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I'm outraged with this latest sign of the times. I am speaking of the new trend in "creating" phony family trees. I am going to refer you to two very important recent blog entries for you to read.
This first is from Dick Eastman's, "Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter", dated Nov 2, 2005, Generating Fake Family Trees Automatically.
http://eogn.typepad.com/eastmans_online
The second is Christopher Dunham's, "Genealogue", Nov 3rd article, Free Census Records Come at a Cost.
http://genealogue.blogspot.com/2005/1
To get you up to speed Dick Eastman's article exposed a new "scam"; bogus family trees. Software created by FakeFamily.com that would create a gedcom of bogus family trees to be uploaded to your website. All this done in the hope of generating more traffic to a website, so people will see your ads and increase your search engine rankings. Nothing to further the cause of genealogy, only to infest it. This is all done in the hopes of financial gain for FakeFamily and the evil and designing person using their $75 program.
Chris Dunham's articles reports that Dick Eastman's article was read by one Ron Carroll who was inspired to add his own twist to this money making venture. It seems this Utah company PhonyFamily.com is so brilliant they won't even charge for their "services" they will freely give it away. They are putting on line digitized images of census records from 1790 to 1930. Why is that a terrible thing?
Well sprinkled between these real census images will be phony pages, fabricated names, ages, birthplaces, etc. Why? So they can subliminally place between the entries ads for things like iPods and condoms. When Chris asked Ron Carroll if he was the spawn of Satan, Carroll declined to comment. (Do we need the answer!)
Both of these designing companies/men say they are doing nothing wrong. They are providing a needed service. This isn't anything that genealogist have to worry about because we are suppose to be verifying our sources anyways. (Am I wrong or wasn't a census one of my sources?) I'm sure they realize that this will drive genealogist nuts verifying sources. Genealogists will think they hit the genealogy jackpot when they find this phony information on line. Then we will have to go through person to person to verify that it's all wrong information. This will waste so much time that could be devoted to real research. All I can say is it's evil inspired to hinder this important genealogy work.
The other thing that concerns me is those nuts out there that are posting these fake genealogies on sites like Rootsweb, and Ancestry. Just look up the name Pepsi on there and you will see what I mean. Ok, those genealogies you know automatically are wrong; but what about the other names and dates that look legitimate and are not? We are all familiar with the losers that have nothing better to do with their time than to post spam emails on genealogy mailing lists. There are just some people that get their daily kicks just trying to annoy as many people as possible. Just like the losers that write viruses and watch them pass and destroy thousands of systems just for the thrill of it.
As you can probably tell I am very upset about all this. The thing that annoys me is it's just how these scum bags want to make me feel. But did I really think that the signs of the times wouldn't include the important genealogy work of turning the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to their fathers? I guess I just didn't realize that some people are the spawn of Satan and that is where their hearts are.
What is the bright side? It's really hard for me to find one right now. But I know doing genealogy is the Lord's work and he always wins. There is hope and tomorrow is always another genealogy day.
This first is from Dick Eastman's, "Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter", dated Nov 2, 2005, Generating Fake Family Trees Automatically.
http://eogn.typepad.com/eastmans_online
The second is Christopher Dunham's, "Genealogue", Nov 3rd article, Free Census Records Come at a Cost.
http://genealogue.blogspot.com/2005/1
To get you up to speed Dick Eastman's article exposed a new "scam"; bogus family trees. Software created by FakeFamily.com that would create a gedcom of bogus family trees to be uploaded to your website. All this done in the hope of generating more traffic to a website, so people will see your ads and increase your search engine rankings. Nothing to further the cause of genealogy, only to infest it. This is all done in the hopes of financial gain for FakeFamily and the evil and designing person using their $75 program.
Chris Dunham's articles reports that Dick Eastman's article was read by one Ron Carroll who was inspired to add his own twist to this money making venture. It seems this Utah company PhonyFamily.com is so brilliant they won't even charge for their "services" they will freely give it away. They are putting on line digitized images of census records from 1790 to 1930. Why is that a terrible thing?
Well sprinkled between these real census images will be phony pages, fabricated names, ages, birthplaces, etc. Why? So they can subliminally place between the entries ads for things like iPods and condoms. When Chris asked Ron Carroll if he was the spawn of Satan, Carroll declined to comment. (Do we need the answer!)
Both of these designing companies/men say they are doing nothing wrong. They are providing a needed service. This isn't anything that genealogist have to worry about because we are suppose to be verifying our sources anyways. (Am I wrong or wasn't a census one of my sources?) I'm sure they realize that this will drive genealogist nuts verifying sources. Genealogists will think they hit the genealogy jackpot when they find this phony information on line. Then we will have to go through person to person to verify that it's all wrong information. This will waste so much time that could be devoted to real research. All I can say is it's evil inspired to hinder this important genealogy work.
The other thing that concerns me is those nuts out there that are posting these fake genealogies on sites like Rootsweb, and Ancestry. Just look up the name Pepsi on there and you will see what I mean. Ok, those genealogies you know automatically are wrong; but what about the other names and dates that look legitimate and are not? We are all familiar with the losers that have nothing better to do with their time than to post spam emails on genealogy mailing lists. There are just some people that get their daily kicks just trying to annoy as many people as possible. Just like the losers that write viruses and watch them pass and destroy thousands of systems just for the thrill of it.
As you can probably tell I am very upset about all this. The thing that annoys me is it's just how these scum bags want to make me feel. But did I really think that the signs of the times wouldn't include the important genealogy work of turning the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to their fathers? I guess I just didn't realize that some people are the spawn of Satan and that is where their hearts are.
What is the bright side? It's really hard for me to find one right now. But I know doing genealogy is the Lord's work and he always wins. There is hope and tomorrow is always another genealogy day.
Current Mood: 
annoyed
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