I agree, which is why I check out every supposed connection to our family tree and make sure that it really connects. And I can tell you I have "cousins" who have gotten a bit upset with me as I work with them and make them prove their connections before those connections are put into my tree. I also keep my tree private. There are too many lazy "click happy" people out there -- "hey the name is the same and so is the year, they are ours" -- no matter that the name is William COOPER and there are thousands, and this one is in a different, county, state/provence, country, whatever. Or JONES, or SMITH. And I get really tired of having to do their research for them to show them where they went wrong so they will remove our family from their trees. They are the reason I keep my tree private. They are also the reason why I have copies of all documentation for each person in my online tree, so the cousins who are allowed access to the tree get the correct documentation to preclude that clicking if possible, as yes, I have even had "click happy" cousins that I have had to slow down and make to think about what they are doing. Keeping the online tree private but searchable gets me the new contacts, they only get a "hit" on that particular person, no connections. If they want to know more they have to contact me to see if it is their person. That gives me the opportunity to check out their work and see if it is correct, or what I come up with, and ask them to prove what they have if what I find is different. And I never work forward checking their info, I work backward from them to see if I can duplicate what they have. Then once I feel they could possibly be connected I contact our family research group of 38 cousin researchers and they all do the same using the resources available to them where ever they are in the world. Once we all pass it, then it is connected to our trees, and the "new cousin" is given access to the family tree. Works for us. We have had only one 5 year error. Two men born 3 years apart, uncle and nephew with the same name, fathers' names the same, fathers' occupations the same. Got them mixed up in the first census they each appeared in alone, ended up marrying the uncle to the nephew's wife. Five years later one of the cousin researchers stumbled across the grave for the nephew with his wife, while getting photos of gravestones for his own line, and we had to make the adjustment to the uncle being a batchelor when he died and the nephew having an extended family. And that error was made early in our collaborative research, more than 20 years ago. It served to remind us that even though we were being very careful since we were researching common names like COOPER, JONES and SMITH, that we needed to be even more so. Annie in Minnesota In a message dated 7/1/2012 1:49:56 A.M. Central Daylight Time, [email protected] writes: In reality both points of view are valid. Ancestry can be extremely useful but like any resource it needs to be used with discretion. There is no substitute for proper research but unfortunately too many people simply copy information without checking it's veracity. You may say that's their problem but it becomes everyone's problem when it is copied over and over again and becomes "fact".