![How are living people protected?](http://cmsasset.ancestrycdn.com/content/dam/ancestry/teams/legal/EN-Privacy-for-Your-Family-Tree-Q2-Status-Living.png)
There are two sources of information about living individuals on our site: information and records users have uploaded into family trees and records Ancestry has obtained from trusted third parties.
Family Trees
We determine whether someone in your tree is living in a couple ways:
We give you control—you can change a person’s status to indicate whether or not the individual is living or deceased or simply include a death date.
We use data you have provided—If you don’t indicate whether an individual is living or deceased, we will determine his or her status based on information you provide. We assume an individual is living unless there is death information or his or her birth date is more than 100 years ago. If there is no birth or death information, we estimate dates by looking at relatives in the tree.
If we’ve determined an individual is still alive, he or she is identified in your tree with a “Living” label. Users who don’t have permission to view living people in your tree will see a “Private” label.
View with permission to see living people
View without permission to see living people
Record Databases
In our extensive databases you may find information about living individuals; quite often this is information that has been made public by government institutions or other groups. Before we publish information on our site, we consider a number of things, including industry guidelines, rules, best practices, laws and regulations, and customer needs, so we can be thoughtful and responsible in our approach.
If you find a record about yourself or a living family member that you are uncomfortable with, please contact Member Services.