People soliciting us

[loobster]

I received an email which said
"My name is Roman Buzov-Kostinskiy, I am your match on https://www.familytreedna.com."

No clue which of the many kits I manage matched him.
That would not matter except that I do not know what kit to reference if I try to contact FTDNA.

He was writing because. he said:
"I represent the genealogical company FamilyHeritage.eu, we are registered in the EU (Finland) and ....

If you may be interested in this, I invite you to visit our website https://familyheritage.eu and make an appointment for a free consultation. "
And gave multiple ways to contact.

Is this acceptable?
Have others experienced it?

[blanko]

Sounds like he's fishing for business - basically a scam. Easiest way to see if he's a match to one of your kits, other than asking him which one, is to download their match lists and search for his name.

But why would a match contact you to solicit your business?

[mdaren]

I received an email from him also. I only have one kit on FTDNA, I found he matches me 22 cM, longest block 15, relationship range 3rd-5th cousin. (That relationship range sounds optimistic for those cM to me, for Ashkenazi Jewish people.) The company website looks okay, it goes into some detail about what they do, it tells what their prices are for various types of work (I don't know if the prices would be considered good), there's an FAQ. It says they mainly specialize on Jewish genealogy in Eastern Europe (modern Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia). As far as I know, my ancestors came from a town that's currently in Moldova, and that used to be in Romania, which was part of the Russian empire at one point, so I don't think that falls in the countries they specialize in. The town is very close to Ukraine, I don't know how long my family was there, maybe they came from Ukraine before that. The locations he lists his ancestors being from in his FTDNA profile are Ukraine, Belorussia, Russia, Poland. He only lists four family names, none of which ring a bell for me. I don't know if his service would help me since it doesn't mention countries that I have info on ancestors being from. But it might be helpful to some people. I'm not sure what I think about the propriety of him contacting FTDNA users in this way, if that's allowed, etc.

[mdaren]

The website says the company's legal name is Kostinsky Oy, so I think the emailer isn't just a representative of the company, it's his company.