How to Keep Your Family Tree Private (When Big Sites Don't)

If you’ve searched for how to make your family tree private, you’ve probably already had the uncomfortable realization: the two biggest names in family history are not built to keep your tree to yourself. FamilySearch is a single public worldwide tree that anyone can view and edit. Ancestry trees, while more controllable, are still easy to expose more widely than you intended. Recording your family means writing down real details about living people — and that is exactly the data you don’t want a stranger, or a search engine, to reach.

The good news is that a genuinely private family tree is achievable. It takes understanding what “private” actually means, knowing where the big platforms leak, and choosing tools and habits that protect the living rather than exposing them by default. Here’s how.

Why FamilySearch and Ancestry aren’t private by default

The two platforms fail privacy in different ways, and it’s worth being precise about each.

FamilySearch is one shared, public tree. It isn’t “your” tree at all — it’s a single collaborative worldwide tree that the whole user base edits together. Living people are hidden from other users, but deceased individuals you add become part of a public record that anyone can see, edit, or merge. You don’t get a private copy; you contribute to the commons. That’s a deliberate, valuable design for connecting distant relatives, but it’s the opposite of private. The FamilySearch-specific version of this problem, and what to do about it, is covered in FamilySearch is public by design — building a private family history instead.

Ancestry trees can be exposed more easily than people expect. Ancestry defaults new trees to “public,” meaning other members can find them in searches and view deceased individuals’ details. Even a tree you set to private can surface information through hints, DNA match connections, and other members who’ve copied your people into their own trees. Living people are protected, but “private” on Ancestry is a setting you have to actively manage, not a guarantee — and once someone has copied your data into their tree, you no longer control it.

What “private” actually means

Privacy isn’t one switch; it’s a few distinct guarantees, and it helps to know which ones you actually have:

No public search. Can a stranger find your family by typing a name into a search box or a search engine? On a truly private tool, the answer is no — there’s no public directory at all.
No exposure of the living. Details about people who are alive — addresses, health, relationships, adoptions — should never be visible outside a small, known circle.
Bounded access. Even among people you do share with, not everyone needs to see everything. Ideally, what each person sees is scoped to their own place in the family, not the whole database.
You control the copy. If sharing your data means others can duplicate it into trees you don’t control, it isn’t really private anymore. One canonical copy beats scattered copies.

A platform can pass one of these and fail the others. “My tree is set to private” often means only the first-or-second is handled, while the copying problem remains wide open.

Steps to protect your living relatives and sensitive stories

Whatever tool you use, these habits materially reduce your exposure:

Keep living people out of any public tree. If a platform’s tree is public or shared, don’t put living relatives’ details in it, even if the platform claims to hide them — hiding is not the same as omitting.
Separate sensitive stories from the searchable skeleton. The bare tree (names, relationships) and the sensitive narrative (an adoption, an estrangement, a health history) don’t have to live in the same exposure tier. Keep the delicate material somewhere access is deliberately bounded.
Assume anything copied is gone. Before sharing, ask what happens if a recipient duplicates your data. If they can copy it into a tree you can’t edit, treat that data as no longer private.
Prefer invitation over publication. A tool where you invite a bounded set of known relatives is structurally safer than one where you publish and then restrict.
Review who can see what, periodically. Access granted years ago to someone no longer close is worth revisiting.

How MyBloodlines keeps a family record private by architecture

Most tools make privacy a setting. MyBloodlines makes it the structure. There is no public search, no directory, and no way for a stranger to look your family up — nothing in it is public, ever. You don’t publish a tree and then lock it down; you record into a private graph that only invited, connected relatives can reach.

What each person can see is set by their permission boundary — computed from their actual place in the bloodline graph, not from a sharing toggle. You see your own line and the relatives connected to it, and not parts of the graph you have no connection to. Because the record is one shared, canonical copy rather than per-user duplicates, there’s no copying-into-someone-else’s-tree problem to worry about. The exact rule for who’s inside a boundary and who isn’t is laid out in permission boundaries in MyBloodlines. And because the whole thing behaves like a private, browsable archive rather than a static chart, it doubles as a private family wiki your relatives can build together.

None of this requires trusting a privacy setting to stay flipped. The default, and the only mode, is private.

Common questions

Can I make my family tree completely private?

Not on a public-by-design platform like FamilySearch, where deceased individuals join a shared tree. To keep a family record completely private, use a tool that has no public search at all and shares only by invitation to known relatives.

Is Ancestry private?

Ancestry hides living people, but new trees default to public, and private trees can still leak through hints, DNA matches, and other members copying your data. Privacy on Ancestry is something you actively manage, not a default guarantee.

What’s the most private way to record family history?

A tool that is private by architecture — no public directory, access scoped to each person’s place in the family, and one shared copy no one can duplicate elsewhere. That protects living relatives without relying on you to remember a setting.

Start recording your bloodline Claim your profile and begin at MyBloodlines →