Minutes ago, I had written the following in the support email portion of ancestry, and when I clicked to send, I was informed it was the first time contacting them, and that I had to REGISTER for support. I glanced to the top of the page to make sure I was logged in, which was the case. Register again? Huh? I'm taking this public, and just maybe someone else has had the same problem. Thanks for reading.

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Hello,

Yesterday, on Ancestry, I noticed the name "gilliangriff..." where MY user name should have been. When I click on my bookmarked page, I always see "Hi, tante33" I can only imagine that the full unknown user name is "gilliangriffin" but that is a guess, since the name must have been too long, thus showing it to be continued with the ... dots. HOW COULD THIS HAVE HAPPENED?!! I live alone, so no one has access to my computer, and do not know anyone with this name. I have not had any similar issues with my other sites.

When I discovered this user name showing on my page, I made a couple of screenshots and would be happy to send, if I could.

I clicked into that user name, and MY profile came up. I got a little freaked out. I then proceeded to delete all cookies, and log back in, then changed my password and my credit card info (in case someone had 'hacked' into my info). All seems well now, but really, HOW could this have happened? Do you see anything on your end?

If this is not the right department for this sort of problem, PLEASE forward to whomever is necessary.

Thank you,

Patricia (last name)
St Louis

Patricia,
I have seen that happen at least once in the past year. It cleared up by itself and I guess I just figured it was one of Ancestry's many glitches. I didn't do anything about it at the time but I think what you did was smart.

Jo

Hi Jo, Thanks for the comment and I like your thought that it was just a glitch. I believe that also, but I still look to see who is logged in, every time I pull up this site. So far, all is well. I hope it continues to be a habit. I'd hate for it to happen again and not notice for a few days!

Sorry, for the delay in answering. I hadn't received a notice there was a reply.

Thanks again.

"I hadn't received a notice there was a reply."

Another one of Ancestry's glitchy areas! lol

About a year and a half ago, a similar situation occurred on GenForum. I posted a couple of messages and then noticed that the user name and ID number was not mine. I clicked on the user history for that name and found that quite a few people had messages that wound up under this mystery user's name. Some of them had noticed, most had not. It took me quite some time before I was able to rouse anyone in support about the problem. Eventually, they just shut down that user name and ID. I imagine that, to this day, some people have no idea this occurred. I contacted as many as I could by looking up their previous posts under their correct IDs. The bad thing is that, if some of them get a response, they will never know it. I was never able to figure out how this happened, or if that user even existed.