RootsChat.Com
General => Ancestral Family Tree DNA Testing => Topic started by: Romilly on Monday 24 March 25 10:15 GMT (UK)
-
I noticed this Article on the BBC News Site today:
DNA testing site 23andMe files for bankruptcy protection https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9q4r9xy9wro
I’ve just deleted my Account and (hopefully) DNA test on there!
Very worrying,
Romilly :o
-
I’ve just deleted my Account and (hopefully) DNA test on there!
Their terms and conditions do not explicitly state that your DNA profile is deleted when you close your account. "Can I download my data and close my account?" "Yes. At any time you have the ability to download your raw data, as well as delete your 23andMe account if you are no longer interested in participating in our Services."
While 23andMe say they don't share your data with anyone without your permission, the same might not apply if their database was bought by another company not specifically interested in the genealogical value of the data.
-
I’ve had the Delete All Records confirmation email and have clicked on it to authenticate. This is what they’ve sent:
‘Once you confirm your request, we will immediately and automatically begin the deletion process and you will lose access to your account. Once confirmed, this process cannot be canceled, undone, withdrawn, or reversed.
If you participated in 23andMe Research, your Personal Information will no longer be used in any future research projects.
If you asked us to store your genetic samples, they will be discarded.
23andMe will only retain limited information for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims, and as otherwise permitted or required by applicable law, and our genotyping labs are required to retain some additional information to comply with legal obligations. For more information, please see our Privacy Policy.
Permanently Delete All Records
This link will expire within 24 hours. If your link has expired, please resubmit your request within your 23andMe Account’
Romilly.
-
I was about to make the same comment to the BBC site.
I never understand why people are so scared about their DNA falling into someone else's hands. You leave a viable quantity on every teacup or glass. "They" aren't going to clone you. What's the worst that can happen? The US has very strict GINA laws (Genetic Information) as well.
Zaph
-
I wouldn’t trust in any existing laws in the US remaining unchanged at some stage in the future!
Anyway, over and done now for me, I just wanted to bring it to people’s attention on here.
Romilly
-
I too have deleted my account and external advice I read suggests that you need to contact Customer Services to ask them to delete your sample, which I have done. I tend to agree that the danger of our DNA getting into the wrong hands is exaggerated but, having said that, it would probably be of far greater interest to 'bad actors' to obtain a well organised database than to follow me around waiting for me to leave my cup at McDonalds for them to swipe (I couldn't think of the name of another cafe you'd all recognise at short notice. Haven't used McDs for donkeys years!).
Tony
-
“March 24 (Reuters) - 23andMe (ME.O), opens new tab on Sunday filed for bankruptcy in the U.S. after struggling with weak demand for its ancestry testing kits and a 2023 data breach that damaged its reputation.
The company's shares fell 50% to 88 cents in Monday trading after co-founder Anne Wojcicki, who made multiple failed takeover bids, resigned as CEO. 23andMe did not say whether there are other interested bidders. It will continue to operate during the sale process, having secured $35 million in financing over the weekend.”
Article 1
https://investors.23andme.com/news-releases/news-release-details/23andme-initiates-voluntary-chapter-11-process-maximize/
Article 2
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/dna-testing-firm-23andme-files-chapter-11-bankruptcy-sell-itself-2025-03-24/
Moderator comment: topics merged
-
I deleted etc. when problems emerged in ?2023.
Gadget
-
This Guide is quite helpful for anyone unsure how to delete their data from 23andme:
https://www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/news/23andme-bankruptcy
Romilly.
-
It is probably worth saving the details of your most promising matches from 23AndMe.
I logged in as they told me I had some new relatives. When I looked at my match list I found that my two closes matches had disappeared. These were a 1st cousin of my aunt and her son. Though this was via a birth out of wedlock. So I am lucky to have saved another info to be able to know who they are.
To this date I've only noticed on other match disappear from MyHeritage, in that case I had it saved in my bookmarks, which contained enough info, as well as my memory, to know who it was.
-
After the DNA leak debacle it does not really come as a surprise.
Way back when we were first looking to test we did look at what was available, if I remember rightly it only took us a few minutes to determine that 23&me were only interested in extracting cash and that their security was suspect.
Similar with My Heritage, cash input rules, questionable aspects to the presentation of results.
So it was a no brainer Ancestry, by far the biggest, a well integrated website with DNA central to true Biological Genealogy.
-
After the DNA leak debacle it does not really come as a surprise.
Way back when we were first looking to test we did look at what was available, if I remember rightly it only took us a few minutes to determine that 23&me were only interested in extracting cash and that their security was suspect.
Similar with My Heritage, cash input rules, questionable aspects to the presentation of results.
So it was a no brainer Ancestry, by far the biggest, a well integrated website with DNA central to true Biological Genealogy.
Have you taken 23AndMe? I have the one mentioned from one maternal aunt and it's thrown up the otherwise unknown cousins. The other closer matches don't provide anything new in terms of solving lines. Maybe there are useful matches at a lower level. But since you can't really get anywhere without sending messages, and there are false positives.
I tried to get a paternal aunt to test with 23AndMe too, since I have three unsolved/partially solved births out of wedlock in that side. But the only draw to it really is the prospect of 2nd-3rd cousin matches on there.
-
Biggles, I am looking forward to part two of your recent comment. The way I see it Ancestry prey on naive people who don't really know what they are buying. Most people, when I am looking at my matches, seem to think that they are going to be told every ancestor they ever had and where they were all born. That's why you see so many people that have themselves and just their parents in their tree. Their website, judging by the numerous comments of complaint here, is frequently in disrepair. The price for a test seems exorbitant, even though they are cheaper than a few years ago.
In balance, I'm thoroughly impressed with myHeritage. I first came into contact with them seven or eight years ago when they were doing a pro bono offer, helping people identify adoptions and mysteries in their life. They gave me and tens of thousands of other people, free tests. Their range of statistics is far superior to Ancestry, their support is friendly and courteous and prompt, which you certainly can't say about Ancestry.
A couple of years ago, when I became really enthusiastic, I did pay for an Ancestry test, and was very disappointed that there was no chromosome browser, and no detailed segment data. And now they have the cheek to actually start charging for a little bit more information. I certainly won't be renewing at the end of the month. I would even be very reluctant to pay for any further ancestry tests in light of my earlier comments. I think this is why they are doing this one month free offer. They are getting desperate.
Zaph
-
Biggles, I am looking forward to part two of your recent comment. The way I see it Ancestry prey on naive people who don't really know what they are buying. Most people, when I am looking at my matches, seem to think that they are going to be told every ancestor they ever had and where they were all born. That's why you see so many people that have themselves and just their parents in their tree. Their website, judging by the numerous comments of complaint here, is frequently in disrepair. The price for a test seems exorbitant, even though they are cheaper than a few years ago.
In balance, I'm thoroughly impressed with myHeritage. I first came into contact with them seven or eight years ago when they were doing a pro bono offer, helping people identify adoptions and mysteries in their life. They gave me and tens of thousands of other people, free tests. Their range of statistics is far superior to Ancestry, their support is friendly and courteous and prompt, which you certainly can't say about Ancestry.
A couple of years ago, when I became really enthusiastic, I did pay for an Ancestry test, and was very disappointed that there was no chromosome browser, and no detailed segment data. And now they have the cheek to actually start charging for a little bit more information. I certainly won't be renewing at the end of the month. I would even be very reluctant to pay for any further ancestry tests in light of my earlier comments. I think this is why they are doing this one month free offer. They are getting desperate.
Zaph
If I may be permitted to add a little. It is true that Ancestry has weak spots in its lack of a chromosome browser. I have posted several suggested ideas that they could offer beyond that, which would offer a lot more and save a lot of time. They should really be offering some of that for the £8 per month, including a chromosome browser.
I have some info on what's going on internally. Ancestry had a affiliate program. And they've basically decided to nuke its potential growth by reducing commissions to basically zero. Thus they are now taking in close to the full value that can be obtained and there is no longer financial incentive for affiliate to generate content. FindMyPast has also done this. Affiliates are an important part of any sector, as many blogs and reference sites rely on it and other ads to incentivise content generation. So you see a lot more MyHeritage ads now, as they are still offering good incentives.
I think this was done as a cash grab. Since the effects of COVID-related money printing and the Ukraine war, discretionary spending has been hit. Ancestry lost $200m in the last few years. It looks like they are looking to squeeze what cash cows they have for what they can.
The growth of DNA testing has slowed. You can see that most of your new matches come from kits gifted at Christmas. And so the new ProTools has been a very slow and low-value offering to extract a bit more money from the most loyal customers.
As a programmer I am a bit surprised how slow and thin their Pro offerings are for DNA. I have developed some tools to download a kit's match list, the attached trees and shared matches. This allows me to very quickly identify clusters of matches, any shared DNA, and shared ancestry in trees, shared surnames and shared locations. The through lines and common matches feature is good. But there is nothing to help you find the literal hundreds of clusters of matches that might be from unknown common ancestors. It would take a few months to develop a very robust interface to auto-cluster all matches, look for potential common links automatically and provide a facility to manage your work with each cluster. But Ancestry is so slow to do anything.
I have or have contact with people from FindMyPast, Ancestry, MyHeritage and FamilySearch. There isn't a question that Ancstry have always been the worst most faceless people to deal with. I did have a good contact with FindMyPast, but after they left they took the faceless Ancestry approach. Always very good dealing with MyHritage.
But in terms of Anglosphere ancestry, Ancestry has far many more tests than MyHeritage. About 97% of the DNA matches I've found are on Ancestry. And a good part of that is because something like 70-80% of the matches on MyHeritage are false positives. So looking at many MyHeritage matches is a wild goose chase, where there is no definitive sign that it is such a chase.. That's where much of the value comes in. They also have a vast repository of trees. When I am extending small MyHeritage match trees, I look up dead-end ancestors on Ancestry.
-
Your self-written tools sound very useful. I'm retired from computing, I did just about everything except programming and I dabbled in that. These days I download data into Excel, then describe to chat GPT what I want doing with it and it writes me a macro. It's one of the few aspects of AI that I'm really impressed with. As long as you can describe accurately what you want, it really comes up with the goods on macros.
I'm really surprised that none of the major players provide any sort of interactive query language so that you can fine tune your analysis of your matches. Even when you insert your data into a spreadsheet you can't reliably know that every fifth, or perhaps eighth line is a new record. You really have to fiddle about to get it to a state where you can analyze it quickly. That is really thirty years behind technology.
Zaph
-
I would argue it's My Heritage that are targeting the naive more than other companies. They are currently teaming up with any and every youtube channel of 500k+ subscribers that will have them offering deals that are more expensive than buying direct. It's never the family history that is talked about, it's always ethnicity and photo colouring, how those help find an unknown parent or grandparent is beyond me, they did correctly identify me as being me but I did give them a huge hand in working out that little mystery so it doesn't really count in my book.
-
Biggles, I am looking forward to part two of your recent comment. The way I see it Ancestry prey on naive people who don't really know what they are buying. Most people, when I am looking at my matches, seem to think that they are going to be told every ancestor they ever had and where they were all born. That's why you see so many people that have themselves and just their parents in their tree. Their website, judging by the numerous comments of complaint here, is frequently in disrepair. The price for a test seems exorbitant, even though they are cheaper than a few years ago.
In balance, I'm thoroughly impressed with myHeritage. I first came into contact with them seven or eight years ago when they were doing a pro bono offer, helping people identify adoptions and mysteries in their life. They gave me and tens of thousands of other people, free tests. Their range of statistics is far superior to Ancestry, their support is friendly and courteous and prompt, which you certainly can't say about Ancestry.
A couple of years ago, when I became really enthusiastic, I did pay for an Ancestry test, and was very disappointed that there was no chromosome browser, and no detailed segment data. And now they have the cheek to actually start charging for a little bit more information. I certainly won't be renewing at the end of the month. I would even be very reluctant to pay for any further ancestry tests in light of my earlier comments. I think this is why they are doing this one month free offer. They are getting desperate.
Zaph
I completely agree with everything you said Zaph. Ancestry DNA was a huge disappointment for me, and is useless without a subscription. I’m not impressed.
I find both FTDNA and My Heritage, especially for European connections, is very good. And in my case, seems fairly accurate.
-
I completely agree with everything you said Zaph. Ancestry DNA was a huge disappointment for me, and is useless without a subscription. I’m not impressed.
I find both FTDNA and My Heritage, especially for European connections, is very good. And in my case, seems fairly accurate.
I also agree. I had not planned to do a test with Ancestry but at a rare family gathering (they meet up all the time but I'm rarely there) it was casually mentioned the my mother's younger sister, four first cousins, 6 second cousins, etc. had tested with Ancestry. Based on that I did a test with Ancestry which came with 6 months free subscription. I did miss a chromosome browser but used the results along with DNA matches on FTDNA, My Heritage & GedMatch. Then Ancestry started charging for features which I had been using so it has become far less valuable for me.
-
Biggles, I am looking forward to part two of your recent comment. The way I see it Ancestry prey on naive people who don't really know what they are buying. Most people, when I am looking at my matches, seem to think that they are going to be told every ancestor they ever had and where they were all born. That's why you see so many people that have themselves and just their parents in their tree. Their website, judging by the numerous comments of complaint here, is frequently in disrepair. The price for a test seems exorbitant, even though they are cheaper than a few years ago.
In balance, I'm thoroughly impressed with myHeritage. I first came into contact with them seven or eight years ago when they were doing a pro bono offer, helping people identify adoptions and mysteries in their life. They gave me and tens of thousands of other people, free tests. Their range of statistics is far superior to Ancestry, their support is friendly and courteous and prompt, which you certainly can't say about Ancestry.
A couple of years ago, when I became really enthusiastic, I did pay for an Ancestry test, and was very disappointed that there was no chromosome browser, and no detailed segment data. And now they have the cheek to actually start charging for a little bit more information. I certainly won't be renewing at the end of the month. I would even be very reluctant to pay for any further ancestry tests in light of my earlier comments. I think this is why they are doing this one month free offer. They are getting desperate.
Zaph
Yes, Ancestry has faults. It looks that a vast number of the DNA kits are bought as a Present, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Father’s Day, Mother’s Day etc as a few weeks later for each event we get an influx of new DNA matches. These only post a basic tree, if an tree at all and once they see their Ethnicity they vanish.
People can have expectations vastly greater than their knowledge of Genealogy. Ancestry like all the other DNA companies are in it to make profit, hence the influx of Traits, Pro Tools etc. so they all are tarred with the same brush.
My Heritage has by far the worst Ethnicity predictions, hardly surprising as they are second division when compared to the resources available in Ancestry.
My Heritage “Lost” my Wife’s DNA, we tested with Ancestry, then tested with My Heritage. All was OK for a few months, I had the massive total of three new DNA matches who had not tested with Ancestry but are now in my Family Tree, my Wife has ZERO DNA matches in her Family Tree from My Heritage. Then all of a sudden my Wife’s DNA disappeared from My Heritage, we had not deleted it 100% sure of that, My Heritage would not reload it from their records, if we wanted we could buy another DNA test kit.
So yes My Heritage customer care SUCKS.
I’ll give you 30,000,000 reasons why Ancestry is the BEST DNA test to take, that is the size of their DNA database, plus you can upload your raw DNA data to ftDNA, MYHeritage, Gedmatch etc to get the best of all worlds, access to as many DNA tests as practical.
Yes, Ancestry is way behind in analytical aspects of using DNA but the Chromosome Browser in My Heritage has not proved itself to be useful for either my Wife’s test nor my own.
Spreading DNA between the available resources is the best way of accessing as large a database as possible, warts and all.
-
It does all depend on your experience, doesn't it?
My husband's DNA matches on My Heritage have been fantastic- confirmed things we expected, made new links with previously unknown branches, etc. I have also found (with the three kits I manage) that people there are most likely to respond to messages.
Ancestry certainly has a large database of members and many of them are close matches of mine but rarely do they respond even when I know them and offer to send family information. Regarding the maternal relatives that have tested on Ancestry only TWO so far of about 100 are remotely interested in family history. One first cousin (whose mother is deceased) did ask our aunt to test but neither she, her brother or nieces are interested in any family details and I never really got an answer when I asked why they even did a DNA test :-\
-
MyHeritage is better for continental Europe. In my limited expedience Ancestry has close to no coverage for Germany and Scandinavia. Almost all matches for such lineages will likely be from immigrants, mainly to the US.
The main benefit of Ancestry is the database size - https://isogg.org/wiki/Autosomal_DNA_testing_comparison_chart
Ancestry at 27m and MyHeritage at 9m.
With Ancestry's skew to tests in the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, it means people with heritage US and British ancestry will get far many more matches on Ancestry. You will find even higher number of matches if you have Jewish ancestry and Mormon ancestry or relatives. As those people take so many tests.
Then there is the situation with Ancestry's timber system, which strips out what they believe are false positives. The rate of false positives on MyHeritage is around 70-80%. So the majority of your matches are not reasonably close relatives, but people who share a common region of ancestry. This seriously hampers finding real DNA relatives, as if you find common ancestry in a cluster of matches on MyHeritage, you have a high chance they are not actually closer DNA relatives. I'd say the false positives on Ancestry >= 30cM are 0%. Below that it's difficult to tell, but it's much less than MyHeritage.
So if you have US, British ancestry you will be able to find multiples more matches, in the range of 40X-50X, with a high degree of confidence. MyHeritage is useful for closer matches, mostly above 100cm. Below after around that level you get false positives.
The MyHeritage cM values are also less helpful, because they don't strip out identical by state (false positive) segments. Below 100cM matches, you need to multiply the cM by 0.6 to get a closer idea of the identical by descent shared cM. So for a typical US or British tester, by the time you've got through your 1st page of DNA matches, you are probably down to people who are 4th-5th cousins. By the time you are through to page 7-10, you are dealing with people with whom you share about 15cM, which might be identical by descent, but is more likely to not be. And 15cM is a very ambiguous amount, as it's at the threshold where it's not not uncommon for 15cM to be inherited (nearly) unbroken over multiple generations. Around 15cM is the average size of segments inherited from either parent.
In terms of Ancestry:
>= 30cm - you will likely be able to find a relationship if there is no NPE, a tree and no brick walls, relationships usually quite predictable
20-29cM - these sizes can be much more ambiguous in terms of relationship, owing to the possibility of smaller segments being inherited (mostly) unbroken
13-19cM - progressively more ambiguous
8-12cM - the range where segments could potentially push outside of the reasonably feasible to research window of ancestry
While you probably only have 10-20 >= 30cM identical by descent on MyHeritage, on Ancestry you'll have more like 200.
With Ancestry, you will typically get several to about 50 matches in a cluster, even for 4th-5th cousins. With multiple people related in the main window that is not so difficult to research (1775-). You look through their trees to find common surnames, places and ultimate ancestors. Heritage just doesn't have enough matches to be able to do that very consistently. Since many matches will have no tree, NPE, or dead ends that aren't easy/possible to solve.
If I go through my Ancestry matches down to about 20cM, if you exclude the ones that have no tree or not enough of on to reasonably find out their ancestry, I know how about 75% are related to me, or I have them in files where common ancestors have been found among the matches. (I have three NPE lines and a suspected adoption, which most of those relate to). Yet if I go through the MyHeritage matches down to Ancestry-comparable 20cM, I don't know how I am related to 90% of them. For the vast majority of them I don't even known what side (paternal, maternal) I am related to them on, never mind the actual line of ancestry. While with Ancestry, for 20cM+ matches, I know which line of ancestry they relate to in most cases. Owing to Ancestry having many more matches.
With Ancestry DNA I've been able to break down 7-8 brick walls, prove most of my lines back to between about 1650-1775, identified a likely adoption, have solid leads and some known ancestors for three NPEs, and expect to be able to solve more lines into the future. Also solved the paternity of a friend's paternal grandfather (who it turns out was my grandfather's half 3rd cousin) and united a few unknown half-siblings. Comparing to MyHeritage, I've just got matches who have provided no clues to break down brick walls, and an unknown ~2nd cousin match where I don't even known if they are a paternal or maternal match.
That's why Ancestry wins hands down, and the competition are not close. Despite their bleeding of their loyal customers and having developed their system very little.
The best process for getting the most out of genealogy DNA is:
1) test with Ancestry
2) upload that test to MyHeritage + FTDNA for free
3) test with 23AndMe (not sure what will happen with that)
4) systematically go through the matches to find common ancestors among them
-
My Heritage has by far the worst Ethnicity predictions, hardly surprising as they are second division when compared to the resources available in Ancestry.
Concur with this. I can't view the results now, but my father and his sister have completely different results. My aunt is mostly Celtic and my father is mostly English. Other tests have some inconceivable results. With Ancestry sibling tests tend to be a few percent different, as you'd expect with the bounds of random inheritance.
I only have one test of about 30 where there appears there might be something that it really wrong.
Although it should be taken with a pinch of salt, it's particularly useful if you have ancestry that can't reasonably be traced or if you want to find out if a family fable of an unusual descent was true.
Of course, most people are unaware of the science and caveats and like to post of their 1% native America etc.
-
With Ancestry's skew to tests in the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, it means people with heritage US and British ancestry will get far many more matches on Ancestry. You will find even higher number of matches if you have Jewish ancestry and Mormon ancestry or relatives. As those people take so many tests.
I have between 18,500 and 19,000 on both but the difference in quality really shows. Both my parents and at least one grandparent are NPE's so I'm always going to be limited to half aunts/uncles and h1c as my closest matches yet I only have 5 matches above 50cM on MH, 4 of them are Ancestry uploads so in reality only one is a new match and is a mystery 276cM, they fit cluster of over 50 who tested with Ancestry but are almost twice the cM of any one else in that Ancestry cluster.
-
The figures tell their own tale.
142 DNA matches linked in to my Family Tree thanks to Ancestry.
3 DNA matches linked in to my Family Tree thanks to My Heritage.
Even though I first found one of these three on ftDNA, so in reality only 2 DNA matches in my Family Tree via My Heritage.
-
I've got -
Matches with confirmed ancestry:
430 from Ancestry
12 from MyHeritage
7 from 23AndMe
3 from FTDNA
Matches with common ancestors, but unconfirmed link to self:
450 from Ancestry
21 from MyHeritage
So also < 4% from MyHeritage.