Modern Software Experience

2010-07-22

MyHeritage

MyBackup

MyHeritage’s latest blog post, A Granite Vault for the Digital Age: MyHeritage.com’s New Backup Service, raises more questions than it answers. Superficially it seems just one of those post in which a vendor touts a new feature for their product - but that new feature is backup, and they want you to pay for it, even if you are a paying customer already.

backup is new?

Let’s back up a bit. If the backup service is a new feature, then MyHeritage has been running without backup all this time?! And if it this feature is available to paying customers only, then all the beginning genealogists that use MyHeritage to maintain their still tiny genealogy of less than 250 individuals are all without any backup of any kind? And if it really is a feature that requires additional payment even if you already are a paying subscriber, then even paying subscribers have always been without backup?!

Is this real? Am I dreaming? MyHeritage just admitted that all their users have been without backup for years? I’d like to give them props for being honest for a change, but I just find it too hard to believe to do so. Besides, if backup really is a new feature, they need be slapped silly and be made to write I will backup my users’ data 15 million times.

Family Tree Builder

Let’s back up a bit further. For some time now, MyHeritage has been aggressively pushing its desktop application Family Tree Builder, and has not been above reviewing it own product, giving itself awards, and, as mentioned in MyBadges, trying to bribe authors into writing reviews posting their ready-written advertorials.

I’ve reviewed several versions of Family Tree Builder, and even the latest version is so fundamentally flawed that I’d rather use Family Tree Maker 2008. MyHeritage Security exposed their lackadaisical security practices by presenting an internal document that had been available on a public server for years. The document itself reinforced the impression that MyHeritage performs very limited software testing.

backup?

FTB Project Open Upload

When you open an project in Family Tree Builder, it immediately prompts you to use its Automatic Publishing (Online Backup) feature. I’ve noted that the feature is misnamed. It is not really about backing up your data, but about MyHeritage grabbing your data, and making you pay for their privilege. Still, even the Family Tree Builder 4.0 dialog still claims that This will back up your family tree, protecting you from data loss., without making it clear what rights you grant MyHeritage to your data, or how much you have to pay them if you back up your data this way. The dialog above is for my infamous HundredThousand GEDCOM used in so many genealogy software tests. There are over hundred thousand individuals in that database, and Family Tree Builder knows that, yet all it says is Basic family sites are free.

Moreover, even if you uncheck the option to upload your data, it will be checked the next time you open the project, so if you don’t pay attention every time you open it, you may find yourself unintentionally giving away your data to MyHeritage - and good luck getting these guys to respect your wishes and delete your data from their servers. When they took over Zooof and OSN Group (a.k.a. Verwandt, It’s Our Tree and DynasTree) they grabbed all the data before informing anyone, in direct violation of these sites’ own terms and conditions.

MyCost

Obviously, MyHeritage thinks it is would be great idea to upload my database to their servers. There are subscription levels, based on genealogy size, but the small sizes are so small that an average size genealogy database already needs the most expensive subscription. The cost is € 8,95 per month, which is € 107,40 per year (about US$ 136,89 at current exchange rates).
That is quite a lot of money, but one of the features you get for that money is that MyHeritage will make a backup of your family tree, protecting you from data loss. At least, that is what the dialog box says.

What MyHeritage’s latest blog post seems to say is that there is no backup for your MyHeritage data. If you want a backup, you must pay another € 2,50 a month to back up your data in Amazon’s cloud. That additional  € 2,50 brings the monthly bill to € 11,45 and the yearly cost to € 137,40 (about US$ 175,13).  That is rather expensive. For considerably less than that, several services offer to backup all your data in their cloud.

secure?

The MyHeritage home page still advertises MyHeritage as free, private and secure. Never mind the free and private claims, what matters here is that your data is secure with them - or is it? That MyHeritage is peddling a backup service suggests it is not.

If  MyHeritage does not maintain off-site backups of your data, your data is not secure. If your data is secure, if MyHeritage already maintains off-site backups of your data, then what do you need an additional backup service for?

MyClaims

MyHeritage claims that uploading your data to their servers protects you from data loss. They claim your data is secure with them, which implies they make off-site backups of their servers. Yet now they peddle a backup service that you have to pay for on top of your subscription. That does not make sense.

MyFacts

Family Tree Builder

Family Tree Builder does not back up your data to MyHeritage, it uploads your data to MyHeritage under MyHeritage’s Term of Service. If it were a backup service, MyHeritage could reasonable charge your for that service, but would not be able to use your data.
What they do is quite different from a backup. Once your data is uploaded, MyHeritage uses that data to attract paying customers and provide services to these customers, so they should be paying you for the privilege of having your data.

tip: free backup

If you want to safe keep your genealogy data and share it with others you can do so for free by uploading it to RootsWeb or any other site that allows you to share your data for free.
If you want to safe keep your genealogy data without sharing, you can do so using a web mail account by mailing the database to yourself.

Any old copy of your database you uploaded anywhere can be regarded as a backup, but that does not justify misleading users. The Family Tree Builder dialog box should clearly state that you are uploading your data to MyHeritage’s servers, that MyHeritage uses the data for financial gain, what conditions apply and how much MyHeritage pays charges you for it.

Family Tree Builders should be less pushy about updating your data, and stop trying to trick you into uploading your data by continually resetting the checkbox and prompting you again.
Family Tree Builder should also offer a means to remove your data from their servers that it just as easy as uploading your data to their servers.

MyHeritage servers

As far as I can tell, MyHeritage does not regularly back up its servers to an off-site facility. The MyHeritage Backup Service Terms and and Conditions contains the following paragraph:

We create additional backups as a precaution against technical failures on the Website and for internal maintenance purposes. These additional backups are saved on our servers and are not part of the Service and are therefore not subject to these Terms and Conditions.

What this says is that MyHeritage does make backup of its servers (on other servers). It does not say whether those backup servers are on-site or off-site. MyHeritage should have off-site backup, but they do not claim to have off-site backup, so it may be less secure on-site backup.

If MyHeritage has done this right, your data is securely backed up already. If anything happens, MyHeritage can restore a recent copy of your data for you.

backup service

Unlike Family Tree Builder’s misleadingly presented upload function, MyHeritage's new backup service seems to be a backup service; it makes backups that you can restore later.

It is easy to take some issues with this new service. It is not included in the base package, but requires an additional subscription. It is remarkable expensive;  € 2,50 a month for nothing more than a single automated back up of your family tree. For US $ 4,95 (about € 3,85) a month, Mozy will back up your entire hard disk as often you like. Most remarkable of all, it is superfluous; MyHeritage already makes backups of all data and can use that to restore your tree.

The new service makes more sense when you do not think of it as a backup service (after all, MyHeritage is already making regular backups of all their server data), but as a versioning feature; this service maintains old versions of your database and allows you to restore an old version over your current one. It does not protect against losing your database as a backup does, but against messing up your database.

That is a nice and sensible feature. Many users of desktop applications make a safety copy before making major changes to their database. Several file systems do so automatically whenever you change a file. Google Wave does so whenever you change a wave. Alas, MyHeritage’s versioning is not very useful, because it is both expensive and limited to just one version a month.

MyStatements

The new feature sounds useful - right up until the moment you realise that MyHeritage must be making backups already. Their blog post says nothing about that and the help topic What is the backup service? merely discusses the new service as if it is the only way to have your MyHeritage data backed up.

In an apparent contradiction to other statements, MyHeritage presents their new service as if that service is the only way to have your MyHeritage data backed up. That may be an effective way to sow doubt among users and scare them into springing for the additional subscription, but it is less than open and honest.

existing backup

The Backup Service Terms and Conditions admits that they already make backups of their servers as they should, and will continue to do so, whether you opt to pay for their new service or not.
The help topic Doesn’t MyHeritage.com already backup my tree regularly? states that the regular backups that MyHeritage already makes are created strictly as a precaution against technical problems on MyHeritage.com or for maintenance purposes. That does not state outright but does seem to imply that MyHeritage will not restore data from their backup for you. I find it hard to believe that, as it would also be a major service and PR blunder to refuse to restore to user data from their backup.
That said, MyHeritage should not leave an fundamental issue like this open to interpretation at all. They should be crystal clear about whether they will or will not restore your data from their backups.

versioning

It may make more sense to think of this feature as versioning than as backup, but it does not save an old version before every session, it only saves your data once a month. That is no real help if you mess up after three weeks of intense data entry.

conclusion

bottom line

The bottom line is that the new feature seems to be about the bottom line. Like other businesses, MyHeritage has been increasing prices, just not always by simply increasing their prices. They have also done so by reducing their already low limits for the less expensive subscription plans - twice. This time, they are doing it by charging extra for what sounds like a basic must-have feature.

If, going forward, this new feature is the only way that MyHeritage provides backups of user data, MyHeritage needs to change this feature from a paid extra into a free part of the basic service and the backup frequency from just once every month to after every user session.

must-have feature

Backups are a basic must-have feature, and MyHeritage is already making regular backups of their servers and their new once-a-month only service falls short as a versioning system.

Any serious web business maintains backups of their servers as part of their normal business operations. Admitting that you do not maintain backups is no option; that would be a great way to make sure that all paying users decide to migrate to the competition.

Automated backup of all data is something that should be provided to all users as a matter of course. It should not even need to be mentioned. If you are serious about doing business on the web, you make regular backups your users’ data. That is how responsible web companies do business.

It is reasonable to charge a one-time fee for restoring data after a user messes things up, it is unreasonable to charge for maintaining backups in the first place.
If, going forward, this new feature is the only way that MyHeritage provides backups of user data, MyHeritage needs to change this feature from a paid extra into a free part of the basic service and the backup frequency from just once every month to after every user session.
Once they’ve done so, they can boast about this backup feature when comparing their service with their competitors. Right now, MyHeritage is practically inviting their competition to do a comparative blog post about how their backups are free as they should be.

If MyHeritage wants to increase prices again, it should simply do so. Creating doubt and confusion about something as fundamental as backups is a spectacularly bad idea. Never mess with backups.

links

MyHeritage backup

related

Family Tree Builder

 

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