Avoid Public Domain Genealogy

Today I stumbled across the Public Domain Genealogy web site and thought it looked interesting. Since I'm always curious about what information other sites have to offer, I went ahead and signed up for the free account (big mistake)!

The site portrays itself as true source of public domain information, which you can obtain for free (as opposed to paying sites like Ancestry.com for it).  Sure they tell you to use the other web sites too in order to get a more complete history record of your family, but they still portray themselves as being something different. 

They even tell you that you will have to look at a few advertising screens during the sign up process, but that that you don't have to respond to any of them.  This is pretty much true.

But what they don't tell you is that the screens last for a good 5-10 minutes and you have to manually click NO on all the adverts on the page.  Then if that wasn't bad enough, by the time you get to the "next" prompt, you're confronted with a message that says you MUST look at one of the adverts.  You can say No after looking, but then the whole process starts over again.   VERY FRUSTRATING!

If you have the stamina to get through all the advertising screens, you'll find that Public Domain Genealogy isn't offering anything different that other genealogy sites are offering.  They have the links to the same directories and databases everybody else does.

Only now, they also have your name, address, birth date, and phone number.   And you basically have nothing more than you had before you found the web site. 


My advice .... avoid Public Domain Genealogy like the plague!