At Ancestry, earning and keeping your trust is our most important responsibility. We know that when you use our services—whether you’re building a family tree, searching historical records, or exploring your DNA results—you’re sharing personal information that matters deeply. Protecting that information is at the heart of everything we do.

Recently, there have been questions in the genealogy community about how Ancestry handles requests from law enforcement. We want to reiterate our position and reassure you about the steps we take to protect your privacy.

Our Purpose Has Always Been the Same

Ancestry is built for one purpose: helping you discover, preserve, and share your family history.

Everything on our platform—family trees, search tools, DNA services, historical records, and more—is designed for personal discovery, not for criminal investigations.

Many of the historical records we host, such as census documents, are public and remain fully accessible through the government institutions that have always provided them. Our role is to make these materials easier to find, understand, and connect to your family journey.

Our Policy on Law Enforcement

Our stance has been clear and consistent for years: Ancestry does not allow our services to be used for law enforcement investigations unless we are legally required to comply.

Here’s what that means for you:

• We don’t voluntarily work with law enforcement. We do not provide customer data to law enforcement unless we receive a valid, legally binding court order.
• We require proper legal process. If a government agency wants data, they must present a court order. We carefully review every request and push back on any that are overly broad or not valid.
• We don’t allow our site to be used for investigations. Law enforcement—or anyone working on their behalf—cannot use Ancestry’s DNA tools, family trees, record collections, or any part of our platform to investigate crimes or identify human remains. Allowing this would go against the purpose of our services and our commitment to protecting your privacy.

We continue to allow family history research that aligns with our purpose, including work by professional genealogists on heirs and probate matters, or adoption research. These activities support personal and family discovery and are distinct from law enforcement investigations, whether conducted by police or by third parties working on their behalf.

Same Policy, Clearer Terms 

Nothing about our position has changed.

Over the past two years, we simply clarified our Terms and Conditions to make our long-standing policy easier for customers to understand:

• January 2024: We explicitly confirmed that our restrictions on judicial proceedings apply to all Ancestry services.
• August 2025: We clarified that these judicial proceedings include any law enforcement investigation.

Your Privacy Comes First

We respect the important work that law enforcement does to keep communities safe. At the same time, we have a responsibility to make sure Ancestry is used for what it was created for: family history research. This commitment to protecting your privacy is part of that responsibility and guides the decisions we make every day.

When you use Ancestry, you trust that your personal and family history information will be used only for the purposes you intend—and never for activities you didn’t consent to. Your expectations about how your data should and should not be used are paramount in shaping and enforcing our policies, including what types of activities are permitted on our platform.

Our goal remains the same—to help you discover, preserve, and share your family story, while safeguarding your information every step of the way.