Passwords, sessions, exporting your data and closing your account.
If you forget your password, request a reset from the sign-in screen. We email a six-digit code, which expires after ten minutes. Repeated requests are rate-limited.
We never email you a link that signs you in without a code, and we will never ask for your password. Anything that does is not from us.
You can claim a username from Settings → Profile. Availability is checked as you type, and it does two things once set.
The username belongs to your account rather than to a person record, so changing it moves the short link with you. Your public ID never changes and keeps working either way.
You can download a copy of your personal data from Settings → Your Data, as a structured JSON file. If something you expected is missing, email privacy@worldancestry.net and we will respond within 30 days.
You can close your account from your settings. It is deactivated straight away and your personal data is erased 30 days later, apart from anything we are legally required to keep. During those 30 days you can reactivate by logging in, and your profile comes back exactly as you left it.
Family records you contributed generally remain, because other relatives depend on them — but your authorship is anonymised, and your own profile is anonymised too rather than deleted outright, so the relationships pointing at it survive.
If this did not answer your question, that is worth knowing — it tells us what to write next.
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