ProbablyCousins

Help

Ask us anything, any time — most questions get an answer straight away. If yours needs a person, we'll fetch one.

Answered automatically first, by an AI — it can escalate you to a person.

Conversations are kept so a person can follow up, then deleted after 90 days.

Ask away — we'll hold the lantern.

Questions we get a lot

privacy

How do I delete my account, or a relative's information?

Sign in to your family site and open Account (top of the page). You can ask to delete your own account, or to remove a living relative's details. A person handles these by hand, usually within a few days.

What about living relatives?

A living person's details are only ever shown inside their own family's signed-in site, and only if the family chooses to show them. On this public site a living person is never named, except a certificate holder who chooses to show their own name on its public check. A family's reference person is named publicly only if they have died. If your family opts in to matching, anyone can search your dead relatives by name and see their birth year, birthplace and family name. Anyone can ask for their details to be removed.

pricing

What's free, and what costs money?

Joining, searching, browsing your family's site, fixing mistakes, stories, photos, the book, and checking a tree file are all free. The one paid thing is asking us to find the record behind a weak link in your tree (Document Your Cousins). You see each job's estimate before it starts. Jobs are paid from research credit your family buys ahead of time in packs, starting at $10.00 plus any sales tax; the Credits page shows about how many record lookups each pack covers. Your family's owner buys it on your family's site under Credits.

How do I buy research credit?

Sign in to your family's own site (an address like yourfamily.probablycousins.com) and open Credits from the menu. Pick a pack ($10.00, $25.00, $50.00 or $100.00) and pay on the secure checkout page. Checkout is run by Link, Stripe's checkout service, which is the seller of record for the payment. You pay the pack price plus any sales tax, which is worked out from your billing address and shown on the checkout page before you pay. No fee is added. Your statement shows the charge as LINK.COM* followed by our name, and Link emails your receipt. Only the owner of the family's billing account can buy; the credit belongs to the whole family, and anyone else in the family sees the balance on Credits and can ask the owner to buy more. If your site is a branch of a bigger family site, credit is bought on the main family site instead. The Credits page shows about how many record lookups each pack covers.

bring

How do I get my tree out of Ancestry (or another program)?

Look for Export in your tree's settings — it gives you a file ending in .ged. Step-by-step notes are on Bring Your Cousins (/bring).

evidence

What does "Probably" mean?

It's the whole idea: we never guess. Every parent-and-child link is graded on its evidence, on one scale: Proven (a record naming both people that our readers have read), Probably (strong records cited in the tree), Possibly (some evidence; more is needed), or Unproven, with Conflicted where the sources disagree and No evidence yet where nothing speaks to the link. A line is only as strong as its weakest link. The full standard is at /trust/standard.

account

I forgot my password. What now?

On your family's sign-in page, tap "Forgot your password?" and enter your email; we'll email you a sign-in link, and once you're in you can choose a new password under Account. If no link arrives within a few minutes, check spam or ask your family's owner to send you a personal sign-in link from Admin.

How do I get into my family's site?

Every family has its own site (something like smith.probablycousins.com). Open it and type the family password when it asks. A family member can text you the address and the password. If a relative sent you a personal link instead, just tap it and you're in, with nothing to type. Making your own account with an email and password is optional; it's only needed to add stories or photos.

I got a text with a family password but no link. Where do I type it?

Go to your family's site address, something like smith.probablycousins.com (not the main probablycousins.com). It asks for the family password. Type it there and you can look around right away. You only need to type it once on each phone or computer. You don't need to make an account. If you don't know the address, ask the relative who texted you.

invites

How do I invite a relative?

Open Invite family from the menu of your family's site and use Invite by text: it writes a message with the site address and the family password for you to send. Your relative opens the site, types the password once, and can look around. The family's owner can also text a personal link from Admin, which signs the person in on tap.

billing

Where are my receipts?

Link, Stripe's checkout service, emails a receipt to the address used at checkout. On your family's site, Credits lists each purchase with its date and amount, and after the first purchase the owner of the family's billing account also sees a "Receipts and invoices" button there. Your statement shows the charge as LINK.COM* followed by our name. If you can't find a receipt, write to hello@probablycousins.com.

Does research credit expire?

No. Research credit does not expire. Any free credit your family has been given is used first, then the oldest paid credit; credit given later never covers research already done. There is also a daily research limit for each family; if you reach it, buying more credit won't lift it, so try again the next day.

Can I get a refund?

Yes, for credit you haven't used yet, within 30 days of buying that pack. Credit that has already been spent on research isn't refundable. The owner of your family's billing account asks for it on the Credits page, using the "Refund unused credit" button next to the purchase; a person handles it and the money goes back to the payment method that paid, including the sales tax you paid on the refunded part. Refunds aren't available on a purchase whose card charge has been disputed with the bank. Because Link is the seller of record, you can also ask Link for a refund through Link support (support.link.com) within 60 days of the purchase; where Link's own refund policy gives you more than ours, Link's policy governs.

Still stuck? Write to us

Prefer to just send a message? A real person reads every one, and replies to the email you give here.