Suspicious changes to vitals

JohnDFarmer

A user account (ForeverRemembered) is changing vital statistics all over in my family and for many generations (and other people's families too?). They just delete and then re-add the same information so that their name shows up as credit for the last change. Sometimes standard format dates are re-entered as non standard and often the sex is deleted then re-added (no change). Is this some kind of bot or business person that is trying to show up everywhere for some commercial reason? I tried to contact the "user" but no response. I reported it as abuse and was chastised for reporting it as it did not meet the "abuse" criteria.

I would prefer to see who made the last meaningful change instead of seeing some bogus name on every item everywhere on my parents, sisters, and ancestors pages.

Amy Archibald

@JohnDFarmer

They could also be running a syncing process between FamilySearch and a tree program (like RootsMagic, Ancestral Quest, etc). And they may not even be aware that is it making all the changes it is doing.

JohnDFarmer

I thought the sync process only went one direction, out of FamilySearch, and into the other products. Am I wrong?

AnneLoForteWillson

There are several third-party programs that can change data on FamilySearch Family Tree as well. As @Amy Archibald mentions, RootsMagic and Ancestral Quest are a couple of those. See the Solutions Gallery for additional ones that can and more about which can upload and which can only download information. Ancestry.com accounts with FamilySearch subscriptions can link and port information from Ancestry trees into FamilySearch Family Tree profiles, as well.

RTorchia

And of course the wonderful thing about those that once you spend a few hours cleaning up a page, they can just overwrite it back the way it was with one click. They don't even get bothered by notes, alerts or reasons for changes, and they don't even get notified of FS chat messages.

MandyShaw1

RootsMagic will only allow one granular change, e.g. a Name or Birth, at a time, but you hit the nail on the head re alerts, change reasons, and notifications. Why are third parties (who are clearly subject to a lot of checks when enrolling for the API) not obliged to make alerts, latest change reasons, and notifications very clear to their FS integration users before updates can be made?