Frequently Asked Questions

General

  1. What is FamiLinx?
    FamiLinx is a database of crowd-sourced genealogy. It contains pedigrees, demographic data, and simple phenotypic information.
  2. Who is behind FamiLinx?
    The original data was created by millions of active genealogists that publicly shared the information on Geni.com, a MyHeritage company. With permission from MyHeritage, we collected the public data from Geni.com in a process that took more then 3 months and then we spent nearly a year cleaning and organizing the data in this resource.
  3. How should I cite FamiLinx?
    Quantitative analysis of population-scale family trees using millions of relatives
    Joanna Kaplanis, Assaf Gordon, Tal Shor, Omer Weissbrod, Dan Geiger, Mary Wahl, Michael Gershovits, Barak Markus, Mona Sheikh, Melissa Gymrek, Gaurav Bhatia, Daniel G. MacArthur, Alkes L. Price, and Yaniv Erlich
    https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aam9309 Science, 2018.
  4. I have more questions. How can I get in contact?

    5. Privacy

  5. Can you elaborate more about your privacy policies?
    The privacy of the individuals is highly important to us and we took several steps to respect it. First, we collected only public profiles of genealogists that decided to share their family trees. In other words, these profiles were accessible to anyone in the world with an Internet connection, not just us. Second, we removed any explicit identifiers from data such as first names and surnames. Third, the resource Terms of Use prohibit any attempt to re-identify individuals in the data.
  6. Do you have any DNA information?
    FamiLinx does not contain any DNA information.
  7. Did you get any private or privileged information from Geni.com/MyHeritage?
    No! We only collected public profiles. We could only access the same information that any other web user or search engine can observe.

    8. Download

  8. Are there any restrictions in using the data?
    See the Terms of Use. Together with MyHeritage, our aim was to maximize the utility of the resource for scientific investigations while respecting the privacy of the individuals and the commercial value of Geni.com.
  9. Why do you ask for my details prior to downloading the data?
    This is just a safeguard mechanism as part of our commitment to respect the privacy of individuals in the dataset. Keep in mind that we do not share this information with third parties or send you any spam emails.