Greetings List Members, I'm sending this notification to the members of the genealogy mailing lists I volunteer to manage for Rootsweb: Rootsweb has merged with MyFamily.Com aka Ancestry.Com. Here is an excerpt from the notification sent to listowners..... ------- Begin Rootsweb notice excerpt ----------------------------------------- Nothing will change for you, no one is going to charge you to use RootsWeb. You'll still find RootsWeb at www.RootsWeb.com. Everything you're used to using will still be here: the 19,000 mailing lists, the hundreds of millions of names in free genealogy databases, the interactive learning guides, the weekly RootsWeb Review and Missing Links, the numerous tools for tracing your family history, the tens of thousands of message boards, the thousands of independently authored web sites. RootsWeb will still support worthy genealogy projects and societies, such as the USGenWeb Project (www.USGenWeb.org), the Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild (ISTG.rootsweb.com) and the FreeBMD Project (FreeBMD.rootsweb.com), and other groups that provide free genealogical resources. And don't worry, you won't be charged to access RootsWeb. No one will put your data on CD without your permission. Our Privacy Policy (http://www.rootsweb.com/rootsweb/pledge.html) and our Acceptable User Policy (http://www.rootsweb.com/rootsweb/aup.html) are unchanged. Other promises made over the years will continue to be honored. You'll still deal with the same RootsWeb volunteers and employees. In fact, most users won't notice any changes, except exciting new tools, more content, and better genealogical resources. If you would like more information, please check out our official press release at http://www.ancestry.com/home/celebrate/rootsrelease.htm ------- end Rootsweb notice excerpt ------------------------------ My personal opinion on this is to proceed with caution. Please visit the web sites from their notification for more information. Do not panic. While they cannot "take" the email addresses from the list, they can start sending "cookies" to your computer on Rootsweb sites. They are those little bits of code which are written to your computer's cookie file so the advertiser can learn more about your Internet habits. Most every commercial site on the Internet already does this. Up until today, no Rootsweb site ever sent "cookies" but I suspect this will change very shortly. How to refuse/delete cookies using Netscape Communicator or Internet Explorer: http://www.iwindow.com/warning.htm About Cookies and their use from ZDNet (asks for two cookies) http://home.zdnet.com/pcmag/features/cookie/cks1.htm By reading the above Rootsweb web sites - you can infer that you will also begin to see more Ancestry and MyFamily advertising on Rootsweb web pages. Nothing new there. I believe that the mailing lists will continue to operate as usual and that your participation and address will be safe while using them. Rootsweb policy specifically states this. Further, they guarantee that any data submitted to Rootsweb will be free from commercial use without your express permission. On caveat - FamilyTreeMaker offered their "free" genealogy web pages under the same premise and yet data from those pages has mysteriously appeared on FTM's various World Family Tree CD's. You decide. In the meantime, I will continue to manage these Rootsweb lists as they have always been run. I will keep you informed of any other changes which might affect you or these lists. PLEASE, limit the discussion of these changes or any questions you might have to private messages to me at vdpcom@warwick.net If there is a need, I will set up a separate list of sorts just for this discussion. I'd rather not clutter up the genealogy lists at this point - there are over 1,000 of you out there on these three lists. Carry on. Cathy DiPietro listowner: Lunen-Links, NJSussex, Kinney-L vdpcom@warwick.net