On April 1, free access to Ancestry.com's databases was severly curtailed at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City and over 2,000 satellite Family History Centers after the Church and Ancestry.com were not able to come to a licensing agreement. While most genealogists are open to looking at both sides of the story, those who have personal subscriptions to Ancestry.com are now up in arms because Ancestry has also cut off the ability for them to log into their personal account from FHL computers. Even Leland Meitzler at Genealogy Blog, who has been supporting Ancestry's move, is now "really upset." He posted a workaround link for individual subscriber access on April 2 and by April 3 even that link had been cut off. I guess the concern from Ancestry.com is that users will not log out of the public computers when they are done, which leaves their account open for unauthorized access. But that's a concern with any public computer and I don't see Ancestry.com moving to block access from the millions of other public computers around the world. I can understand the decision to discontinue such extensive free access - that's a lot of potential income for The Generations Network. But blocking individual subscriber access from FHL computers is being a bit petty in my opinion.

UPDATE: April 5

An official response to the situation from Ancestry.com:

Dear Colleagues,

The Family History Library and Ancestry.com have used IP authentication for several years to help manage the access to the Ancestry.com experience to the library. Since Ancestry and the FHL started using IP authentication several years ago, patrons at the Family History Library have not been able to use their own personal accounts on Ancestry.com. With the changes in the FHL access to Ancestry.com effective on Monday, this has become more of an issue than it was in the past.

Ancestry learned a few days ago that patrons at the Family History Library had inadvertently used a deep link into Ancestry.com to bypass the IP authentication that made the computer unable to log out of a personal account, even if the user wanted to, creating a security risk. Ancestry closed that hole to protect our site security and customer privacy. Shutting down the deep link log in function on the FHL computers was not a direct or an intentional ploy to upset current Ancestry.com subscribers.

Ancestry and the FHL are currently exploring solutions to allow people to gain access to their personal accounts at the Family History Library while still protecting the privacy of customers. Rest assured that we (Ancestry and the FHL) are working on a resolution--but there is not yet a timetable for its completion.

SUZANNE RUSSO ADAMS, AG(r)
Professional Services Desk Manager
ancestry.com
Part of The Generations Network