I saw this on another mailing list and decided to send along along.........
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/1,1249,635160683,00.html
Fake family trees online may trip up genealogists
By Lee Davidson
Deseret Morning News
Genealogists beware.
A software company is marketing a new program to Internet advertisers
that could quickly generate Web sites full of extensive, but fake, family
trees.
Critics say the approach appears to be part of a new money-making
scheme to lure people who search for family names on Google, Yahoo or other
search engines to Web sites that use bogus data to help ensure they appear
high on "hit lists." They then make money if visitors click on advertisers'
links.
They worry that novices might download false information that is
designed to look real, and then corrupt others' family trees if they share
that bad data online or through family history databases such as those
offered by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or the commercial
Utah-based
Ancestry.com
However, Don Harrold, co-creator of a program called "Fake Family,"
which he sells for $75, says data it produces has "absolutely zero chance"
of matching any real person or family. He says he has offered the program to
fewer than 30 self-described Internet advertisers, so its use is not
widespread, and he has not made money on it.
Why make it then? "Why not? I enjoy trying to find ways to create
computer simulations of organic life," Harrold told the Deseret Morning
News.
But online chat groups of both genealogists and Internet advertisers
are buzzing about what the new program could do to genealogical research,
and why Harrold is marketing it, even if, as he says, to a small group.
Dan Eastman, author of Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter, wrote
this past week that he believes Harrold "wants to flood the Internet with
bogus genealogy material, all for the purpose of making easy money."
Online information that Harrold wrote says his product can "create
thousands of pages of unique . . . content with almost no effort. Neither
humans nor search engines will be able to tell whether the content is 'real'
or 'generated.' "
How could that make money?
Josh Anderson, an Internet advertiser from Idaho, who also is a
genealogist concerned about the product, explains Web hosts can program
their sites to display "sponsored links." Advertisers pay search engines to
have these appear on screen whenever certain key words such as "genealogy"
are part of a search.
When such links are clicked by a visitor, the Web site host and search
engine company split revenue from an advertiser. (Of course, Web sites can
also offer other forms of advertising.)
"It can be a very profitable source of income. Some people make
millions of dollars a year doing it," Anderson said. "The whole purpose (of
Fake Family-style sites) is to trick the search engine, so they get a top
listing for some search words" to attract more visitors and potentially more
revenue-producing mouse clicks.
Search engine companies say they hunt for and remove from listings any
sites that are bogus or that scrape content from other sites merely to act
as a vehicle to carry advertiser links.
But Fake Family boasts in written information that it can fool search
engines. It does not merely produce lists of random names, but links them
generation-to-generation with bogus birth, marriage and death dates and
places.
It adds that its randomly generated names "are era-specific," meaning
you will get more names such as Orville and Bertha in the 1880s than the
1980s. Infant mortality, marriage rates and migration data is also encoded,
and more. It's the rich family "experience" that Fake Family provides that
is significant and makes the output stunning in its ability to look real to
humans.
Internet advertisers helped the Deseret Morning News identify a few
genealogy sites that appeared to contain only bogus information, along with
plenty of advertiser links. Harrold, however, said he only knows of one
generated by Fake Family (even though he said in written information that he
has "monetized" several family history sites).
"This is scary to me," said Mindy Koch, an Internet advertiser from
North Carolina and an avid genealogist. "There is a great chance that a
novice could think this is real. If they download it, and then later upload
it into repositories like (the LDS Church's) Ancestral File, those databases
would include lots of people who never existed."
Also, she added that it potentially could make search engines more
difficult to use for genealogy if bogus sites slow them or account for all
the "top hits."
Harrold says such threats are imagined and not real. He said the
chances of randomly selected first and last names, coupled with randomly
selected places and dates, being shown as married to the same persons as
people who actually lived "are not just slim, they are nonexistent."
He said if someone still mistook such information as real and
downloaded it, "that's their fault." He adds, "If you want real family
information, why are you not looking at Census records? If you're not paying
for it, and I didn't ask you to take it, and the name and date don't match
your family tree, why are you taking this information? Any onus is on the
people who take this information."
Some in genealogy chat groups, however, complained that a name that
looks even roughly plausible could be mistaken as real by a novice, or cause
even a genealogy expert to spend a lot of time and money to eliminate the
possibility it is the person for whom they are seeking.
"Boo hoo," Harrold told the Morning News in response to such
complaints. He said "the real story" is how Google and other search engines
do not verify content they seek and guide others to for profit. He said
databases by the LDS Church and
Ancestry.com also contain some incorrect
information submitted by patrons. His obviously false data creates less
threat to genealogy research than they do, he said.
Harrold suggested in chat groups that he might sue people who referred
to his work as a "scam." He also warned the Morning News to be careful what
it said about him.
In turn, makers of the Legacy Family Tree software threatened to sue
Harrold if he did not remove from his Web site instructions about how to
download free software from them that could assist the Fake Family program.
Meanwhile, Mary Kay Evans, spokeswoman for
Ancestry.com, a Utah
company that, as part of its service, offers a large database of names,
said, "It is so unfortunate that there are predators on the Web who target
people interested in their genealogy. Genealogy is such a popular hobby that
predators are moving to take advantage of that."
Evans, as well as many genealogists and even Harrold himself, urges
genealogists to verify carefully all sources of information in genealogy,
especially any obtained online from people they do not know. "That is a
primary role of
Ancestry.com, to help people see source records," Evans
said.
Anderson, who operates a small family Web site, also encourages
genealogists to actually talk to people operating such sites and ask for all
source information.
E-mail: lee(a)desnews.com