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Family Search (by the Mormons)

Genealogy, Local, General
ten0rman
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Family Search (by the Mormons)

#162705

Postby ten0rman » August 28th, 2018, 8:31 pm

OK, I'm thinking about restarting my genealogy research this winter - something to do when it's too darned cold to do anything other than skulk indoors.

Anyway, I see that Family Search, the Mormon database, requires a free membership before one can use their data. Fair enough, and one doesn't need to be a Mormon either. And so I attempted to set up an account. Now being a suspicious sort of cove, I thought that I would use a disposable email address, then if they did indeed start cutting up nasty about their religion, I could simply delete said address and forget about it. The disposable address is in the format "main part of address - disposable part of address @ yahoo.com", eg ten0rman-familysearch@yahoo.com.

Well, it don't work, not nohow. Unless, of course, I've messed up typing it in, which is always possible. I've tried changing the password, but can't even logon, so I'm going to have to resort to their last ditch support suggestion, ie wait 48 hours and set it all up again. Job for tomorrow, possibly. But in the meantime....

.... Has anyone else done this with Family Search? Ie used a disposable address similar to the above? And did it work?

I have tested the disposable address from myself, if that makes sense, and it does work as expected.

MTIA,

ten0rman

johnhemming
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Re: Family Search (by the Mormons)

#162712

Postby johnhemming » August 28th, 2018, 9:07 pm

The mormons are quite good at this. I haven't done much online genealogy for over a decade, but I found their site quite good. It isn't so much a forum as a source of information. One of my great grandfather's brothers emigrated from Birmingham and his descendents are now in Utah and there is a substantial piece of mormon research of that part of the family.

I don't remember whether I had to give them my email address, but I would not think there is much that one can get from that anyway. (if you are using Gmail or hotmail or something like that).

vrdiver
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Re: Family Search (by the Mormons)

#162735

Postby vrdiver » August 28th, 2018, 10:47 pm

I'd second John's suggestion to just give them a throwaway gmail address.

Gmail, if you want to, will accept a "+" between the name and "gmail.com", e.g. vrd+lemonfool@gmail.com. Some websites bar the "+" sign from being embedded in an address (they just say "invalid address" when I try to use it). I wonder if the Mormon site has a similar policy for the "-" that you are using?

ten0rman
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Re: Family Search (by the Mormons)

#162836

Postby ten0rman » August 29th, 2018, 12:04 pm

Well, well, well, there's a thing!

I've tried again - with complete and immediate success.
As VRD suggested, the UID, which can be either an email address or a pseudonym, does not accept "-", yet the normal email address is quite happy to accept it. So, I've created my account with pseudonym of 15 letters, just as before, ok, I mispelt a part of it, but I can't see how, or why it failed because of that, and I've created a password with a mixture of uppercase, lowercase and numbers - just as before, and I've created an email address of ten0rman-familysearch@yahoo.com (ok before you all get het up, it wasn't that, but the point is the "-" was accepted), and received an immediate confirmation email.

So what did I do wrong? I can't see a mispelling for the UID causing a problem, I suppose I could have got the P/W wrong, but really, that shouldn't have stopped the confirmatory email, so I suspect I must have done something wrong with the email address.

Never mind, all's well that ends well.

Now for some research just to see what it throws up, eg there's a suspicion that Mrs T's grandfather emigrated to America and although we think we know his name we're not really sure. Interestingly, Mrs T's grandmother gave birth to two children, neither of whom have a father, she ostensibly being single. Yet in 1930 or so, she married a man with the same surname as the man we think may be the actual father. Also Mrs T's aunt disappeared post 1942. Did she emigrate? We don't know. Lot's of interesting things to follow.

Cheers now, and thanks.

ten0rman


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