At Ancestry, privacy is our top priority. Below is our transparency report for 2017, which covers law enforcement requests for member data. This report covers requests addressed to all Ancestry brands.

As explained in our Guide for Law Enforcement and our Privacy Statement, Ancestry requires valid legal process in order to produce information about our members. We comply with legitimate requests in accordance with our Privacy Statement.

Overview

  • Ancestry received 34 valid law enforcement requests for user information in 2017. We provided information in response to 31 of those 34 requests.
  • All the requests were related to investigations involving credit card misuse and identity theft.
  • We refused numerous inquiries on the basis that the requestor failed to obtain the appropriate legal process.
  • We received no requests for information related to genetic information of any Ancestry member, and we did not disclose any such information to law enforcement.

National Security Requests

As of December 31, 2017, Ancestry has never received a classified request pursuant to the national security laws of the United States or any other country. In other words, Ancestry has not received a National Security Letter or a request under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

2016 Transparency Report

2015 Transparency Report

Number of Requests per Ancestry Website: Ancestry.com (33), Rootsweb (1). Jurisdiction: US Federal (11), US State (8), Germany (8), Canada (4), United Kingdom (3). Type of Request: Criminal Subpoena (34), Search Warrant (0), Emergency Request (0), Administrative Subpoena (0)