Monday, October 24, 2016

Monday Mailbox: Oops

The Ancestry Insider's Monday MailboxA user posted a comment about my article, “Darned Records: I’m My Own Grandmother.” It appears we’ve been had.

Dear Ancestry Insider,

I regret to inform you that the Florida Sun Post is a fake or satirical news publication: http://www.dailydot.com/irl/florida-man-granddaughter-marry-hoax/.

Signed,
Joe Lowry

Dear Joe,

Oops.

Signed,
The Ancestry Insider


Dear Ancestry Insider,

I have been busy of late and decided after reading [“FamilySearch Adds 141 Million New Record Hints] article that for a few hours today I would have some fun and go back to the LDS site but alas they wouldn't let me sign on so I tried to make a new membership and password and they said I was already a member and to please sign in but when I tried to sign it it said I wasn't a member and would I please create a new password and so I did and on and on and on until I finally thought they got it and a sign came on that said, "timed-Out." I do hope that others don't have as much trouble as I had or they will lose more members than they will ever gain. Trick or treat?

Signed,
Connie

Dear Connie,

If it is still happening, send me your username and email address and I will look into it.

Account management is one of the most difficult aspects of FamilySearch. In fairness, account management is difficult on many websites. Mastering the art of username and password recovery is a good skill to have. For many websites I use infrequently, I don’t bother writing down a password; I just use password recovery every time I use the website. To recover a username or password, you do need to have access to email. And unless you are on your own computer, you will need your email username and password.

I helped a lady in the Family History Library one day. She was in your same predicament, but she could not remember her email password. If you forget both your email password and website password, it can be hard recovering access to that website.

Signed,
---tai

5 comments:

  1. Your headline "I'm my own Grandmother" reminds me of a passage in James Joyce's Ulysses where Buck Mulligan summarizes his friend's really convoluted argument saying "[Stephen Dedalus] proves by algebra that Hamlet’s grandson is Shakespeare’s grandfather and that he himself is the ghost of his own father".

    That's the simple version. I bet lots of genealogists have found themselves trying to explain similarly complicated relationships...

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  2. Family Search has a strange way of telling you that your password needs to be changed or has expired. Connie's experience is what happens with any user who has not changed their password in the last 6 months. If it gives you a chance to change your password, do it, if not try https://ident.lds.org to change your password. If no success, call 866 406-1830 for help resetting your account. Never give your user and password to anyone else for any account.

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  3. Good catch. I shouldn't have asked for her password. That was an oversight. Never share your password.

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  4. Connie's experience with familysearch recently almost parallels mine with Ancestry.com in the last few days. I have been attempting to get in touch with their support staff about what I consider to be a serious issue. Briefly, a GEDCOM export to my FTM software resulted in all links to findagrave references in every person's record in the database reverting to only one online findagrave record.

    I tried sending my issue to "support@ancestry.com" and received an auto-response indicating that I should instead use this page, "https://support.ancestry.com/s/". This page is virtually useless. One can enter name and email, but one cannot choose from pull-down boxes nor does the request submit button function. The "All Support Topics" link in the upper right of the page does not function. I know that Ancestry's support has a reputation for being slow and not very helpful but this appears to be a new low, even for them.

    Paul

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  5. If you every try to point out to Ancestry.com that they have something wrong and even let them know what the correct entry should be they seem to turn it around and it's you that have done the wrong thing and they couldn't have made a mistake (i.e. they had entered that my great Uncle had married twice and was living in a Scandinavian country, the chap had never been out of Australia and there was no way that he was going to be trapped by a woman after the first fiasco, he actually "hid out" at his cousins place and even us kids were told that "Uncle wasn't there" if anyone asked). That's if you can get onto their customer support dept. I saved an old address they answered me on once, and that I could reply to, and I use that. That was a while ago now so they may have altered it. Any time I seem to make a complaint things get worse so as you can guess I just wait and wait and wait for it to come good.

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