Before me lies a book with a padded red cover, the title, "Frees," embossed in gold.

Inside, the pages are designed to look like an heirloom, with scrolled type. Yet, the first two chapters are a generic history of how Americans might have lived centuries ago, with a few Frees from census and early marriage records thrown in, all readily available on the Internet.

Chapter 3 mentions inventions that "changed the lives of Frees 200 years ago." Again, not a mention of a Free. The fifth chapter gives an introduction into how to do research, but the title is "Further Discovery of Our Free Roots." The last chapter, by far the shortest chapter in the book, gives a list of people with the surname Free from various telephone directories.

The book, touted as a Free family history does carry this tiny print: "This publication represents a compilation of public information and is not connected to any particular Free family." I did not buy this book because I had been warned by several genealogists that Halberts -- who published this book, as well as several other publishing houses who were doing the same thing -- were convincing unsuspecting people into buying these fraudulent histories. Someone else bought this book and gave it to me. I wish they had saved their money.

Gratefully, I haven't seen this "family history" scam for several years, but thanks to the Association of Professional Genealogists and Eastman's newsletter, I would like to warn you of a new scam. And since I am reporting this information, rather than finding and developing it myself, I'll quote.

This is from Mike Ward of Ancestry.com: "Potentially Fraudulent Sites Posing as Genealogy Web sites ... We have recently become aware of three Web sites purporting to allow family history research: SearchYourGenealogy.com, Ancestry-search.com and Australian-Ancestry.com. The sites claim to have 'the largest online genealogical search tool' and promote themselves as the foremost resources for genealogy, but from what we can tell, these sites are nothing more than a series of Web pages with links to other services. These sites, in our opinion, are clearly fraudulent.

"On each site, potential customers are lured to purchase under what we feel to be false, misleading and deceitful promotional material, and get little or no value out of money spent at the Web sites. Blog and message board posts from the community confirm this opinion."

You can read the entire article at blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2008/04/10/potentially-fraudulent-sites-posing-as-genealogy-websites/.

Some readers of Ancestry.com's blog and Eastman's newsletter include OneGreatFamily and www.italianproject.com in this list of fraudulent sites. Apparently, there is also a site that mimics the new FamilySearch site. So, buyer beware.

With so many sites available, how can we mere mortal genealogists know which sites are worth our hard-earned cash? The readers of the same sites quoted above give some solutions. First, make sure the site has a physical address, with names of people who can be contacted by phone or snail mail. Real businesses tend to have real people who take up real space behind them.

Another reader suggested going to securityspace.com/sspace/index.html to check out owners.

"Potentially fraudulent sites posing as Genealogy Web sites" at Family Research, www.lineages.co.uk/2008/04/13/potentially-fraudulent-sites-posing-as-genealogy-websites/, may also be useful in determining which sites are good, which are bad and which are downright ugly.

SearchYourGenealogy.com required my e-mail address and my name, which I was loath to provide. But for the sakes of my readers, I dutifully entered this information. The next page, as might be expected, was the "charge" page. I can pay $2, $3 or $4 per month. Since I had read the warnings from Eastman and Ancestry, I didn't proceed.

Ancestry-Search.com is typical of the sites that annoy me the most. All it does is refer me to other sites, many of which are fee-based. The Australian-ancestry.com site wanted my money first, before I could determine what was on the site, or if it would do me any good. These all promise information about a family for a price then deliver only links to other sites.

OneGreatFamily.com does not fit in the same category as the above three; it does provide additional manipulation of information. This is good. I can find the relationship between myself and another individual, what information is missing from people in my database, who my end-of-line people are, etc. However, I find this site exceedingly difficult to use.

When I typed in italianproject.com, the site that came up was ItalianTime.com. This site is in Italian, which I don't read. However, one of the reviewers on another site said it was run by a father and son in Arkansas who take the money and run. How is that for heresy? If anyone knows more about these last two sites, I would appreciate input.

Please note that both Eastman and Family Research quoted Mike Ward at Ancestry. This repetition does not necessarily make it true that SearchYourGenealogy.com, Ancestry-search.com and Italianproject.com are fraudulent, but my own perusal of them does not reassure me. Let me know your findings.

• LaRae Free Kerr can be reached at Itsallrelatives@sfcn.org and Itsallrelatives.net.