Genealogy enthusiasts - WARNING

OldWilliam

There is a Web site on the Internet called "BillionGraves.com", owned and operated by an American company - BillionGraves Holdings Incorporated - that purports to hold and provide data from death and burial records, and cemetery records, on payment of a fee (of course).

It might well be a scam, because I was horrified to find all three of my children (whose names, because of our unusual surname, I know without doubt to be unique) listed in the database of dead people - but they are all alive and well. There are only two families in the world with our surname, although the two branches are - for established reasons - known not to be linked.

Obviously, I contacted the company, and made them aware of my suspicions that the personal data concerned had been harvested from GEDCOM data that is openly available on the Internet. They have denied this and in its response, the company stated that the source of the data was "FamilySearch" (i.e. the Mormon Church) and that "All information and names received on the website come from gravestones, and/or military, American Social Security records, and burial records of the dead."

This is provably untrue. It is much more likely that the company has simply downloaded personal data in bulk and just ignored any data that indicates the data subject might still be alive, as I know that the Mormon Church is scrupulously careful about that specific fact. It is core to their reasons for collating and storing genealogical data in the first place.

I have submitted a further complaint to BillionGraves Holdings Inc. but I want to draw attention to the fact that a subscription to the company in order to obtain data about a loved one is almost certainly a complete waste of money. And it might prevent any nasty shocks if anyone accesses the site and finds that someone they know is (wrongly) listed on there as being dead... :sad:

gettingtheresometime

You do realise that this is a U.K. based site, even though it ends with a .com?

seashore22

gettingtheresometime wrote: »

You do realise that this is a U.K. based site, even though it ends with a .com?

Why would that matter?

People researching their family trees use World wide data bases. The Mormon church has some very useful, although sometimes flawed information about births, marriages and deaths. It's a by product some some of their beliefs, but I can't think of one family historian who doesn't use this resource.

Never heard of Billion Graves though. It may well be a useful warning.

seashore22

OldWilliam wrote: »

There is a Web site on the Internet called "BillionGraves.com", owned and operated by an American company - BillionGraves Holdings Incorporated - that purports to hold and provide data from death and burial records, and cemetary records, on payment of a fee (of course).

It might well be a scam, because I was horrified to find all three of my children (whose names, because of our unusual surname, I know without doubt to be unique) listed in the database of dead people - but they are all alive and well. There are only two families in the world with our surname, although the two branches are - for established reasons - known not to be linked.

Obviously, I contacted the company, and made them aware of my suspicions that the personal data concerned had been harvested from GEDCOM data that is openly available on the Internet. They have denied this and in its response, the company stated that the source of the data was "FamilySearch" (i.e. the Mormon Church) and that "All information and names received on the website come from gravestones, and/or military, American Social Security records, and burial records of the dead."

This is provably untrue. It is much more likely that the company has simply downloaded personal data in bulk and just ignored any data that indicates the data subject might still be alive, as I know that the Mormon Church is scrupulously careful about that specific fact. It is core to their reasons for collating and storing genealogical data in the first place.

I have submitted a further complaint to BillionGraves Holdings Inc. but I want to draw attention to the fact that a subscription to the company in order to obtain data about a loved one is almost certainly a complete waste of money. And it might prevent any nasty shocks if anyone accesses the site and finds that someone they know is (wrongly) listed on there as being dead... :sad:

SO what info did it give about your dead/not dead relatives? Dates and places? Could they be from previous generations.

I think Billiongraves may well be associated with the Mormons. The people doing research for them are usually amateurs and mistakes do happen. It is still a useful resource, but needs independent checking to make sure the info is correct. Admittedly not every family historian will do this, but even official transcripts have errors in them.

One thing I will say about the Billion Graves website is that it has had to substantiate claims about it's accuracy and how much better it is than Find a Grave. That makes me a little suspicious.

seashore22

I've looked at the site. It seems to have photos of the graves. Did it have photos of your living relatives graves? Spooky.

OldWilliam

gettingtheresometime wrote: »

You do realise that this is a U.K. based site, even though it ends with a .com?

I'm not sure why you think that... the domain registrar is GoDaddy, the DNS servers belong to Amazon, the five IP addresses to which the DNS servers point are all issued by ARIN and all belong to Amazon. All are located in the USA and the company identified as running the site is BillionGraves Holdings Inc., incorporated in the USA and without any presence in an EU state, which of course would permit me to launch a GDPR claim for damages using Part 78 of the Civil Procedure Rules 1998 (not in Denmark, which opted out).

seashore22 wrote: »

SO what info did it give about your dead/not dead relatives? Dates and places? Could they be from previous generations.

The site provides full names in response to a search, but doesn't provide any more information about a specific individual unless a paid-for subscription is taken out (another red flag), and the company doesn't even provide a contact e-mail address - I am having to contact them via a Web form in their "Help" pages, and replies to the originating e-mail address only results in an automated response stating that queries can only be dealt with by opening a support ticket - which, of course, requires the enquirer to join up, a third red flag for users!

No, I have the family tree going back to my great-great-grandfather (18th century), who was illegitimate - both he and his mother had a different surname from his descendants so I can be certain that the three listed names are those of my three living children, data only provided to genealogists with correct dates of birth in a GEDCOM file. The match is exact, two of the children have one middle name and the other has two middle names.

OldWilliam

Interestingly, findmypast.co.uk hosts the "England Billion Graves Cemetery Index", and there are no entries on that index relating to anyone with my surname, not even the genuine ones that I know to exist.

So, it increases my concern that something is very wrong about the US site - I have no concerns whatsoever about findmypast.co.uk, although it might be prudent for the operators of that site to be aware of the lack of accuracy relating to data and the dubious practices of BillionGraves.com, given that they link to the abovementioned index from their own site.

BrassicWoman

OldWilliam wrote: »

I'm not sure why you think that... the domain registrar is GoDaddy, the DNS servers belong to Amazon, the five IP addresses to which the DNS servers point are all issued by ARIN and all belong to Amazon. All are located in the USA and the company identified as running the site is BillionGraves Holdings Inc., incorporated in the USA and without any presence in an EU state, which of course would permit me to launch a GDPR claim for damages using Part 78 of the Civil Procedure Rules 1998 (not in Denmark, which opted out).

All the advice on the MSE site is about UK based money saving; 99% of the users are UK based

BillionGraves is USA based

Hence the suggestion that this message board may not be most effective for you to spread the word

OldWilliam

BrassicWoman wrote: »

All the advice on the MSE site is about UK based money saving; 99% of the users are UK based

BillionGraves is USA based

Hence the suggestion that this message board may not be most effective for you to spread the word

Ah! Got it, thank you. Unfortunately, because of the ambiguity, I thought that gettingtheresometime was referring to the problem site, not to MSE. As a long-term MSE user, I wanted to alert people here... US legislation, either state or federal, makes scant requirement about data accuracy, and I'm not aware that its residents have any recourse whatsoever for data abuse, far less than that provided by the Data Protection Act 2018 and the GDPR.

gettingtheresometime wrote: »

You do realise that this is a U.K. based site, even though it ends with a .com?

OldWilliam

From the company today:

I sent this over to our technical department this morning to see where these records were generated and by whom. These records came from the England and Wales Birth Registration Index, 1837-2008 created by the British Government. These were given to us by FamilySearch, and we were under the impression that these records were for non-living individuals.

I'm taking this to be a withdrawal of their allegation that the Mormon Church was responsible for the mess, and therefore as an admission of liability. It's a pity that BillionGraves.com doesn't have a corporate presence in an EU State (thus enabling a GDPR claim to be made against it), but it's a perfect example of why personal data sent out of the EEA is at serious risk, and why the European Court of First Instance ruled that the so-called "Safe Harbour" agreement with the USA was inadequate and did not meet the requirements of EU Data Protection legislation.