Hi everyone, I've just received the following message from Paul Burchfield, Genealogy.com Technical Support in response to the FTM version 9 warning I issued in Sunday's Coffee. It seems that the information I was given and passed along to all of you was inaccurate. I do apologize for "causing a lot of unnecessary angst among people." (see below) Please understand, mine was meant only to warn and alert FTM users about yet another possible attempt to encroach in our personal lives by a commercial enterprise. Most of you already know how deeply I feel about our "watching out" for each other as family, peers, cousins, friends, etc. I received the alert from someone I trusted, and still do. As an already reported non-user of FTM, I believed my informant had already done his/her "homework." Please forgive. As I stated earlier, my intent was purely to be helpful and alert you; that was all. I post Paul's message to you in its entirety. I wish you all a WONDERFUL week! :) Colleen -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Family Tree Maker 9 warning Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 20:34:48 -0800 From: "Paul Burchfield" <Paul_Burchfield@genealogy.com> To: <ladyaudris@earthlink.net> Colleen, A member of the ORTON-L list passed along a copy of a message you sent to the list where you passed along a warning about Family Tree Maker version 9. Unfortunately, what you saw and passed on is inaccurate. With one person seeing it on one list an then passing it along to another and so on, it's causing a lot of unnecessary angst among people. The issue is not a nefarious one at all. That software is used during beta testing as a tool to help us know what our testers have been doing (to make sure we test enough in all of the areas of the program). it also helps us identify what was happening and what went wrong if during testing the program crashes. During the beta testing period, we periodically ask our beta testers to send to us by attaching the file that is created showing this information to an email. It is not sent to us automatically. Usually when we are done testing and create the final version used to duplicate for sale, we replace the active program file that creates the file that gathers the testing information with an inactive version that doesn't gather the information. Somewhere along the line that part was not done when we shipped version 9. We found this more than a month ago and at that point in time created a knowledge base article. We also made the replacement, inactive program file available for download so people could use it to replace the active one. When we later discovered a problem with Family Tree Maker and created a downloadable update for it, we also included as a part of that the inactive aqueduct file. Because someone didn't ask us about this nor did they look at the existing information we had on this topic, incorrect and inflammatory messages have been created and passed around. It's unfortunate that the originator of the message nor those who are passing it along didn't come to us and ask about it. I would appreciate knowing from whom you received the message. I would like to make sure that they understand what the real issue is. Sincerely, Paul Burchfield, Genealogy.com Technical Support Online Help Center - http://www.genealogy.com/help/index.html