I can answer a few of the questions regarding family tree maker, i.e. the blue stars (and yellow stars)... Family Tree Maker has a built-in online search. When it finds a "match", either from a CD or from an online tree it places a star beside the person (blue or yellow depending on a new match or one you've already looked at) in your tree that a "match" has been found for. I have never found their "matches" to be that good - somebody of a similar or same name, but the only real match I ever got was for some of my own info that had been posted online. Now if it went out and broke some brick walls for me, I would be very excited!! Your adopted daughter becoming your third cousin may have been shown as such if you have a line in your ancestry that crossed somewhere. I have several...i.e. two brothers of one family married two sisters of another family, and a couple of generations later cousins marry...yes, it do get strange! I'm my own cousin (there's a song that goes "I'm my own grandpa" and it certainly is not uncommon to have double relations to yourself, your sibs, etc. Now, as for information being loaded into your files, I have a feeling that there must be something "turned on" in your family tree maker program that is allowing this to happen - like it is going out to the "matches" and autoloading them. I have never had this happen, and it certainly would be an unwelcome event. I don't want my hard work being pasted over by something that is possibly not verified, and vice versa, I certainly don't want information that may be private (living persons, etc.) being stolen out of my program and posted somewhere. This will bear some further looking into. Best, Heidi Dundas Oregon, USA