Scam genealogical book: History and Key Facts

The popularity of genealogy, encouraged by the increasing use of the Internet is encouraging a number of people to mass-market what authorities regard as "scam genealogical books" which are sometimes promoted by affiliated websites. They tend to contain a general introduction, a section about the origin of surnames in general, a section about heraldry, a couple of blank charts for the purchaser to copy and complete once they have done their own research, a few recipes, and (sometimes) a list of names, addresses and telephone numbers culled from publicly available telephone directories.

The books are not unique to a particular surname, are not published annually, and contain no pictures of the buyer's family members. In a recent case, Jeffery Scism, a San Bernardino genealogist, said the fines for such practises are puny when compared with the hundreds of thousands of dollars he believes such vendors rake in.

Those who have sold such books so far include:

Burke's Peerage World Book of [Surname]s - not to be confused with Burke's Peerage

Source and attribution

Text excerpted from Scam genealogical book by Wikipedia contributors, available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. The extract is abridged and formatting has been adjusted; the adapted text on this page is shared under the same licence. Revision history.