Has anyone here done the ancestry DNA or 23 and me tests?

Don't do it. I got long-lost ancestors from all over Sweden asking me about getting them VISA's. Oy!

Apparently I'm 10% neanderthal and 16% donkey.

Yes, very interesting and did not get any requests like OP's

r3 Including yours.

Eventually these companies will get bought out by some other company who will get all the data and who knows what they'll do with it. I'd love to find out more about my ancestors but not at the expense of some health insurance company potentially buying my DNA results and flagging me for predispositions.

First I did a lot of research on Ancestry.com and built a family tree that went back many generations, each line going back before emigrating to the US. That way, I knew that if my research had been good, the DNA results would be predictable. The results exactly correlated. There may be errors in the family tree research, but on the whole, it is in good order.

Found out I was half Mexican. I had no idea.

Then the gubermint has your DNA, of course the OP probably has a criminal history, so they already have his DNA.

I’ve done it and found some interesting info. Nothing surprising. .

I gave it to a friend, as a Christmas gift… he found out he had a half sister that his now deceased father never disclosed. Awkward.

Please. Do none of you get your blood drawn during your annual physicals? Do you ask for that blood back? Even if you did, samples were taken to perform tests ordered by your doctor... AND WHAT ELSE???

Honestly, if Blue Cross wanted to cancel your health insurance, all it would have to do is have someone follow your fat ass around to grab samples of your DNA at every restaurant, bar and coffee shop at which you eat or drink.

My first cousin on my mom’s side and my brother both did it and there was enough discrepancy to conclude that my mother and her sister didn’t have to same father. My aunt is dead (as are my grandparents) and we agreed never to say anything about it to my mother.

At least you're not paying $100+ to put your own info on the market, r10.

An ex-friend used it for her 1 year-old daughter due to uncertainty of baby daddy. she was a RN who faked depression and anxiety (told me herself), somehow got on permanent SSDI. She had subsidized housing and was paid as caretaker by state of California via a private agency for another SSDI person to live in her home. She wanted another kid because her 4 teenage kids were leaving for college or would be soon.

She fucked random guys without protection to get pregnant. One was a mentally unstable Latino guy in his 20s who had family money. The other was a wealthy Indian guy, a divorced tech company executive in his 50 also with older kids. Anyway, she was still unsure of paternity after a year, it was hard to tell because she’s Filipina and her daughter looked like she could be anything from southeast Asian to Mexican. She had been getting support money from the Latino guy’s rich family.

A year later she sent the test for her daughter and it came back that her daughter has half Indian ancestry. Her Indian, former fuck buddy called her out of the blue and asked her what was going on. He didn’t know she was pregnant, they only fucked 2-3 times before he broke it off. He found out when his niece told him about a matched but unknown relative nearby and it was a baby. Long story short, she ended up getting support money from him too while still getting money from the Latino guy’s family. It went on for about 3 years before the Latino guy’s family found out.

Moral of the story is you never know what kind of family strife you’re potentially getting into, when you get these tests. But then again these tests are godsends to women in my scammy former friend’s situation.

I heard one of these guys had his DNA tested and he found a gay in his family. Never lived it down. Moral = don't risk it.

Don't do ancestry....run by Mormons and some say they will baptize you as one of their own to pad their numbers as the "fastest growing religion in the world".

Found out I had 55% Eastern European Jewish ancestry. I was a bit surprised, but never shared that information with my priest or with the members of my NAACP chapter.

My family research is old, it was done by the family geneologist in the 90s. He was a college professor that used to make regular trips to Europe to scour old cemeteries & church basements for the data.

The test just confirmed it all that research as being true. I also got an email that said in so many words, “uh we hope you know this already but this guy is your dad”. It immediately linked me to my dads profile. So I don’t think the results are junk science

If you do the Ancestry test, make sure you click on the option to not give them the right to distribute your genetic info.

I had a woman contact me 2 months later who turned out to be a surprise cousin. My 85 yo aunt had a baby out of wedlock a year before she was married and gave her up for adoption. The cousin really really really wants to meet her mother (of course), and my family have made it really really clear she absolutely cannot meet her. Big messy drama all around. (she could probably locate my aunt on her own, but the meeting would very likely be quite unpleasant.)

So yeah, watch out for unknown relatives that pop up.

Wow, R18.

Can't you just buy the test in a drugstore and use a fake name?

I want to use Bootsy Gumdrops

I did it for my rescue dog-- he's 60% chihuahua, 13% terrier, 13% miniature pinscher and the rest is Swedish. Ever since random Swedes have been hitting me up for cash and treats.

I did but nothing really earthshattering. I did it under a different name then my own though and when my half brother i no longer talk to saw we matched as close relatives he reached out to me. I used it as an opportunity to mess around with him and made up some crap about his dad with hilarious results.

Yes, and they found the gay gene in my ancestry. I guess that means I have to transition to kill those evil urges. Should've saved my money.

[quote]...my family have made it really really clear she absolutely cannot meet her.

What gives anyone in your family the right to intrude on this woman's wish to meet her own fucking mother? The mother can decline, but only her. And declining would be a sick and twisted thing to do to a person you already abandoned once.

The Cherokee line actually turned out to be black. My guess is this is more common than some may think.

Oh yeah, I sent mine in and discovered I have a second cousin I didn't know I have. and that one of my cousins has a kid they don't know/care(? ) they have.

Now what does one do with that little stick of informational dynamite?

Family genealogy was a pandemic project that surprised even me since I always thought it was the most boring thing ever. I found out it’s like a giant puzzle and with so many resources online, you can find out a lot about your ancestors from the comfort of your own sofa. Once I was pretty far along, I did the DNA test and it matched my research so that was satisfying. I met a couple of distant cousins through DNA and, like me, they were passing the time during the pandemic so it was fun and low pressure to communicate over email with them. We exchanged old family photos and one even had a voice recording from the 1960s of my dear grandpa. Especially with everything being shut down, it brought me some comfort during the worst of COVID getting to know my ancestors. A little less lonely in a weird way. Oh, and I have no complaints about the Mormon church’s work on genealogy. The Family Search site represents decades of work on the church’s part and they believe no one should have to pay to learn about your ancestors. That site is totally free of charge. I thought that was pretty cool.

My father split when I was 4 years old, taking with him every bit of family information that might have otherwise been available to me. His parents were deceased 10 to 15 years before I was born, so I never would have known them or gotten any information from them. It's a weird void to grow up with, underscored by his personal absence.

About 5 years ago, I started researching on Ancestry. I now know far, far, far, more about my ancestry and my father's ancestry then he ever could have known. I would rather not deal with the LDS church, but I've gotten a tremendous amount in return out of this deal with the devil.

I can’t understand why anyone would do this…all they’re doing is collecting information on gullible people, like the Mormons

[quote] "Found out I was half Mexican. I had no idea."

I had no idea you were adopted, either Linda Ronstadt @ R7.

The government has enough information on all of us. I wouldn’t give these companies any of my DNA

did it years ago and had a lil surprising makeup. most dna connections were 3rd cousins I never heard of. did it with another service years later to see if it had same results. got email results were ready. clicked relatives and closest was half-brother. I don't have a brother. Yes, I do...my dad hooked up at a party when he and my mom had broken up early in their relationship...the young woman told another guy he was father. He wasn't interested because in a relationship. She gave child up for adoption after a few weeks. My dad was never told until I found it online and freaked as to all of the possibilities it could have been before finding out the truth. we eventually met and it's ok, my parents are still together and my dad had told my mom about the hook up when they got back together so she wasn't mad.

someone else I know found out her mom fucked her best friend's husband and so he was her father instead of the man who raised her.

Took 23andMe test at the urging of my sister who was building the family tree. Found out we have Nigerian blood in our Swedish/Northern European blood line.

My cousin had hinted at that back in the 1970s. My cousin was working in Salt Lake City in a non religious field. She did our family tree using LDS material. The cousin said she found some weird stuff in the family tree back in the early 1800s in Georgia. Like somebody was having sex with slaves, but she couldn't prove it.

I guess 23andMe proved our cousin was right. Can"t wait to tell my NAACP buddies at the next meeting.

Did both Ancestry DNA and 23 & Me. The 23 & Me was for the CCR5∆32 variant. I wondered how I managed to stay HIV- and thought this might be it. Alas, no. I have two copies.

But I did find some interesting information.

1. Like the old TV ad, I grew up believing that my father's side was German. We have a German surname and went to a German church. Into my teens, the last Sunday of the month services were in German. But I have than 2% German DNA. After some digging, I learned that my paternal great grandfather married my then-pregnant great grandmother, but their first child, my grandfather, was not his. Through matching others, I know who my "real" great grandfather was. He was of mostly English heritage

2. On my mother's side, I discovered a half-aunt. She was a girl in my K-12 school, two years behind me. She desperately wanted to meet my mother – her half-sister – and it happened after trying to set it up for a couple years.

3. Also on mother's side: the "full-blooded Indian" mythology was finally debunked. The story varied from my mother's great grandmother to her 3x great grandmother, but it was all legend. It turns out that the surname Crow somehow became twisted into an Indian/Cherokee name along the way. My grandmother and great grandmother both assured me that I had a "full-blooded" Cherokee grandmother. They even revealed that it was their grandma Crow. Crow was an Anglicized "Groh," which was a Dutch ancestor's name before immigrating to the US.

4. Finally, the length of time my "family" has been in North America astounds me. With the exception of two 4x great grandparents, all of the rest came to the colonies during the 17th and early 18th centuries. Massachusetts, Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania were most common. The exception was the Swedes who migrated to Delaware. Generation by generation, they moved further west until the 19th century, when they stopped in Ohio. Of my 16 5x great grandparents, all but two were born in Ohio (or the Northwest Territory, prior to 1803).

*Of my 16 4x grandparents...

Ancestry.com has drastically revised my DNA results several times, showing how hokey it is. I think they are trying to align the results each time to reflect my family tree.

R34, regarding the length of time your ancestors have been in the US, I found something similar. Every one of my direct ancestors who emigrated to North America, did so before the American Revolution. My earliest ancestor to come here arrived in Jamestown in 1610. Given the huge number of pairs of grandparents that build up with each generation, it never occurred to me that such a thing could happen.

My ethnicity results are evolving as more people use the ancestry kit. At one point, I was as British as I expected, but now the results are turning toward Swedish and Norwegian. It makes sense, as Vikings entered Britain many generations ago. More people with similar genetic strands are making things more clear.

Same with my German ancestry. The early Germans came from Eastern Europe and I'm getting more confirmation my roots originated with the Czechs.

I am fascinated.

R38 understands how a growing field of science works.

R36 does not.

I did DNA Consultants and found our that I have Mulungeon ancestry which is a mixed race people. This happened in the 1600s in Virginia between indentured servants. This was before there was officially slavery laws. I'm white and my grandfather was from Italy but the mixed race came even before the Italian.

Yes I did. And I found my entire biological family. I’m still sorting through all of that 1.5 years later.

R36, the reason Ancestry.com keeps revising your results is because their database / reference pool keeps growing as more people around the world take part. In the beginning they had a much smaller pool of potential matches and couldn't be as specific as they are today..

My mostly German Jewish dad was 10% southeast Asian

I did the Ancestry DNA and found out what I already knew. Most of my father's side were of Spanish descent who conquered many of my mother's ancestors in northern Mexico. It explains much of my family's bronze skin and blue eyes. It was interesting to seeing the small percentages of Nordic, and Jewish and ancestry. Yay me!

I bought the ancestry.com kit but haven't used it yet. I really don't want to hear from distant relatives and they won't hear from me. I'm just curious about where we come from.

I’m white as they come and I found out I’m part Nez Perce.

I did the Ancestry DNA and also had done my family tree prior to that—the family tree stuff was really interesting. I found out I have a long patrilineal history in England, and traced our surname back to the era of William the Conquerer. My 12th-great-grandfather was a graduate of Cambridge, and one of my later grandfathers (the 7th, I think?) was a sugar merchant who ended up in Maryland in the late-1700s, where he died within a year.

The DNA kit confirmed a lot of what I already know—I am genetically 25% Irish (mother's side—her paternal great-grandparents were from County Cork), around 25% Russian (also from my mother—her maternal lineage is majority Russian-Jewish/Ukrainian), around 15% Swedish (from my father's side, which I also knew—his great-grandmother was from Sweden), and a little bit of German, French, and Latvian.

I would suggest doing it, OP, if you are truly interested in where your ancestors came from. The DNA test gives a lot of info, but I frankly think putting together/tracing your family tree is much more fun. I spent around two weeks working on it heavily during every spare moment I had, and managed to figure out a lot of stuff using their archives.

^ I forgot to mention that English obviously also shows up on my DNA results, but it's smaller than I'd expect given that my surname is English. I think it's around 13% if I remember right.

If you have any unsolved murder murderers in your family tree you can help investigators identify them.

While taking care of my aging aunt and uncle, who had no children and are now deceased, my aunt began to talk about family members from when she and my mother (already deceased at the time) were young. There were many relatives I had never heard of. I took written notes each time my aunt talked about the family, but soon it got so complicated that I took out a subscription to ancestry.com to get the information organized. That led to more discoveries, most of which my aunt confirmed once I asked if she remembered someone I found on ancestry. My aunt was in her late 80s at that point, had never used a computer, and didn't know what the Internet was. She was both amazed by the power of the net and outraged by the lack of privacy.

Nearly every time I discovered a relative that was alive, my aunt would say, "Don't contact them or they'll ask for money," and she gave me some examples of family members of her generation who had asked for money from relatives. Her warnings deterred me for quite some time until I found a second cousin who is related to two of the few relatives in my extended family I ever knew personally (as a child). We had a nice, long phone call catching up about the family members we had in common, and she certainly didn't ask for money. However, she had been resistant to having the call, and I didn't get the sense she wanted to stay in touch afterwards. The first thing I thought was that maybe some family members told her to stay away from long-lost relatives because they will ask for money! Perhaps that's why I never knew about or met the large extended family I actually have.

98 percent Ashkanazi Jew: boring. I was hoping for a twist.

R50 Great story…I can hear your aunt’s voice. On a related note, my work on family history has actually given me something to talk to my father about. It brings up old, half forgotten memories for him and helps me fill in some gaps.

I want to do this but I’m concerned about what they do with your DNA 🧬.

[quote] 99.9% British and Irish

[quote] 0.1% Korean

assuming its not some weird error I can only assume one of my grandmothers got frisky with a sailor around the time of the Napoleonic wars.

[quote] In the beginning they had a much smaller pool of potential matches and couldn't be as specific as they are today..

Ancestry didn’t refine my results. They shifted my ancestors to a different unrelated ethnic group. If they could be that far off, they shouldn’t have provided their guesses in the first place, or maybe should have refunded my money.

My mom was adopted and wanted to know more about her background. She found her long-lost father on Ancestry. Turns out her bio mom had an affair with him while he was married. She has a half brother that was born 2 weeks after her! Her mom was single and like 10 years older than her dad. She had since passed away, but my Mom was able to meet family on both sides recently. Her dad is pretty old and frail so I’m glad she had a chance to meet him.

How do you guys research a family tree without DNA tests?

r57 Census data and other government records usually. Church parish records can also be pretty useful

Are these available online?

r59 Depends what country you're in. The National Archives has most of the old censuses from I think up to pre-1921 up online for the UK. I think they uploaded most of the ww1 records for the centenary in 2018. Local church records and more small scale stuffwould be more difficult to get hold of you'd need more local data and probably have to email the relevant authority and ask them to look for you..

So many pearl clutches on the start of this thread. As someone pointed out, your DNA is already out there if you have ever been to a doctor and they drew blood. Oh and your face is already in a 3D database if you have a drivers license in the last 10 years. And no your banking is not off the internet just because you still write paper checks and walk into a branch to make a deposit.

Anyhow, I did 23 and Me, Don't do ancestry....run by Mormons. It's your choice to share or keep all your info private, random people cant just contact you unless you check that box. The thing is most people doing it want to know if they have a relative they never knew about. that's kind of the point. In my case I found out I had a half brother or cousin. DNA cant prove which one it is. You know why? Because my father and my uncle are identical twins and DNA is identical. So one of those old bastards cheated on their wives but they both took it too the grave.

It would be nice to meet the guy, he took the test and posted it in the first place right? But he seemed pissed realizing his biological mother back in the day was a little lying whore. We sort of talked through a friend of his that contacted me but he never mustered up the courage to make the call or send me an e-mail. Apparently he was told he was adopted. LOL

[quote]My first cousin on my mom’s side and my brother both did it and there was enough discrepancy to conclude that my mother and her sister didn’t have to same father.

Did you come to this conclusion on your own or did someone who knows genetics conclude this because there can be huge differences between cousins without anything weird having gone on.

Is there any reason for the finger length prediction except to show propensity to be gay? There is some study showing a correlation between index and ring finger lengths or something like that and I can't think of any other reason they'd report that particular genetic marker.

Just so you know, these companies OWN your genetic data once you give it to them. Yes, you may be able to specify you don't want it shared with OTHERS, but the information becomes their proprietary data.

Keep in mind, the founder for 23andMe was the wife to one of the Google founders for a long time.

It said me and some older Scottish guy were 3rd cousins. No one was in the war nor traveled to Europe. My guess is since my grandmothers were distantly related (like 1500s) via Irish and Scottish cousins, he somehow has the same situation and we are genetically 3rd cousins.

Knew a lot of my genealogy, except for one side. Found a relative on Ancestry who had done the tree. True life Highlander without magic rocks. Low level Scottish laird who fought the Brits and came to NC before the revolution to fight them some more.

Gedcom will extrapolate your kit and you can use tools on there for more in depth analyses. My 1st namesake was in VA 1640s? right after Jamestown. Story is he married a NA woman. And you know there were not that many white women brought over. Her first name was that of a famous temptress and then Elizabeth after the marriage. Gedcom does give me a NA touch that mathematically seems correct. And it did go up as more people submitted DNA.

The Native American thing is interesting. I have always been told I was part Native American which apparently a lot of US citizens like to believe. Most people are not. DNA has burst a lot of American bubbles. I dont know if it's a guilt thing or more likely a way of saying their ancestors were not murderous ass holes and they are somehow true Americans. But in my case, bingo! 30% Native American almost exactly what we thought. Keep in mind, Native Americans didn't have a written language so oral history is all I ever had to go on. Liz Warren jokes aside, you would never know, I look white because those just happen to be the dominant genes that made me look the way I am.

[quote]Just so you know, these companies OWN your genetic data once you give it to them.

What if you give a fake name and your just want to know about your ethnic makeup and don’t care about trying to find family members?

GEDMATCH not gedcom. opps.

NA has gone up again to almost 1 percent. It started at like .01 and was stable at .46. Now it is .98.

[quote]Please. Do none of you get your blood drawn during your annual physicals? Do you ask for that blood back? Even if you did, samples were taken to perform tests ordered by your doctor... AND WHAT ELSE???

[quote]Honestly, if Blue Cross wanted to cancel your health insurance, all it would have to do is have someone follow your fat ass around to grab samples of your DNA at every restaurant, bar and coffee shop at which you eat or drink.

I get that there's always going to be a contingent of Dataloungers who make up fantasies and pass them off as deep thoughts, but this is embarrassing.

Do you really think insurance companies are spending their own money to get labs to run unauthorized DNA tests on patients in secret? Do you think they'll start hiring Pinkertons to follow individuals around and steal their soda cans?

Buying data that you have already signed away your rights to would be much easier, cheaper and perfectly legal. That's a far more likely possibility than the crazy stuff you just made up, simply to be a crank and a contrarian.

[quote]your DNA is already out there if you have ever been to a doctor and they drew blood

Link?

I don't even know what that means. You're saying everyone who had a blood test had a secret DNA test done of them and the information is "out there" for insurance companies to grab at any time they want?

It's not a surprise to me that a board full of people who cannot WAIT to tell everyone their mother's maiden name, first pet's name and date of birth say that people who care about security are "pearl clutches" [sic] but some of you are just dumb as the proverbial post.

It doesn't matter if you get these tests. If your family members do, then it's enough for certain things to be traced back to you.

[quote] I found out I have a long patrilineal history in England, and traced our surname back to the era of William the Conquerer. My 12th-great-grandfather was a graduate of Cambridge, and one of my later grandfathers (the 7th, I think?) was a sugar merchant who ended up in Maryland in the late-1700s, where he died within a year.

I hate to break it to you, but every young genealogist finds some “lead” enabling them to trace their roots back to medieval nobility. Unless you have solid documentation for each generation, it’s often erroneous… and even documentation that appears to come form a legitimate source is often either forged or was written to be intentionally misleading (for birthright motives, etc.). I spent the first two years of genealogical research adding European nobility links only to find out that my actual ancestral link was wrong-my real ancestor used a false name when he immigrated. Erroneously believing one is descended from William the Conquerer (and even more often, Charlemagne) is pretty common (and often chided in the genealogy community).

Ancestry and I'm fascinated by the results even though mine are boring.

My sister and I assumed we are basically half Irish and half German with a little French (from Alsace at the German border).

Years ago when we were first tested, we both came up as a minor percentage (23% for me, I think) Irish and otherwise mostly British with a little Iberian (that was a total surprise). I was really hoping for some kind of non-European surprise, but there was none—except I was surprised British is an ethnicity. I just never thought of it that way and I never really thought about my ancestry being British.

Then Ancestry sent out an update and instead of British, the classification was Northwestern European, emcompassing part of Germany, and that made more sense with respect to our known family history. And the Iberian disappeared and the Irish went up a little bit. (Many people on the west coast of Ireland are closely related to Basque people and that may have been why Iberian showed up.)

Then another update: My Irish went up to about 45% and Ancestry correctly identified Mayo County in western Ireland as my family's origin there. It pinpoints four specific areas where we know our family came from, which I find remarkable. It also now has gone back to "Great Britain," but broke down Britain to include Scotland, and that's where most of the ancestry is shown to be, with much less in England, which makes sense. It also circles a region of Switzerland where my dad knew we have family from, as well as Lichtenstein, which is a totally new thing for us. I now show a small percentage from Sweden and my sister and father show small percentages from Norway. The NW European region that is identified includes a lot of ancestral indicators in Switzerland ns Lichtenstein and nearby Germany as well as specifically Alsace, where we know family came from.

So over the years, the results have been shaken up quite a bit but from the beginning, they were broadly correct, showing only NW European ancestry and over time they have pinpointed very specific, tiny areas (County Mayo, Ireland, Alsace-Lorraine, France) where we know our family came from. Also an area of Scotland that shares our family name, which appears to most people in the US be a misspelled version of a common Irish name, so that's interesting.

Our family has a lot of health problems with autoimmune and allergic diseases and I was also grateful to see the genetic conditions test results that show I don't have to worry about any known ones. The phenotype predictor correctly guessed my eye and hair color and other physical characteristics based on DNA alone. And it says I metabolize caffeine at a quicker rate than most and so I probably drink more coffee and tea than most people, and I appreciate that as an excuse to do so!

r72: "I hate to break it to you, but"

Do you really hate to break it to someone? Don't you actually love doing that? And what do you know anyway?

I have used 23andme, and I found the information very interesting. As for requests from family members, I don’t use my real name and I never reply back. Not looking to add to my family pool, just interested to see how many are out there.

It was interesting to see my Eastern European ancestry and find out that I’m part Hungarian, Slovenian (hello Melania), Ukrainian, and Polish. Of course, we’re all bastards in terms of ancestry, but still surprising to see it broken down.

My partner and had both done. No surprises for me - English/Dutch/Flemish/Norwegian.

My partner, on the other hand, had a couple of surprises. He found Scottish, English, and French, as expected, but the surprises were Basque, a trace of Mongolian, and also a trace of native American..

[quote] You're saying everyone who had a blood test had a secret DNA test done of them and the information is "out there" for insurance companies to grab at any time they want?

What I am saying is all the pearl clutching queens who thing that a DNA test is going to be sold off to some mythical insurance company who will come after you some time in the near future is just about as ridiculous as a blood test being sold to a third party when you go to a doctors office. Most blood drawn at an office is sent out to an outside lab. They are bound by law not to share that with outside sources. If you trust that then you should trust that the same laws work with DNA testing companies. Anything is possible sure, but you bitches afraid to get a DNA test because you think The Man wants your tained DNA for some nefarious reason are really on the edge of paranoia and conspiracy theory. No one wants to clone you Dear.

Interpol has spent too many years trying to get my DNA to just give it them now at my own expense.

The fact that my father and his siblings don’t know his father’s (my grandfather’s) real birth surname name or who his real parents are, and neither does anyone else local to our area, precludes me from doing cohesive ancestry projects. Which is kind of a relief, honestly, as I’m the type to obsess and fixate and freak out when confronted with surprising information. Plus my father’s living family are hillbilly nutcases, with some sort of undiagnosed personality disorder in common. It would only lead to pain knowing too much.

As for the DNA testing...hmm. I wouldn’t go there either, due to data-mining concerns (which as R77 points out may be paranoia, but better safe than sorry. And Mormons are creepy...).

Nonetheless, I am ragingly curious to know what my ethnotype really is. As far as I know from asking my living relatives, I am English (both parents & grandparents English, Saxon/Teutonic type to look at), with suspected Welsh blood (patrilineal—my grandfather was an orphan of mysterious origin as I’ve said, but he had curly reddish hair and a Pembrokeshire accent), and suspected Gypsy blood as well (matrilineal—my last living grandmother says that one of her great aunts was an Irish Traveler). My mother’s family are all pale blonds & gingers for the most part, so I imagine that points to Nordic/Viking blood in there somewhere. They came from Londoner (East/West End) stock, though, which suggests a mongrel gene that could admix anything from Jewish blood to Jamaican (highly doubtful in my lilywhite case, but you never know and I’d be open-minded).

Given choice, I’d prefer to come from the rare elegant dark pale Celtic phenotype, just because it sounds so beautiful and cool, but I think my fairness & redness of colouration rules that one out.

.,.!

r72 He only said he'd traced his surname back to William. That's honestly not that difficult to do. Most etymology websites will be able to tell you if your name origin is Norman French.

The fun part was I didn't know Neanderthal was a real thing in our DNA. Apparently when modern man first stepped foot out of Africa, they actually did encounter an earlier branch of humans the Neanderthals. Turns out they made love not war. Got to stay warm somehow. The Neanderthals died out but the DNA is in the chain of all descendants and races to fallow. There is one exception though. Pure blooded Africans lack the Neanderthal genes because their original ancestors never left the continent and therefore never encountered the other species of man.

The average person has 1% to 3% of Neanderthal DNA.

R73 can I ask why you found it surprising that “British” is an ethnicity?

R83 It just never occurred to me. I never thought about it. And when I saw it, my immediate feeling was "how can British be anymore of an ethnic group than American?" Because Britain has had so many invaders over thousands of years: there were early pre-Celts who are unknown at this time, and then the Celts moved in, and then Jutes, Danes, Angles and Saxons, and then the Romans and then the Normans. Even today, Great Britain is in flux. And the different nations of Great Britain are distinctly different ethnically, from Wales and Cornwal to Scotland and Northern Ireland. So it stands to reason that genetic mutations would occur within the country, but it seems to have so much continual flow through it.

For example, this finding is really curious: Today, the average British citizen is 36.94% British and 21.59% Irish.

Meanwhile, the British part of my family has been here since around 1700, according to the Ancestry DNA timeline, and I am 59% British (combing Scotland and England).

So my family has been here for 300 years and I'm mixed with other US immigrant groups and I am still more British than the average UK resident!

It's just a real surprise to me.

[quote] Found out I was half Mexican. I had no idea.

You never wondered why you loved tacos and burritos?

All you girls have to do is read the instructions published at Ancestry DNA to know that the DNA testing is done anonymously. You spit in a numbered test tube. That's the only identity that Ancestry DNA has for you. You get the DNA information you want from Ancestry DNA, but no one there ever gets your name.

If you are interested in doing the family tree research on Ancestry.com, you can then choose to attach to your account at Ancestry.com the DNA information needed for it to identify other Ancestry.com members with whom you share DNA. If you have hit a research wall using the conventional documentary research, these DNA matches can open doors not available any other way. You can choose to participate in matching with other members. Or not. You can choose to allow other members to contact you. Or not.

We've just gone through a year and a half of people tied in knots over misinformation about Covid-19. Passionately believing things that are wholly untrue, when all they had to do was read a bit and get the facts. This whole thread is a re-enactment of what we've just gone through with Covid. I can't tell you that there will never be a data breach at Ancestry DNA or at Ancestry.com. But if a hacker breaches Ancestry DNA, all they're going to get are anonymously numbered samples.

Gedmatch will tell you the Roman bit maybe. It has a Med. percentage which I don't think I would have otherwise. Use the free tools and there are 5 or six. You can look up the specific tests but they are pretty explanatory. I'm like 3 percent ancient pygmy. Who knew. Just upload your raw data.

[quote] Even today, Great Britain is in flux. And the different nations of Great Britain are distinctly different ethnically, from Wales and Cornwal to Scotland and Northern Ireland. So it stands to reason that genetic mutations would occur within the country, but it seems to have so much continual flow through it.

r86 Not really. There've been invasions and migrations but the only one that made much of a genetic difference is the Saxon conquest in the South. The Romans, Vikings and Celts don't seem to have left any footprint at all. Most of them just resulted in a cultural shift which is the main difference between the nations. The majority of the ethnic makeup can still be traced back to the people that walked across the channel before the Ice melted.

Canadian here, I took the 23andMe DNA analysis and unsurprisingly it came back as 99.9% European, and 73% British Isles. The rest a combination of French/German and Scandinavian. I think the latter may be linked to the Scottish side of my family.

During lockdown I signed up for Ancestry.com’s 30 day trial. I now understand why genealogy is typically a pastime of retired persons, because it’s a massive time suck! Tracing your lineage can be like going down dozens of rat holes, and just when you think you’re getting somewhere you realize that further up the chain you linked to the wrong ancestor and need to prune back that part of the tree and re-start.

To get my hands around it (and complete something within 30 days) I focused on mapping out my paternal grandfather’s side of the family, which is one I’m most familiar with. I knew that he (and his wife’s, too) family had come to this country via the U.S. following the American Revolution.

[quote] Every one of my direct ancestors who emigrated to North America, did so before the American Revolution. My earliest ancestor to come here arrived in Jamestown in 1610. Given the huge number of pairs of grandparents that build up with each generation, it never occurred to me that such a thing could happen.

That’s pretty much what I confirmed as well. Traced my grandfather’s lineage all the way back to the early 1600’s in what is now Rhode Island. Their descendants were later forced to flee to New Brunswick for choosing to stay loyal to the crown rather than commit treason (and yes, it was TREASON!).

I’ve never been to Rhode Island, although my parents visited years ago and brought back some amazing photos of the homes in Newport. Me, I’ve learned all I need to know about Rhode Island from watching Family Guy LOL.

[quote] I’ve learned all I need to know about Rhode Island from watching Family Guy LOL.

Don't LOL at your own post. It's bad form.

Disagree about the Vikings not affecting Brit. lines. There is no other way my Swedish 10% and Norwegian 14% DNA would be in there.

It could be later migration +10% sounds unusually high for an ancestor from 1200 years ago. Admittedly if the Vikings altered the genetic makeup is a bigger debate than I thought.

[quote]Most blood drawn at an office is sent out to an outside lab. They are bound by law not to share that with outside sources. If you trust that then you should trust that the same laws work with DNA testing companies.

Ridiculous, r77. DNA companies are not bound by the same laws as medical labs.

Lab work is protected by HIPAA. DNA results from these various companies are not. That's why they share DNA results so easily with law enforcement and other agencies.

[quote]There is no other way my Swedish 10% and Norwegian 14% DNA would be in there.

And you would know this how? You were there when your ancestors got together and mixed it up a bit? You were not.

What happens to a society on a macro level as it moves through history can be important. But in genealogy, so can a chance meeting. Pinpointing the moment when particular DNA was placed into your own personal bloodline is often impossible to do with certainty.

Well, they are talking about Danish DNA and not Norwegian. Look at this thread and see how many with British Isle roots are like 10 plus percent Norwegian.

And I bet they all have blue eyes.

[quote]All you girls have to do is read the instructions published at Ancestry DNA to know that the DNA testing is done anonymously. You spit in a numbered test tube. That's the only identity that Ancestry DNA has for you. You get the DNA information you want from Ancestry DNA, but no one there ever gets your name.

They also have your payment information and your address, plus a whole lot more once someone chooses to use their website to try to find ancestors and relatives.

The thing is, even anonymous DNA without a name attached gives personal information. The Golden State Killer was found using ANONYMOUS DNA. By "combining an anonymous DNA sample with some basic information such as someone’s rough age, researchers could narrow that person’s identity to fewer than 20 people by starting with a DNA database of 1.3 million individuals."

That means even anonymous samples without names attached can identify a person.

[quote]We've just gone through a year and a half of people tied in knots over misinformation about Covid-19. Passionately believing things that are wholly untrue, when all they had to do was read a bit and get the facts. This whole thread is a re-enactment of what we've just gone through with Covid.

Sorry, no. You're a know-it-all who is just trying to win an argument.

This happens literally every time someone suggests people use caution when giving personal identifying information out. There's always at least one know-it-all like you who insists everything is safe and anyone who doesn't agree with you is so stupid they're practically ruining the entire country. It's pathetic.

I found my grandpa the rapist.

And your father, r98?

[quote]The thing is, even anonymous DNA without a name attached gives personal information. The Golden State Killer was found using ANONYMOUS DNA.

Right. But it wasn't the Golden State Killer's anonymous DNA that gave him away.

The killer left his DNA on his victim and the police collected it. The police then tested the DNA, uploaded the results and looked for close matches. They found them. Cousins, as I recall. Once they found that, there was only a small number of people who the killer could be. Had to be male. Had to be an adult at the time of the killing. Etc., etc. The cousins cooperated with the police.

Your example does nothing to serve as an example of why one should not test one's own DNA with a commercial service. The killer didn't do it at all.

[quote]He only said he'd traced his surname back to William.

You'd think Mike Deconqueror would have known that already.

[quote]I did it for my rescue dog-- he's 60% chihuahua, 13% terrier, 13% miniature pinscher and the rest is Swedish. Ever since random Swedes have been hitting me up for cash and treats.

Much better than say, giving the money you spent on the test to the "rescue shelter."

[quote]If you do the Ancestry test, make sure you click on the option to not give them the right to distribute your genetic info.

Yes, because that is all it takes to stop them.

flip phone much?

I had my DNA analyzed and I found out I'm the son of a thousand maniacs.

R98 my father lived with me and my mom and sisters until the smoking caught up with him and he died of a massive heart attack. I’ve been thinking about him a lot recently. As for the rapist, my grandma was a light skinned black woman and my “grandpa” was an alleged minister. She was at death’s door in her sick bed and he went into pray for her and left her alive, but with my Mom on the way. So now, I see all of these people who I’m related to and it all seems icky. Being that both sides of my family are mixed my online relatives are majority white, so it’s all very weird.

No real ancestry surprises, other than my mom's family actually did NOT have Native American lineage, although we were told otherwise for years and she was, too.

But it did reveal that my dad fathered another kid.

I did the 23andme one, and got 100% 'British and Irish'. Extremely boring but I also feel a bit inbred because I went to the 23andme subreddit and almost everyone posting is a mix.

I didn't understand that these services would put you in touch with actual named people you're supposed to be related to. I thought that was an entertaining fictional detail they made up for sitcoms and such. That would be a deal-breaker for me. I can't deal with the relatives I already know about.

R109, you can opt out of it with 23andme. I decided to open mine up briefly out of curiosity and only found 1 second cousin.

R109 Privacy setting. You can keep everything 100% private.

I did the Ancestry DNA several years ago when it first came out. My results have changed dramatically in that time. The first report said I was 25% Armenian, which was a total shock and didn’t match any of my research at all. I though perhaps I was the bastard child of Robert Kardashian - but no such luck. The latest update matches my research pretty much exactly.

It’s been kind of cool to connect with relatives I never knew I had and compare genealogical notes. The best part about it for me though has been the validation of my 20+ Years worth of research.

"British" is not an ethnicity.

We've had a number of threads over the years where DLers share their DNA results and it is overwhelmingly from the UK, Ireland and Northern Europe. Makes me wonder if homosexuality is more prevalent amongst people whose ethnicity comes from those regions.

R109 The benefit of connecting you to others you may be related to from a pure genealogy perspective is that you can meet others from your family tree who are researching the same common ancestors and, if both parties are agreeable, exchange information. I met a cousin who had a photo of our mutual great-great grandfather in his civil war uniform which was really interesting. On the other hand, I have some antique wedding and baptism photos from my grandparents’ cousins circa 1920s. I’m not much interested in them but if their descendants find me, I’d be happy to give the copies to them. But I’ve been lucky so far, the distant cousins I met are a pretty mellow group and everyone has been helpful and respectful of privacy.

How many of you ladies bitching about guarding your privacy have photos of your junk on websites that can capture your IP address? Online privacy is an illusion. At a minimum, everything you post online is subject to subpoena in a court case. Or a warrant signed by a judge.

And how many of you have very detailed information about yourself and maybe even a photo of your face at LinkedIn? LinkedIn is the pinnacle of oversharing. I am much more comfortable with Ancestry.com than I am with LinkedIn.

[quote] We've had a number of threads over the years where DLers share their DNA results and it is overwhelmingly from the UK, Ireland and Northern Europe. Makes me wonder if homosexuality is more prevalent amongst people whose ethnicity comes from those regions.

How odd that an English language web site would draw so many people of British origin!

[quote] I didn't understand that these services would put you in touch with actual named people you're supposed to be related to.

omfg

r117 I'm talking about Americans. The Americans on here are overwhelmingly of UK/Irish/Northern European origin.

R93 = Pearl Clutching her blood like it's liquid gold.

No one ones you blood dear, or your DNA. Let me guess, you put tape over your web cam too because the government can spy on you.

[quote]I am much more comfortable with Ancestry.com than I am with LinkedIn.

Exactly. Linkedin is the ultimate public posting of all your information. Criminals and the dark web will find that kind of info far more useful and lucrative than some insurance company finding out you are some half breed.

The largest wave of Germans came to America during the middle of the 19th century, facing civil unrest and high unemployment at home. Today, the majority of German-Americans can be found in the non-coastal states, with the largest number in Maricopa County, Arizona.

Coincidentally, the larges group of racist Trump voters are from the same non coastal areas. Middle America. Mostly whites of German decent.

I found a half sister

Thanks to this thread, I now believe that my father isn't my father. I got Ancestry done a few years ago but never looked too much at the matches - only the origins (German, British, scotish, French, Sardinian, Indian/native). Going over the matches, nothing makes sense.

On background - my father has never been a part of my life but I do know who he is, so it wouldn't really make a difference to me.

I have done genealogy without doing a DNA test. I got a lot of data from a relative who had done research through relatives. I expanded it using primarily familysearch.org. My fathers side started with some data from a relative, then I also ecpanded that greatly. Interestingly I found that one of my distant relatives was one of the founders of 23andme.

[quote]No one ones you blood dear

What gets me about DL these days is how many people we have like r120, someone who obviously thinks he's smarter than everyone else here, yet can't go more than three words without completely screwing up a sentence.

R120 I'm not the poster you're talking to but I do actually put tape over my webcam because Mark Zuckerberg does and if anyone should know about privacy-breaching, it's him.

That said, if someone wants my DNA, they can easily get it like how they got a sample from the Golden State Killer, since we discard DNA all the time. I think the benefits outweigh the negatives.

CONSUMER REPORTS recently featured an article entitled, "Your Genetic Data Isn't Safe."

I am not about to PAY to send in my genetic material and lose ownership of it.

As they say, "fools rush in ... "

[quote]CONSUMER REPORTS recently featured an article entitled, "Your Genetic Data Isn't Safe." I am not about to PAY to send in my genetic material and lose ownership of it.

But, what are you afraid of, R128?

Yet R128 probably has a Facebook page where he willingly posted endless amounts of personal data and images for the largest company on the planet to do whatever they want with it.

[quote] I do actually put tape over my webcam because Mark Zuckerberg does and if anyone should know about privacy-breaching, it's him.

So you are ranking your personal status of important on the same level as a billionaire? Really? Hackers want to hack famous people or people with money, not some old queen clutching her pearls posting about the evils of science on a gay bitch site.

Health insurance companies , r129.

If you ever tried to buy private health insurance pre-ACA, then you would know insurance companies only want to insure healthy people whose genes do not contain time bombs for expensive conditions that will cost them big money.

Other DLers can corroborate this, I feel sure.

It sounds so fancy that some of you have 5x grandparents that were still in the USA, and that you were already able to dig up your ancestry via church records and headstones and whatnot. Many of us here in the NY tri-state region are descended from turn of the century European immigrants, and we often don’t have the same easy access to those records without knowing the languages of our ancestors. And our ancestors were often dirt poor peasants who came to the US for a better life, so there isn’t always a lot of information on them except immigration records and census reports. I’d love if I could trace my ancestry to Virginia planters in the 17th century as many of you can, but unfortunately my people came in steerage from Naples in 1900 and were considered n****** by white protestants in the US.

My mother's husband was not my father, that was a fun one.

R131, hackers and scammers target average/normal people all the time. Even average people often have tens of thousands-worth in savings or assets that's worth it for hackers and scammers. There are numerous examples.

My mother had told me (after a few cocktails) that her unmarried sister who died a spinster had a child out of wedlock in 1950. Sense she was a devout Catholic, this would’ve been a scandal so the child was given up for adoption. My mother claimed to know nothing beyond that. Fast forward five years when my nephew is on 23 and me and his contacted by a woman who turned out to be the love child. Somehow she knew my aunts name from getting her birth certificate and we determined that she was the daughter and my first cousin. She was now in her 70s and a grandmother and a very nice person. We met her and the resemblance to our aunt was remarkable. She just wanted to know more about her mother and we were able to share some stories as well as some personal items which my aunt had from her years with Ma Bell. We told my mother that we had met this lady who was her niece, however my mother being quite elderly, did not want to meet her. All she wanted to know was that the lady was a nice person and was raised by kind people and was not a freak looking for money. We respected my mothers wishes and simply told our new cousin that my mother was not well mentally which was not true but we didn’t want to tell her that her own mothers sister did not want to meet her. So ours was a happy story. The lady has not contacted us more than a few times just to say hello as she has her own life and family as we do. She just wanted to know who she really was. Somehow she also found the name of her father who was apparently a one night stand with her mother.

But you are living in the past R132. I have tried to buy insurance back then. Life is not like that anymore than telephones with cords and and land lines. Besides, even back then the info they got was what you provided them with the authorization of your doctor. They couldn't just snoop in your background or private information without your authorization. You are paranoid. Stop reading click bait articles that just reinforce your echo chamber of pearls.

My friend will never do it, because she thinks down the line they'll have the potential to clone people and turn them into slave labour.

Several years ago, a cousin did his DNA test. At a family reunion we were discussing it. We can trace our families back to the early 1500s to an area of Germany called Ostfriesland. Yet the DNA test said zero percent German. It said we were English. Centuries ago, a lot of Frisians settled in England

I’m sure that as more people have taken these tests, the geography/ethnicity has gotten more specific and less generalized.

You're not American r137, you obviously don't have any pertinent knowledge of American health insurance company practices.

[quote]your personal status of important

Try again.

[quote]not some old queen clutching her pearls posting about the evils of science on a gay bitch site

Okay, that is enough out of you, r131. No one has said a THING about "the evils of science." That's such a stupid take on the things people have said in this thread that until your dumb ass said it, I didn't even realize that's what people like you were thinking.

"I don't always give my personal information to corporations" is not "science is evil." Good lord. Maybe this "gay bitch site" isn't the place for you.

I'm American R140, I just chose not to live in the past and in fear. And trust me, I have actual long term health issues, I deal with insurance all the time. I am not saying I like it, but I am not paranoid they are going to secretly going my DNA report to use it against me. I know people who work in the industry, that's not how it works, they would use a far simpler method and reasoning to deny coverage. They don't need to jump through hoops to change policy or deny coverage.

You might find........that your ancestors fucked over half of Europe with a smattering of other unexpected surprises.

R136, that’s sweet. Sorry your mom didn’t want to meet her but understandable.

After my aunt died, when my cousin was going through her things, she found out that her mother had given up a baby for adoption. My mother confirmed it was true but insists she knows nothing more and urged my cousin to drop it. My cousin suspects the father is either someone we know, a rapist or other known criminal, a different race, or married with a family. It was the early 70s and any of those scenarios would be difficult for a young unmarried mother.

My cousin is registered on both Ancestry and 23 but has not been contacted by anyone connected to her long lost brother.

R136 thanks for sharing that.

I was the one who posted at R107 - I am glad I went into it initially just for the ancestry piece. My father and I got along reasonably well once I was an adult and out, but it was nice to have the ancestry search to sort of collaborate on and talk about. He was trying to trace a particular line back from colonial Pennsylvania into Ireland, but we didn't have much luck.

I was the youngest by several years and missed meeting a lot of family beyond some basic aunts/uncles/cousins so I learned a lot about my extended family from the ancestry research.

But I also realized after meeting them that, as nice as they were, and as pleasant as the meetings were - well, mostly - they were not my "family." That's something that happens over time, over years, and we just didn't have that bonding.

So if I ever do meet my newly discovered half brother, I will have much more realistic expectations, which is a good thing. But that is a very complicated situation, so I don't know if we'll ever meet, or if he'll ever know who his father is.

R139 - it would still show that you had part German ancestry though, despite them migrating to Britain centuries ago. As a northern Brit I have 19% Scandinavian DNA, even though the Viking migration was a millennia ago. Maybe you just don’t have any German in you?

I'm reading a history of the Vikings and contrary to the Nazi myth that the people of the North were a "pure" ethnicity, they had absolutely no problem mingling and intermarrying with people from other cultures, including the indigenous Sami. They were also polygamous prior to being converted to Christianity, and like every other raiding and slaveholding society, left behind lots of rape babies that were assimilated into whatever society they happened to be born into.

R61

[quote] Because my father and my uncle are identical twins and DNA is identical.

Surprisingly, this is not true. They have made DNA tests of identical twins and/or triplets. While the results are very similar, the percentages of various lineages differs.

My Ancestry DNA test showed that I was 100% European, no black, no Indian, no Jewish. Where can I sign up for the SS?

I did the FamilyTreeDNA male Y-line DNA test and it showed that my male-line ancestor lived in Southern Denmark or Northern Germany as far back as 3000 BC! I can only trace it on paper back to 1660 in Southern Scotland. So did my ancestor come over with the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons, the Vikings, the Normans, who knows? But they're trying to figure all that out.

[quote] My Ancestry DNA test showed that I was 100% European, no black, no Indian, no Jewish. Where can I sign up for the SS?

Europeans are not all equal.

What could nefarious actors do with my DNA? I don’t understand the risk people are freaking out about upthread.

For AncesteyDNA, I spit in a tube. Surely the used the entire sample for the DNA test, and if they didn’t, I highly doubt they saved it to clone me…not that they can clone people yet… and even if they could, why would I care?

Once the test is done, what could they possibly do with the results that would bring harm to me? I don’t get it.

I think DL has too many nervous nellies.

I took the genetic test to see if I carried the breast cancer gene, bc my mom had breast cancer.

There have been no consequences with regards to insurance premiums since. And if there was ever a reason for an insurance company to raise my premium, that would be it.

So I don’t really think you all should be concerned about DNA testing Data mining with regards to insurance coverage.

Maybe in the distant future but right now ACA prevents insurance companies from refusing coverage for pre-existing conditions.

Right now, The only ones that should be worried about DNA test data mining are the people that got away with rape or murder decades ago. The clock is ticking on them

[quote] Europeans are not all equal.

Well, it was all Northwestern Europe, so I think I'm OK. I meant to specify that it would be the old, gay, overweight, lying on the couch in my caftan division of the SS.

re: insurance

they can get info anyway - you all know they can order your prescription history when you apply for life insurance, right?

Remember when mounted cameras (streets, stores, etc.) were new and people felt like it was horrible. Now, if something happens, everybody wants to see the video to find out the details of "what really happened."

Both of my parents are dead. Both were reasonably good parents and never got divorced. I'm not interested in analyzing my DNA.

However, there are so many people (abandoned children) all over the world who know very little about their ancestry. I can understand wanting to meet at least one blood relative to feel a connection.

DNA has been very useful for people who were adopted and want to find their birth parents.

[quote] "Because my father and my uncle are identical twins and DNA is identical." Surprisingly, this is not true. They have made DNA tests of identical twins and/or triplets. While the results are very similar, the percentages of various lineages differs.

Well that still does not solve the problem. While the difference between the two is so small it falls within the margin of error of all DNA tests. Remember DNA tests are on a spectrum of accuracy at the moment. Even companies like 23&Me have a slider somewhere on their page that you can adjust the probability of accurate of people you are related to. If you set that really low, you will have 1000 third cousins with 1% match probably.

In my case since both twins being my father and uncle passed away long before DNA for the public was available, it's your guess is as good as mine as to who fathered the offspring. Your article in interesting but apparently it's the first time its ever been done so I don't think it's going to be incorporated into commercial DNA tests for a long while.

R149, R154.. you are gay. The Nazis literally sent gay people to the concentration camps (pink triangle). So shut the fuck up because they would have hated you too. Along with disabled people, gypsies and some other groups no doubt, even though they had European genes too. Twat.

I would like to hear a story about a white supremacist who found out they were part black.

R160, here you go, this is good.

There was also a story (I'll never find it) about an African-American Studies professor who was big into black supremacy, but turned out to be very much of white ancestry.

23andme says I’m about 90% UK/Irish and around 10% French/German with less than a percent West African. What surprises me most is how little my ancestors mingled with non-white folks. I expected more somewhere. The 1% West African is likely due to some kind of slavery situation and assault…however, the Science vs. podcast mentioned that for the ancestry companies, anything around 1% or less is questionable in terms of accuracy. However, I’m not trying to deny that an ancestor would’ve assaulted someone with less power—that is highly likely given human history.

I did both Ancestry and 23andMe. Ancestry says I've got Northern Filipino, Southern Filipino, Southern Chinese, and Spanish in my genetic makeup, which was no surprise to me. 23andMe goes even further and throws in tiny percentages of Dai, Korean, Italian, Bengali/Northeast Indian, and Egyptian, which was a surprise but made sense.

R165 joins the discussion

Do you get matches as far back as third or fourth cousins? I know all of my second cousins' identities (barring "surprises"), but going a bit further back might hook me up with a brick-wall descendant to share info.

I have a good number of 4th, 5th and 6th cousins who are DNA matches found on Ancestry that I have been able to trace and add to my family tree.

I don't think I would want to know any 3rd, 4th, 5th or 6th cousins. I know all of my 1st cousins and a few of my 2nd cousins and that's MORE than enough lol!

Knowing of distant cousins doesn’t require you to know them.

The ethnicity results are the DNA equivalent of a parlor game. The science at this point is good at distinguishing between continents, and perhaps larger regions, but that's about it.

In other words, they can tell with fairly good accuracy what percentage of your DNA comes from the Americas, what percentage comes from Europe, and Africa, and Asia, etc. They can also pretty much distinguish, say southern Europe from Northern Europe, North African from Sub-Saharan African, Eastern Europe from Western Europe, North from South America, etc. etc.

But the Scottish vs. Irish vs. English vs. Welsh thing? All pretty much guesswork. Same with German vs. French, Spanish vs. Portuguese, Swedish vs. Norwegian, and so forth. And the tiny percentages of certain ethnicities, say, that 1% Turkish that shows up that you can't figure out how it got there, or that mysterious 0.5% from Pakistan...in some cases it's true, but in a lot of cases it's just "noise". People who test take it all as gospel, when it's about as accurate as your daily horoscope.

But it seems to be the main selling point for the tests, and the reason why most people participate in the first place, so the companies tend to oversell the accuracy of the ethnicity results.

And the ethnicity estimates are based on carefully selected reference populations, then run through an algorithm...which is why the results vary from company to company. Each company has its own reference pool and algorithm. The reference groups are NOT taken from customer base, so the idea that "the more people test, the more accurate the results" isn't true. The results change because the companies are constantly adding more people to the various reference populations and toying with the algorithms, in an attempt to make things more accurate.

I would imagine that most African Americans have a higher % of European DNA than white Americans have African DNA. 1% seems really small and what does that mean? A slave ancestor was raped and the baby passed as white and that’s that? I think if a white American had African (from a slave) DNA then it would be a larger %.

Am I wrong? I am certainly no expert…

[quote]So I don’t really think you all should be concerned about DNA testing Data mining with regards to insurance coverage.

You don't want your health insurance adjuster knowing your family's medical history. We don't know who 23andMe sells their info to. And if they sell it to someone, you don't know if that someone turns around and sells it to someone else

insurance is a multi-trillion dollar a year industry. If they can use something against you, they will. And remember they pay to have laws created to benefit themselves

Silly geese! This is Murica. Of course there's something nefarious going on! You just paid a significant amount of money to place your DNA in a perpetual database, and that of your descendents!

I did it. Absolutely, no surprises. 100% Western European in the correct percentages.

No surprise siblings/relatives or scandalous secrets revealed. I was hoping for something akin to a daytime soap.

Can you do it anonymously?

Yes. Of course it's anonymous. The testing kits are identified by number. Only.

And, yes, of course, there is an office somewhere with an email address that is connected to that kit number so that your results can be sent to you. Yes. Of course there is. And, yes, you probably paid by credit card. But that information is not at the lab, either. It's at your bank. Looking globablly, that information is at all the various banks used by all the various customers scattered around the world. So good luck cracking all of that.

The server with the email addresses of the customers is not in the lab contracted to do the testing. The people handling the sample do not have access to your name. And the information about your DNA that is retained is done so anonymously, identified only by that kit number. When studies are done using the DNA data collected in this process, those scientists do not have access to your name. They're looking at large numbers of samples, anyway, seeking patterns and trends that can be discerned, not looking to personally destroy your own sniveling life, in particular.

There is a MAMMOTH amount of hacking and other nefarious behavior that would be needed to accomplish what the nervous nellies on this thread fear so greatly. Their concerns are really just more conspiracy theories. Insurance companies wouldn't bother because they cannot screen for pre-existing conditions. If they want to limit their exposure, they already have ample tools in their arsenal of things that fuck us up. Ancestry.com is not likely to be one of them.

Given what just happened with COVID, people should be very concerned that China is buying these entire databases.

Thanks for the non-specific, generalized, and unsupported warning, R177.

Would you like to tell us WHY we should be concerned and the facts that support your conclusion?

R178, it's exhausting to be the personal research assistant of the lazy so I've retired from that portion of Internet life. I'm sure you can search the Internet if you're interested enough to expend the effort and make your own judgments about the information you find and the sources they're from. If you're not interested, that's both understandable and no skin off my nose.

It was your claim. You support it.

I don't recall signing a contract obligating me to acquiesce to your demands. Good day.

R170 the confidence intervals they use with their data are laughably lax in the research world, but there is a fair amount of accuracy the bigger the reference population gets in a particular region. My family had traced my ancestors back to a very specific region/county in UK and 23and me started out with generic “50% Northern Europe” and zeroed in on that exact county over time (as highly likely to have ancestors from there) that my ancestors were traced from legitimately through documents. The 1% random population that some people see in their reports is far more likely to be wrong because the dna segments with gaps are sort of just guessed, so the very small percentages are negligible and should be ignored. Anything closer to the 3 or 4% range or more is probably more sound in terms of the science.

They that said "more people does not mean more accuracy" contradicted they-selves (had to do it) in the last few sentences.

It is possible to run only one side of your family, for instance, have them search only through the maternal DNA?

R184, if you meant to write 'is it possible', speaking for 23andme, it isn't. I doubt it's possible with other companies either.

You got caught and owned, R181.

Better luck next time.

'Good day?' Good God.

Who is "owned" on an anon message board?

Get a life!

R184 Sort of.

Some companies offer mitochondrial DNA tests (maternal) and Y-DNA tests (paternal, and only men can take these). But these are very different tests than the autosomal DNA tests that the vast majority of people take (the ones that give ethnicity breakdowns, and close and distant family matches).

Mitochondrial DNA will give you matches only from your purely maternal line...in other words, your mother, your mother's mother, your mother's mother's mother, and so on down the centuries. So most of the matches you get are going to be very, very distant, and nearly impossible to trace. Same with the Y-DNA, which gives you your paternal line (father's father's father, etc.) The purpose of these tests is different than the autosomal tests, and they are generally for people who are balls deep into the advanced nuts-and-bolts of DNA.

R188, what companies are those that offer only searching through maternal DNA?

R189 not trying to be nosy, but may I ask what you're trying to find out with the maternal DNA test? I'd hate to see you waste your money on something that isn't helpful to you

R190, I'm not the original questioner lol. My question was actually rhetoric because I find it hard to believe that any company offers searching via maternal DNA-only. I have an account with 23andme which was the most expensive option and they don't offer that option. It doesn't seem to be happening.

R191 OK, got it.

Family Tree DNA does the detailed mitochondrial (mtDNA) testing, with matches. Link below gives more info.

You know how 23 and Me shows you your maternal haplogroup? That is done via mtDNA, so they do it, but just in a very limited way.

R192, sure but they don't offer a way to search by that alone.

R193, which is why I tried to explain that mtDNA and Y-DNA testing is an entirely different animal than autosomal. Apparently you missed that part.

Yes I did - and it was life-changing.

R195 how so?

r196 - I grew up as an only-child. I've now learned that I had eleven siblings. Two are gone and nine remain. I was extremely lonely as a kid, and dreamed about how great it would be to have a brother or sister. But six decades later, it's impossible to make up for all of that lost time. It's been a year of discovery, proving my identity, looking at people who look just like me .. etc. Surreal experience.

That I am literally a European mutt; mostly British/Irish with German, Dutch, Swiss, Swedish, Danish, and French ancestry.

AWG?

A lot of white guys have some Southern and Eastern Europe ancestry. r198 seems more premier.

[quote]There is a MAMMOTH amount of hacking and other nefarious behavior that would be needed to accomplish what the nervous nellies on this thread fear so greatly. Their concerns are really just more conspiracy theories.

Exactly. Besides, if they really wanted to know, all they need is a drop of blood from your next check up. Everyone who goes to a doctor on a regular basis sooner or later has blood work done. Or they could just out right require it to remain covered. They really don't need to be hacking secret databases for individual nutjobs.

Mine was a surprise--I thought all my ancestors were northern European, but I found I'm also 9% Balkan. Meanwhile my older brother (who did not find any Balkan heritage) found out he was also 13% Spanish (and I am not)! Meanwhile our sister was all Northern European (British Isles or Scandinavian-German. People who know how genetics work have told me this difference among siblings can be explained, but I still don't understand how we can be genetically so different.

I do regret giving my genetic coding over to a corporation, however, and would never do that again. My sister wanted us to do it one Christmas, and we did it to please her.

I did 23 and me back in 2017 and there were no surprises for me, but i did get one for one of my daughters as a gift because I was sure her father (my ex) who she grew up with was not her bio-dad (we were split up for an 8 month period, during which both of us was with someone else, then got back together). She looked like the other guy and looked NOTHING like my ex. Also, I got pregnant within a 3 week period in which I was with the live-in boyfriend, then got back together with the ex. I was SURE her father was the live-in boyfriend. Like 100% sure. When she was around 10 years old, I told her that her Dad was not who she thought it was - she was very emotionally intelligent, and I thought it was a good time to let her know.

Fast forward to 2018. She hadn't used her kit when I first got it for her, and when she finally did, she didn't tell me about it until she got the results back. She got a 50% match with her "Uncle" who was her dad's brother...my ex. The one I was sure wasn't her Dad. I actually told her I didn't believe her and made me show her the results. Let me tell you, the entire family was in shock (it wasn't a secret that my ex was *probably* not her dad). I think it gave her a lot of peace because she had always felt very close to that side of the family, but yet had this little part of her that thought they weren't her bio-family. After the results, she finally felt she was truly a part of their family. It was a complete shock to me.

[quote] People who know how genetics work have told me this difference among siblings can be explained, but I still don't understand how we can be genetically so different.

It's really simple, think of a lottery game where a bunch of ping pong balls are blowing around inside a drum until the draw is made. Each one of those balls represents a percentage of dna from both parents. Every time they pick a number it will be a different combination of part of the total. If you have 3 or 4 different ethnic traits from the parents, one child will have more of one trait than the other. Otherwise all the kids would be carbon copies of each other.

I committed all kinds of crimes and now I'm chased down internationally and am running out of options!!! Fingerprint removal and a nose job aren't an option any longer!!! What am I supposed to do???

[quote]I would imagine that most African Americans have a higher % of European DNA than white Americans have African DNA. 1% seems really small and what does that mean? A slave ancestor was raped and the baby passed as white and that’s that? I think if a white American had African (from a slave) DNA then it would be a larger %. Am I wrong? I am certainly no expert…

Most African Americans have between 20-28% European ancestry. The thing to remember is, that depending on the company you're with, you might be able to tell that this is generally related to slavery or sometimes (at this point in 2021) marriage at some point in your family history. Some of them list dates of when this likely occurred. There are African Americans with no European ancestry but they likely had parents that immigrated intentionally in the past few decades.

A beautiful black woman on youtube (she could have been a model) revealed that she had zero European ancestry. She took the test with her boyfriend and thought it was hilarious, not because of that but because her ancestry was 100% Nigerian. Her parents moved, she was the first kid born in another country and it turned out that no one, at all, in her family history had slept with anyone from outside of Nigeria. (At least as far as the test was concerned.)

What studies have shown is that White Americans from certain areas of the US tend to generally have SOME African American ancestry. Out of the sample 23&Me took over a certain period of time, about 12% of white Americans from Louisiana and South Carolina had 1% or more African ancestry. To make things more interesting, people who had 15% African ancestry or less considered themselves white. People who had 50% or more considered themselves black. People who were in between those two numbers ran the gamut.

[quote]But the Scottish vs. Irish vs. English vs. Welsh thing? All pretty much guesswork. Same with German vs. French, Spanish vs. Portuguese, Swedish vs. Norwegian, and so forth. And the tiny percentages of certain ethnicities, say, that 1% Turkish that shows up that you can't figure out how it got there, or that mysterious 0.5% from Pakistan...in some cases it's true, but in a lot of cases it's just "noise".

I can say that Ancestry DNA is constantly updating. As they say, the more people they gather from specific regions the more accurate the tests become. As someone that was on it years ago and has watched the changes, I went from having Irish and Scottish ancestry to having mostly Scottish and Irish ancestry to that entire percentage jumping over to Scottish. So now it's like 35% Scottish and no Irish.

However, they're also getting more specific. They went from entire regions to, specific countries to specific areas within those countries. So that 35% is all Northern Scotland now. Furthermore, I know that my last name is Scottish and I know exactly where the castles they owned were/the clan originated and they were all in Northern Scotland. So, once again that agrees with our family history.

R203 wow you're a real bitch putting your kid through that for most of her life.

Well 207, we all make mistakes and I was 100% sure she was not my ex's bio-daughter (at that time, due to circumstances) . I believe in honesty. That's why i told her about it at 10 and the other part of the family knew about it all along. I may have not handled it correctly, but after all is said and done, my daughter loves the hell out of me (as do I her) and my ex's family loves and accepts both her and I. We're all one big happy family, so it all turned out in the end. It's not like it was a normal (or cheap) thing to get a DNA test 20 years ago. But thanks for your judgmental opinion, a-hole.

^^reply above was meant for the judgmental asshole r207

r203, websluth frau trash-whore.

r210 whatever. i was only trying to contribute to the thread. you seemed to be focused on being a dick. not the good kind.

They still need to work out the Native American thing of which I am about 30%. In case you never thought about it, Native Americans do not have a written language, our history has been handed down through stories as oral history. So far, it's been pretty accurate from what I can tell. Which actually surprised me. But as far as DNA goes, it's weak with location because not enough samples. So at one point they said my ancestors are from Mexico which I know is not accurate because the tribe I came from was from the north where the Anasazi once resided.

Native Americans came to America from the top down through Alaska. Some branched out in the US territory, other kept migrating all the way to South America. But they didn't migrate back up. Then later on my DNA map changed and showed what I was told that my ancestors came from the north near Mesa Verda in Colorado. So again, the oral history was more accurate.

upload to gedmatch and use the various extrapolators. it will tell you the NA. mine has gone up over the years. AWG with...yes! ...a touch.

[quote] They still need to work out the Native American thing of which I am about 30%.

Did you know that beforehand? I’m curious if people with Native American ancestry experience any of the problems with firewater.

Yes I could figure out what percentage of Native American I was based on what we knew about the grandparents and great grandparents. It was talked about a lot when I was a kid. Not a one time conversation. I guess that's how they passed the information down.

Is that firewater thing supposed to be a joke? No, Native Americans do not have a genetic problem with alcohol, that's been debunked. That's based off one flawed study from the 1970's. It's never been proven since then. The rate of alcoholism is higher than the national average but it has to do with more of a cultural thing, poverty, education, isolation etc. My grandmother had 13 children and I would say only one had an issue with it. They had already left the reservation and worked on a farm so not much time to sit around and get drunk when you work sun up to sun down without farming equipment or machines. Really hard working people. Most of their sons and daughters went to college and became Nurses, Doctors, Teachers, and one even went into computer science long before people had home computers.

So I never had a "tribal" experience growing up and never benefited from all that stuff people bitch about that Native Americans get from the government. And contrary to popular belief, most tribes do not own a Casino. They don't share the wealth with other tribes either. Cunts.

Sorry, r203, r207 isn't a judgmental asshole, he's right. You didn't know who the father was because you didn't have any testing done, you assumed based on looks (which is a dumb thing to do) and told your daughter at far too young of an age, and by your own admission she did not feel like she was "truly a part of their family" for years because of what you said. Then it turned out you had told her the wrong thing all those years ago, years she spent feeling like she wasn't really part of the family.

That's an awful thing to do. And just FYI, you're a straight lady coming to a gay board and telling your straight lady stories and then getting mad at the gays for telling you their opinions. It's not our fault you don't know what Datalounge is, but I can tell you what it's not: your safe space.

I'm not sure how DNA results are currently used, but it's not that crazy to suggest they could be used against people. There's not as much concern when it comes to DNA uses in criminology, since obviously most people aren't committing serious crimes -- however, the concern over health coverage could actually be on to something.

I never thought about the all the ways our data/ info is being used until I watched a documentary about it. I was horrified and genuinely shocked over what they've done with it in some cases.

One guy was denied equipment due to the smart technology in his CPAP showing he was "non compliant" by not using the machine enough. He claimed the data was misread , but his insurance didn't care. They denied other equipment he needed.

Not exactly DNA test related, but blood test related; multiple companies were caught taking life insurance out on their employees, after gaining info from mandatory health screenings (labs, exams, etc.) They were pretty good at pinning down which employees were at a higher risk. This is a big problem with insurance being tied to employers as well. Point being, many people underestimate the ways data/ info can be used.

I highly recommend the entire mini documentary, but the way companies are using data/info, especially insurance, starts at 8:40 -- first a tech specialist gives a general run down, then the guy with the CPAP shares his story.

(I'm a fan of that channel, but they do put a ton of ads. If no adblocker, just scroll to a few seconds before end of video, let it play out until replay icon appears, and you won't have ads bc it thinks you watched it).

Yeah R14, I think most DL-ers aren't risking anything...they already know they have someone gay in their family.

[quote]So at one point they said my ancestors are from Mexico which I know is not accurate .... Then later on my DNA map changed and showed what I was told that my ancestors came from the north near Mesa Verda in Colorado. So again, the oral history was more accurate.

R212, The same thing happened to my results. They started out in the area around the Yucatán Peninsula. Then the results changed to generally "Mexico." Now they're all of Canada and the North Eastern/Eastern half of the United States. They seem to be getting closer but they're still not quite there yet.

Damn. Most DL'rs are not self-effacing enough to think they have no gays in their family.

HIV testing was always done anonymously, never through insurance or under your name, for the very real risk that your insurance company would drop you and/or your employer would fire you. Just think about that for a minute.

Yes, it was necessary because of the great stigma about HIV at the time those laws were written in the 1980s. There were many levels of confidentiality built into the process. Without them, a person testing positive for HIV could be a target for harassment at all levels, not just employers and insurance companies. Neighbors harassed people with HIV. Family members did, too. And not just verbal taunting. The harassment included things like beatings and arson.

Without the confidentiality, many fewer people would have agreed to being tested. It was a public health imperative to make the testing anonymous and the results confidential. Much of that has been removed from the protocols. There is still HIPAA, but that's quite different.

R208 you don’t owe an anonymous person an explanation of such sacred and intimate experiences. It’s frankly off-color and strange. Why do you feel the need to justify such a personal thing to a sense of trolls? You need to get off the internet and do some soul searching. There is something wrong with this picture.

Lay off R203/R208. She makes it clear that the discussion with her daughter was 20 years ago, long before DNA testing was readily available. Years ago, my own sister got knocked up by a guy she was seeing when she was stepping out on her husband. She passed the baby girl off as her husband's child. By the time her daughter was 12, she was asking "Why am I so much taller than my father? Why don't I look like anyone else in this family?" It was that noticeable. Not just to my niece, but also to everyone else in the family. We all knew what my sister had been doing and we all saw who the child looked like. And, of course, we all knew she had been lying about it to everyone for years and years. It could not continue. The damage to the daughter was too great.

20 years ago, there was no other solution than for the mother to come clean. My sister, instead, killed herself. So, I really can't see that R203/208 did such a bad job.

That’s a shame about your sister r225, but DNA testing was widely available 20 years ago. I am sorry she did not know that. It was actually a common story line on daytime soaps going back to the 70s and 70s.

Thanks, R226. No DNA testing was needed. Some things are just obvious. And this was one of those things.

My point, which perhaps I did not make, is that these things can be horribly complex. And not entirely secret.

If R203/R208 got a good outcome, then be happy for her.

Lying about a child's paternity is fucked, for the child and the father(s). No sympathy for the mothers.

r228 i never lied about her paternity. Everyone knew the circumstances, including my ex, and the decision was made to raise her as his, even though we didn't know one way or the other. Everyone in the family knew both he and I had been with other people during our split, so her paternity was always in question but AS I STATED, DNA testing wasn't readily available and since we had decided to get back together, it was a non-question at that point.

And for the record, i have been coming here for YEARS posting because i love you guys, this board, the topics, the gossip, the fun, the cocks(!). i usually keep identifying gender-related info out of my posts and have had pretty much NO ONE flame at me, but i thought i could contribute to this thread with my story. Sheesh, last time i do that.

Have a great weekend, all.

R229 I was actually referring to 225's story who knew without a doubt and lied, and others in that situation.

You could've compared your blood type with your ex's and your kid's, which would show if she could've been his. You could've told her her dad "might" not have been her dad instead of being definitive when you didn't know for sure.

I'm glad everything worked out for the best, but it doesn't change the fact that you put your kid through a lot of heartache over nothing.

r230 there was no reason for us to compare blood types - everyone in the family agreed to the fact that we were raising her as his and there was no reason to do anything else other than that. Nobody cared about the semantics and she was NEVER treated differently.

There was no "heartache" involved. On the contrary, she lived with her Dad for several years in her late teens. It was all very amicable. You all are making a mountain out of a molehill. My daughter, the ex and the ex-inlaws are all one big happy family. There wasn't the amount of drama or "heartache" that you are all attaching to this. This was all very out in the open knowledge in the family.

yawn...

I have a friend who took this test repeatedly and his sample inexplicably failed despite him following the directions to a T. For those who sent in successful samples, do you have any tips? I've heard anecdotes of individuals having more success in the morning but I have dry mouth when I first wake up. If I had a cup of coffee and waited a couple of hours would that be ok?

[quote]I did 23 and me back in 2017 and there were no surprises for me, but i did get one for one of my daughters as a gift because I was sure her father (my ex) who she grew up with was not her bio-dad (we were split up for an 8 month period, during which both of us was with someone else, then got back together). She looked like the other guy and looked NOTHING like my ex. Also, I got pregnant within a 3 week period in which I was with the live-in boyfriend, then got back together with the ex. I was SURE her father was the live-in boyfriend. Like 100% sure.

TRAMP!

But, gurl... it sounds like you had A LOT of fun! Good for you!!!

[quote]What studies have shown is that White Americans from certain areas of the US tend to generally have SOME African American ancestry.

I think that this is a good thing. Most of we Black families have known ever since slavery (and before) that there is "White blood" within our family's DNA. Finding pure African DNA lineages in the USA is probably not as easy as we all think. However, it is the White Americans of this country that must now come to terms that not only might they have Black relatives, BUT... they probably have "Black blood" within their very own DNA. Keep in mind that "one drop" rule that would define one as being Black.

There were many Blacks who could pass for White and did. This sheds a whole new light upon the White Supremacy phenomenon. As more and more "White" Americans learn and accept their racial history make up, I believe that there will be a greater softening of race relations in this country. I believe that even more and more "Whites" will shun the superiority nonsense and accept that they are in the position of where they are purely because of racism.

I truly believe that the overwhelming majority of people believe in fairness, and choosing what is right over that which wrong, and therefore will join in for the fight for equality for all.

Thanks for sharing, R203. I think that it is FABULOUS that you are here with us!!!

R18

Why can't your bitch aunt just meet her damn spawn already?

Did Elizabeth Warren learn of her lineage to Native Americans through a DNA test?

[quote]Did Elizabeth Warren learn of her lineage to Native Americans through a DNA test?

She heard it from her family. She took a professional (not like these places) DNA test. She asked a famous-ish genetic researcher at Stanford to interpret the results. They determined she likely had a Native American ancestor 6-10 generations ago. So the stories she heard were probably right BUT the Cherokee Nation pretty much said that it doesn't count. (They were nice about it though and used it to open a wider dialogue about people not using DNA tests to determine these things.)

And, R238-the troll has arrived. I don't know why such a big thing was made of that. It was something that was told to her by her family. Why would she question it? But, the right-wing made something of it and she stupidly (IMHO) responded to it.

[quote] I don't know why such a big thing was made of that.

Me neither.

My mother was told for years that she had Native American ancestors. I remember her telling me I was 1/32nd or 1/16th, and that several generations back she had a full native ancestor.

But our DNA testing proved otherwise.

I've read other ancestries and studies where a lot of people in the late 1800s pulled a Dolezal and claimed Native ancestry. Sometimes it was to be "cool", sometimes it was a way to counter any hostile Indians by saying hey, I am blood to you, too.

Warren's a politician and an imperfect one, but I think she always acted honorably about that, and did not mean to deceive anyone.

Also, the DNA research confirmed that Warren was just as Native American as her family said she was.

R66, how would you pay? Would you send them cash? How would they contact you?

How do you do anything today, without providing something that identifies you.

[quote] Also, the DNA research confirmed that Warren was just as Native American as her family said she was.

Well, not quite. Warren's DNA was much farther back and in a much smaller increment than she was led to believe.

Warren said her great-great-great-grandmother was NA.

I am bad at the math, but would that not make her about 1/32 NA?

In my experience while doing this work I am still shocked by how much history that has been lost and/or rewritten given that we are such a young country (USA). I'm speaking from an African-American perspective here. I've been able to track one of my family's lineage back to pre-civil war (about 1840's) and that was it. However, I have found very little records of that lineage after Reconstruction. I suppose many of that lineage went "underground" given the racism, etc. I mean no census data, property records, etc. I've been told as an African-American that I was very lucky to have been able to go back that far. Conveniently, the records where a lot of that data was held was destroyed by fire and then the remainder by flooding. Alas...

But, my mother's side (and that's where the White DNA REALLY exists) I've been able to track that lineage all the way back to Ulster Ireland. That was quite exciting! There were wills, property deeds, etc.

I guess my point is that it does matter and make a difference if one has a sense of "who" they are and where they have come from. Unfortunately, many African-Americans don't have that luxury.

R245 Sounds about right.

I'm 100% Neanderthal

From a 23andme perspective, it showed i had almost zero Native American ancestry when I know that i'm 1/16th Cherokee with my maternal Grandfather being on the roles. Apparently, that is a huge ding in their results from what i've read.

Upload the raw data to gedmatch.

When your Anglo G7 g-pop came over in16-whatever, how many Anglo women were over here? That's how I have my touch, and the family story was true. Ancestry does not go that deep .

I did want some AA. BUT my decidedly racists 1st cousins do! Kinda loved that.

From the article mentioned by R128 (linked below):

[quote]It can’t be used for health insurance, thanks to the ACA, but—except in Florida where this practice was recently prohibited—it could theoretically be used to determine life, long-term care, or disability insurance plans.

[quote]Your genetic information could also potentially be used against you in a court case. If you were to seek damages for a work-related injury, for example, a company might try to use information from your genome to point to potential other causes for your symptoms... It’s even conceivable that sensitive information about your family or your health could be used in a blackmail scenario.

[quote]Those examples may sound extreme. But the bottom line, Brookman says, is that genetic information could reveal facts about you that you don’t want known. And right now, consumers don’t have many protections against that happening.

***

[quote]In one 2018 study of DTC genetic testing companies’ privacy policies, Vanderbilt University researchers found that 71 percent of companies used consumer information internally for purposes other than providing the results to consumers. Sixty-two percent said they use data for internal research and development, while 78 percent said they provided genetic information to third parties in de-identified or aggregate forms without additional consumer consent.

From R93:

[quote]DNA testing companies have improved their methods for deleting your data over the years. However, since the United States government requires these companies to retain DNA information in order to comply with quality control guidelines, it’s never really possible to delete it forever.

I'm uncomfortable with this. I don't have Facebook or LinkedIn accounts either.

Me dood it. Sed me atey percent neandertall.

Wha bullshit.

Insurance companies don't need to tap into your DNA for medical coverage or life insurance.

Y'all do know that every pharmacy you've ever been to in your life supplies the names of the medications you've been described to a nat'l database, right?

No, doctor hopper, but thanks for the info!

[quote]I've been able to track one of my family's lineage back to pre-civil war (about 1840's) and that was it. However, I have found very little records of that lineage after Reconstruction.

I'm not sure if you did this but a lot of people end up using ancestry's match feature and then simply contacting people who are closely related to them to compare histories. You might even find that someone else has also done the work.

There's actually another service that caters to people overseas more than it does here. I can't remember the name. Someone else might. I know that I used it with the AncestryDNA export feature and imported it there. It found TONS of people other countries that were somehow related to me, a few of them even closely. So while Ancestry mostly focused on people in the united states, this thing was pulling up people from Australia, South Africa and New Zealand.

Me, no. But my seventy year old aunt just discovered her SON! She was raped back when a women just had to carry it to full term, and gave it up for adoption in a “closed” adoption, which was the rule back then. But her son and she were on ancestry and ascentry notified them both of their common genetic makeup.

Finding ancestry information going back to early 1800s is often but not always successful. Of course African Americans aren't ale to find a lot of info pre 1865.

Most of what I have pre 1800 is from someone else's research but I was lucky that my ancestors lived in an area where so much info was contained in wedding/birth announcements, obits, etc. I was really able to find so much that way. And the great thing about obituaries is that for every question it may solve, it might give you 10 more pieces of info and two more questions!

I did and I found out I'm 49% equine! Who knew?

I saw this on Reddit today

R259, those percentages are going to change when Ancestry does its ethnicity update later this month.

23&Me, I was surprised to find out I had some Western Asian/North African. Less than a percentage, but still shocking just because all my traceable family comes from Northern Europe.

[quote] I was surprised to find out I had some Western Asian/North African. Less than a percentage

Those tiny percentages are meaningless and should not be considered valid.

R262 is right. All you people who think 1% or 2% of some ethnic group is meaningful, you have not bothered to read the details posted on those sites. They state clearly that there is a margin of error the lower the percentage goes. 23 and Me even has a prediction slider that you can play in terms of accuracy. If you push that thing up to 90% accurate, it pretty much only show the top 3 largest groups you might be a part of. If you push it down to 50% you can almost come up as being1% part Alien from planet Zenon.

Has anyone else encountered the family that refuses to share/help BUT are very interested in the information?

With my research I post it on a family page. What strikes me is that in seconds that I post something the eagerness of family members to read the information. Now, my family (at least this link anyway) have always been secretive. It was like we were raised with the unwritten rule that you don't talk. But, I have a different outlook. I mean... while I do want to know for myself, I do feel that it is important for our younger generations to have a sense of our family history. There's nothing to be embarrassed about. What is done is done. If you were a slut when you were younger then it is what it is. But, now you have found Jesus and all is forgiven...

I'm one of the few that do know a lot about my family and have learned a helluva a lot more from my research. But, we're dying out. This family history can very possibly be lost forever. Yet, I get nothing. No pictures. No anecdotes. No other information that can possibly open up a lead to further research. Nothing. HOWEVER, I do get many questions! I have assumed that most of my family truly don't know anything or they're just refusing to help BUT want to know.

Anyone else encounter this? Any suggestions for breaking through this "whatever"?

Which test would you guys recommend?

[quote] Has anyone else encountered the family that refuses to share/help BUT are very interested in the information?

I love figuring out the identity of distant relatives who are DNA matches who have their tree on private and then putting them on my public tree. That gives me satisfaction to thwart their attempt to hide.

[quote]Which test would you guys recommend?

I can only speak to Ancestry. However, if you're interested in researching your family history I would begin with familyresearch(dot)org before subscribing to any of these DNA whatevers. It's FREE. I wish I had known that. To me, Ancestry has become SO mercenary. Its subscriptions are NOT cheap and a lot of the information (if not all) that you get from them regarding historical research is the same information that you can get from family research for free. But, the issue is that Ancestry is basically monopolizing this space ie they've bought "FindAGrave", "Newspapers" etc and have made them subscription.

As far as DNA info, I guess its really not that much better than the competition.

My boss’s wife did Ancestry.com.

She is not her father’s daughter. It was like something out of Maury.

How does Ancestry.com even work?

I do not know the names of some grandparents. Not sure if they were born in the US or Europe.

Without any family information, how much can you really learn about your family?

I would love to know....but I doubt much of my family's past is discoverable.

R269, some users make family trees. You use Ancestry DNA. You get a list of people you are related to with what Ancestry believes you are (1st cousin, 2nd cousin, etc.) in relation to them. You can view that user's family tree or talk to them.

I don't know much about my dad's family but I have 4, 1st cousins I've never heard of. I looked at one of their family trees. Turns out that guy is the son of my dad's younger brother who I've never met and he has most of his family listed there that I've never heard of except for my father.

R270, other than my siblings and their children, I would not have any relatives to put on a tree. And I would have not way to tell if someone was related to me. (Both my parents had common last names--I have had people contact me to ask if we were related, but we cannot ever tell since I have no info on extended family.)

So it sounds like it may not be worth it for me.

I did it and now I say- who cares?

Got an update on my Ancestry DNA results yesterday and it's incredible how accurate some of the results are. The timeline part pinpoints *exactly* where my mother's family came from in the remote weat coast of in Ireland in the 1800s, and even circle the small town her cousin lives in today. It's pretty crazy.

The ethnic groups keep getting shifted around as Ancestry gathers more data. I've gone from being 61% "Great Britain and Northwestern Europe" and 39% Irish to:

38% England and NW Europe (England, Netherlands & Belgium)

31% Ireland

16 % Scotland

9% Wales

6% Sweden & Denmark

My family isn’t that interesting. I know/knew of six generations of extended family. That’s enough.

The recent Ancestry update has turned my 2% Spanish into 2% Basque. Everything else remains the same.

I had quite large tree I thoroughly researched over 20 years and posted on Ancestry. Then people started adding my information to their trees, but made huge mistakes. If you're going to copy off the paper of someone else, put in a tiny bit of fucking effort to copy accurately.

Their mistakes are then copied by others and put into their trees. I finally took my information down and just have my own database that I will sometimes share pieces of with other family members.

For those that claim they have small families or don't know of other relatives. Ancestry does have a sizable database now and if you're in the US, chances are good you'll find relatives. My mother has more than 1,000 people who are fourth cousins are closer matched.

Yes. It listed every salad bar I had visited since 1976.

No !! This is a scheme to get t you in the database run by those pedophiles that own that pizza restaurant in DC !!! Hillary uploads the data on her secret server and she gives it to all the Rabbi's that control the jew space lasers so they can locate you better by GPS !!!! They activate the secrete ingredient in the vaccines that turns you into a tranny !!!!

It bears remembering that the whole thing about Elizabeth Warren's indigenous ancestry is tied up with the wider issue of the U.S. government historically cheating native Americans out of their rights by deliberately keeping all but a fraction of them off the official tribal rolls. The people who currently have membership in an indigenous nation have had to fight for generations for just a fraction of what they were supposed to have been guaranteed by treaty. So for someone who's enjoyed the privileges of being counted as white to say "I'm part Cherokee!" or whatever is just kind of culturally fraught. But not in the way that the Republicans tried to make it. They're very much part of the racist infrastructure that indigenous Americans have no illusions about.

Mine has been updated, so I guess now I'm more Welsh and Finnish than Irish or German.

Why do you want to know?

My cousins did the family tree. I just watched.

One side is from England and got here via the Mayflower. The other side from Sweden.

At the urging of my sister, I had DNA checked via 23AndMe. It came back 5% Nigerian with the rest being from England, Scandinavia and Easter Europe.

Then, I knew there was a reason I am a life time member of the NAACP

R279 DNA tests like Ancestry are not accepted by Native American tribes as evidence for or against tribal membership for several reasons. For one, the population pool is far too small and so the tests are extremely unreliable. It is possible that Warren did in fact have one or more Cherokee ancestors but that the DNA testing company does not have adequate data for a match, plus it would be a relatively small percentage. Also, tribal communities have time-honored means of determining who can be a member and who cannot, and they won't change because the Mormon-run Ancestry says they know better.

Looking at a person to determine Native American ancestry is also unreliable. Tori Amos is my favorite artist and so I have followed her for the better part of two years. One of the things that interested some people about her when she hit the music scene was her Cherokee heritage. As time passed, people began to accuse her of having made that up to stand out and of cultural appropriation. Some people have tried to conduct independent research challenging her claim that her mother's parents are American Indian because she looks more or less like a white woman. She and her family in fact are enrolled members of the Eastern Cherokee tribe of North Carolina, where she was born. Her sister is a medical doctor who trained in part on reservations, and she has been featured by NIH as a celebrated American Indian medical doctor. Yet some social justice warriors have determined to accuse the woman, who grew up with Native American traditions, stories and spirituality in her close family, of lying about her heritage.

I have 2 blond blue eyed nephews whose grandparents (not my side) are Cherokee and Lumbee. And both of these are legit tribe members. You never know.

My Grandma always reminded us that if you are thinking about something, or feeling in some way, be assured that there are 100s of others who are experiencing the same thing too.

I think that Ancestry is quite expensive and you really don't get your money's worth. Maybe it's because people don't fully know how to use it effectively? Anyway, I paused my membership for two months and subsequently canceled it. OH! Before that... I filled out a survey basically stating how displeased I was with the service and that it was expensive, yadda, yadda... The very next day I received a blast email detailing the services and what was free and not free, etc. Then during their sale period I bought a kit for $60 that I was going to add the subscription onto my existing subscription. You can do that but someone else would still have to do the DNA test and then give the 6 month subscription to you. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't like doing the DNA stuff.

So, I canceled. TODAY, I receive an email offering a 6 month membership (we want you back) for $74.

I'm just letting everyone know this because in the past the Company would not negotiate its pricing. It did the leveling up model. Bait you with a cheap price and escalate from that point with no discounts, etc.

Just letting you folks know! Also, fill out those surveys! Someone is reading them and listening.

Is anyone else getting spammed with a lot of Ancestry emails? Lately, I've just gotten a lot of emails and I'm seeing their ads all over the place. I don't recall the company ever pushing the product so hard than they are doing now.

Don't do it. China is buying up all the data trying to compile a world dna database

[quote]Don't do it. China is buying up all the data trying to compile a world dna database

And, to do what with it?

I’m 70% sub Saharan African, 5% Caribbean indigenous, 20% Northern European, which makes sense because my paternal grandmother was a black/indigenous Cuban and my mom’s side, like most African Americans, are varying admixtures of black and European…but tell me about the 5% Filipino…how’d that happen? I think that something is off. Plus a distant cousin that I found on Ancestry.com said that they are constantly changing the results…

I’m 100% KWEEN.

Nope. No surprises to report here

My genetic data is already a pass-around bottom due to the number of medical studies I've participated in, so I had no privacy concerns about a commercial spit test. No big surprises were revealed. Back then Promethease would analyze your results for free and match your variants to research that may or may not be relevant, which was kind of neat (and, for me, pretty accurate).

R289, the results are changing, they are actually becoming more refined as more people add their ancestry to the broader mix. I went from 25% Scottish to 12% Irish and 12% percent Swedish within ten years. My family tree backs it up with my research. My grandmother, who considered herself proudly Scottish, had a parent who was born in Ireland. She never told us this. Scandinavians had a major presence in Britain centuries ago. It all makes sense. My grandmother would have been horrified at the most current result. I'm glad she isn't here to see it.

Do any of these companies take a more medical approach, perhaps using your DNA to tell you more about your health?

Or are they keeping that data in-house and for third parties exclusively?

I have tried so many times to like Tori Amos music but never could. Her fans are so adamant that I gave it a few tries because I was sure I was missing something.

It just never took.

R295 Wrong thread, Bub. And that's OK. Tori is a genius, but also not everyone's taste.

R294 Ancestry and 23&me both run certain genetic health tests if you consent. They only look for certain traits and disorders, though. You can read about them on their websites. Ancestry is supposed to be better for ethnic breakdowns and 23&me better for genetic disorders.

If you do Ancestry, you can also download your DNA information and run it through a program like Genomapp, Promethease, etc., which give more comprehensive analyses of mutations and will tell you the likelihood of being affected by them. But of course privacy is a major consideration.

F&F, R279,

Thank you r296.

I'm really sorry I gave away all my genetic information for free, OP. Don't do it.

Think about it this way. If someone wanted your dna bad enough they would find a way to get it.

Care to elaborate, R299?

I did 23andMe - now to preface I'm Italian-American. Sure enough I get the broadly European thing. I also get a few surprises like Ashkenazi Jewish, Iberian, Sardinian, etc. Plus a little North African to even out the mix. And if you were born on the east coast of the U.S. you got Irish, English, French Canadian and a lot of Native American too. But to look at me I definitely look Italian.

Oh the other thing - I know from family lore that I have a half brother in the UK - I believe I found him on 23andme.

Actually, I need to revise my prior statement!

Found out approximately 6 weeks ago that I have a brother via my dad who is 6 years younger than me!

He did 23 & Me and found a 2nd cousin on my paternal grandmothers side.

Still processing everything.

R302 I had Ashkenazi show up for years in my Ancestry profile, a small amount (< 1 percent), but it disappeared during their last update.

So many hand wringers here about not knowing much of their family and therefore dont know what they would get out of taking a DNA test. Well for starters, stop watching Jerry Springer. That's not what DNA tests are really about. A DNA test is about YOUR genetic history, big picture, where your great, great, great, great, great, great parents came from. Where they migrated from, what percentage of other ethnicity they mixed with. Not long lost relatives. That's just a side benefit that's been over hyped.

Ancestry is very accurate when a substantial population has participated. The more people take the tests, the more specific the results become, and so yes, the results change over time.

I'm convinced of the accuracy for a few reasons:

1. My dad was contacted by two different men on Ancestry who were somehow related, which Ancestry told them, and who didn't know who their fathers were. My dad looked at their common relatives, their birthplaces, he consulted some cousins and they were able to determine the fathers. So two new family 'bastards' were identified primarily by DNA results and then piecing together the rest.

2. As with many people of Irish descent on the East Coast, my ancestors came from the West Coast of Ireland during the famine in the mid-1800s. My mother identified a cousin in County Mayo online and they became pen pals. After my mom died, we visited the cousin and she took us all over the areas where our family came from. Ancestry pinpointed the very small region the family is from with multiple concentric circles.

3. Through oral history and some documentation, we know that our family came primarily from the UK and Ireland, but also my dad has had family history saying people came from Switzerland to the US. Ancestry shows my ethnicity as primarily Scottish, English, Welsh and Irish with a little Scandinavian, but it has a big pink circle over the place in Switzerland where my dad's family history says people came from. It's a bit of an anomaly given how "Islander" we are, and it's right there in the DNA.

A friend and his wife have multiple cousins and and great great times however grandparents in common. Like they’re Charles and Diana inbred. They’re from the same town in Cheshire and were only semi joking when they said they were relieved that their son married and has kids with friends with a Fijian woman.

R307 At some point, Ancestry identified 'genetic communities' and one of the ones I am grouped into is 'Connacht Irish.'

I didn't know what that meant and so I asked an Irish woman I met through Twitter. She replied "We're Connacht, too!" and told me that her whole immediate family had just taken genetic tests for health reasons and found out that they have three inherited diseases in their DNA that result from inbreeding. The same community has lived in the same tiny remote region for at least hundreds of years and possibly more than a thousand, and so the gene pool is very concentrated. My ancestors were lucky in that sense to head off to a new country and diversify.

Alt-right, white-Pride Barbie Lauren Southern must have forgotten she dyes her hair blonde because she was shocked and disappointed she did not, in fact have “Nordic” heritage, but the significantly duskier Portuguese.

Haha R309 I'm surprised someone like that would admit it.

I have an aunt who is a born-again southern Baptist and her Ancestry DNA initially identified her with traces of Ashkenazi Jewish and Polynesian. She called my dad in a panic. He laughed at her. Ultimately, those disappeared from her results later on and never showed up in ours.

My immediate family was hoping for some surprises (even Portuguese would have been beyond the North Atlantic roots we know about) but alas. We all had a small amount of Iberian show up initially, but it later went away and the Irish percentage increased. Some people in Western Ireland are most closely related to people from Spain who migrated by sea hundreds of years ago, so that was probably the reason for the change.

Im R43 and was thrilled that my white bread Jewish dad who was 10% southeast Asian passed it on to me. The thought of being just another boring white person was disappointing. I ended up with 6% of my DNA Asian, too

My sister did it, so I guess privacy-wise I'm fucked? Then again she is my half-sister, so it's only half my story. Her father was Sicilian so she got some middle eastern hits.

We did learn that while our mother was born and raised in Scotland, we ping only in England and Ireland. So much for all that shortbread we grew up with.

I imagine a lot of white people indeed get excited to find a bit of color in their DNA.

R312 Not sure how you're "fucked." Some long-unknown murderers have been tracked down through their cousins' DNA being in these sorts of databases, but unless you got away with murder at some point and are living in hiding, your sister having taken a DNA test shouldn't fuck you over at all.

R306 I've had three or four people who were adopted reach out to me, but unfortunately their distance from me was fourth cousin or greater, which is really a large grouping of people at that distance - had they been third cousins or less or had either Ancestry or 23andMe been able to pinpoint a common ancestor I might have been able to help to see what relative of mine was their parent.

[quote][R306] I've had three or four people who were adopted reach out to me

Mmph... a lot of adulterous and fornicating fuckin' goin' on up in here!

♫♪♪ Jesus keep me near the cross... ♫♪♪

I had a few people from my mother dearest side reach out to me....Mother came from a long like of mentally ill people. Her mother and brother were schizophrenic and mother herself was a borderline narc.

I gleefully told them they too came from a long line of nuts...hey, why not. if I'm stuck with them as family, why should I be the online out in DNA land to know???

[quote]I imagine a lot of white people indeed get excited to find a bit of color in their DNA.

Usually when they find out it’s not “Native American” but “African” they get a bit more than excited….

It's an inexact science, but getting better. For instance it says I'm about 9% Finnish, though there are no such names in the family tree.

I'm guessing that since Finland used to be connected to NW Europe and the UK by land (the North Sea was created by melting glaciers) that they interbred. Or maybe the Vikings raped the English....

[quote] Don't do it. China is buying up all the data trying to compile a world dna database

[quote]And, to do what with it?

To replace you with a perfectly copied clone!

^^^ I’ll just die if I don’t get that recipe…

R318, Maybe your ancestors came from Doggerland.

[quote]Why do you want to know?

Why don't you want to know?

But, you may be a part of the many other groups that have that privilege/choice, to have that option, which is not a privilege/choice for many African-Americans. Too many African-Americans cannot trace their family's history no farther than 1870. Their history was purposely hidden and/or destroyed. Their will to want better, build generational wealth, education, and so many other factors were denied from them and/or beaten out of them to the point that there is basically just an empty shell that is left. And yet, there are those who wonder why the race has no gumption...

IMHO, one of the more positive things that is coming out of this DNA, genealogy research, etc, is the rush to correct that wrong. Many States are aggressively trying to document the true history of African-Americans in their State and make that information publicly available. African-Americans have taken a keen interest in wanting to learn about their families and history. They want to speak as proudly about their heritage as many of you have posted here.

I discovered that my sister is my daughter.

The vast majority of data they have is for people of British/Irish/Ancestry. How do I know that? Because you can trace me to small counties in England (backed up by my family’s previous genealogy work), but when it comes to other countries, they are far less certain and usually stick to the nation-level. So a bunch of white Americans probably dying to know how British their ancestry is because they feel empty perhaps?

R72 has reading comprehension problems, among other issues.

[quote]The vast majority of data they have is for people of British/Irish/Ancestry. How do I know that? Because you can trace me to small counties in England (backed up by my family’s previous genealogy work), but when it comes to other countries, they are far less certain and usually stick to the nation-level. So a bunch of white Americans probably dying to know how British their ancestry is because they feel empty perhaps?

That seems to be changing by leaps and bounds. It looks like more and more institutions are putting their data up online and for access. Another factor is that more people are joining these DNA companies and sharing their DNA and the family history that they know. Also, computers have made this work A LOT easier. I'm noticing that there are now software programs that are searching the internet to find any and all information on an individual, ex: John Doe 1789-1889.

BTW (for those of you who are interested) Ancestry is running a sale. $49/6 month package

R13 Hol up

One can receive SSDI for anxiety and depression? LOL everyone I have ever known would be on disability if that were the case

So, what I've learned is that some of you or your ancestors were all sleeping around and had illicit affairs.

R327 Disability benefits average $800 to $1,800 per month, putting a recipient under the poverty line, and by definition, a person on disability is not able to work to earn income. You've have to be exceptionally lazy to claim disability benefits if you are not lazy, and the poverty would certainly make lifr more difficult than working does. You can only get disability for depression or anxiety if you're truly disabled and therefore can't earn a living.

R329 Thank you for the information. I am unable to work as I am taking care of my elderly parents as well as battling depression and anxiety - diagnosed and being treated, but still debilitating. Along with a smattering of other chronic ailments and pain (hyper-mobility resulting in painful loose joints), even just trying to care for them is knocking me out.

At this point anything is better than nothing, and I do not want to take any of their money for my bills, obviously. This is not a lazy thing for me, it might just be a lifesaver. And I had absolutely no idea that I could even be eligible.

Thank you for the reply! Right now I am unable to work for a wage and I really hate not making my own money, so I applied today. No harm in trying.

PS i am married and my partner makes a good wage, but for a family of three we are still struggling without my financial contributions.

I discovered that my sister was my mother.

Ahem...

Is ancestry com a ripoff?

Ancestry has a consumer rating of 1.54 stars from 439 reviews indicating that most customers are generally dissatisfied with their purchases. Consumers complaining about Ancestry most frequently mention customer service, credit card and free trial problems. Ancestry ranks 26th among Genealogy sites.

Yes...

No...

If you do the Ancestry test, make sure you click on the option to not give them the right to distribute your genetic info.

I had a woman contact me 2 months later who turned out to be a surprise cousin. My 85 yo aunt had a baby out of wedlock a year before she was married and gave her up for adoption. The cousin really really really wants to meet her mother (of course), and my family have made it really really clear she absolutely cannot meet her. Big messy drama all around. (she could probably locate my aunt on her own, but the meeting would very likely be quite unpleasant.)

So yeah, watch out for unknown relatives that pop up.

Um, sorry, but she has a right to know who her mother is, and I'd want to meet her too. Not her fault the old girl was a slut with loose morals.

[quote]I had a woman contact me 2 months later who turned out to be a surprise cousin. My 85 yo aunt had a baby out of wedlock a year before she was married and gave her up for adoption. The cousin really really really wants to meet her mother (of course), and my family have made it really really clear she absolutely cannot meet her. Big messy drama all around. (she could probably locate my aunt on her own, but the meeting would very likely be quite unpleasant.)

And this is just something that I don't understand. I fully understand having a desire to know "who" you are, and where you have come from, but this wanting/need to build a relationship is something that I can't understand. This person (people) haven't been in your life for your entire life and now at 65 years of age you need to meet your 85 year old biologic mother just to say "Hi mom" ? Give me a break...

[quote]Um, sorry, but she has a right to know who her mother is, and I'd want to meet her too.

She knows who her mother is. She doesn't have a right to meet her.

r336 You're clearly not adopted

she doesn't have a right to meet her.

Where did i say she has a right to meet her? Your comprehension skills fail you.

This person (people) haven't been in your life for your entire life and now at 65 years of age you need to meet your 85 year old biologic mother just to say "Hi mom" ? Give me a break...

Um, she's probably felt her entire life that she needs to meet her biological mother, and that now she knows who she is, she wants to, Unless you're adopted you've no idea. Give ME a break.

Nope, R337 and from the few friends of mine I have who have been adopted they have no desire to find/know their biological parent(s).

[quote] and that now she knows who she is, she wants to

She KNOWS who she is! She is the woman who birthed her and who didn't want her. End of story.

r340 So because you know how a few adopted people feel, you think you can talk for all adopted people? You're a deadshit.

I've read those ancestry tests (especially the ones people do at home and mail in) are rife with inaccuracies and basically worthless.

I don’t think that I would want to meet the mother who abandoned me.

[quote][R340] So because you know how a few adopted people feel, you think you can talk for all adopted people? You're a deadshit.

"Momma, why? Why momma, why? How could you give away your own flesh and blood? Did you not love me?"

Ugh... These LifeTime stories...

People go through A LOT of shit! Not knowing who a biologi(cal)--thanks for the correction, btw... parent is, doesn't rank very high on the totem pole. YOU'RE HERE! YOU. ARE. HERE, DAMN IT! You got here someway and some how. Accept that for what it is and concentrate upon your own life.

R332 That appears to be for Ancestry's genealogy/family tree-oriented membership. I took the DNA test many years ago for $89 or something like that, and that is all I have ever paid. They continue to update DNA results based on refined data and you don't have to subscribe to anything and risk being overcharged. I'm not particularly interested in the family-tree aspect; however, both of my parents were and they were able to find a huge amount of information as well as connect with distant relatives through Ancestry. They were very satisfied with it.

I know someone who took 23andme and came up 28% Italian when no one in her family had any Italian genes at all and ancestors were from Turkey, Germany, and Portugal. It led to a lot of confusion. Suddenly, one day they changed the Italian results to middle eastern when her parents connected their dna results to her. She also did ancestry.com and got the same Italian result but it DIDN’T change when her parents linked theirs to hers.

Makes you wonder about the accuracy. As I mentioned before, the confidence intervals are WAY too generously set at 50% (in science, 90% confidence intervals are standard in most fields for data), so it’s very loosy-goosy. If I change the CIs to 90% on my 23andme, suddenly the ancestral information gets REALLY broad (ie is mostly “broadly Northern European” rather than identifying countries/regions in a country).

[quote]Makes you wonder about the accuracy.

I think it's accurate enough for the overwhelming population, R36. Why such a tenacity for pinpoint accuracy versus what many have been told by their own families which in many cases is incorrect a la Elizabeth Warren as an example/

It is extremely accurate in some respects for some ethnic groups and not very accurate for others, particularly when the groups are closely located geographically and the results are assigned names by national borders that don't really relate to genetics.

As I mentioned above, when I first took the Ancestry test many years ago, it said I was primarily Western European with some Irish and small amounts of Iberian. After more data were collected over several years and the geography was re-labeled, I became about 60% British and Northwestern European and 30 percent Irish with small amounts of Norwegian and Western European. Then Ancestry identified genetic communities and precisely identified the immigration routes of my ancestors to the US as well as County Mayo in Ireland, where our family left during the famine and where we still have family living today.

Now, Ancestry has me broken down as 38% England and NW Europe, 31% Connacht Irish, 18% Scotland, 9% Wales and 6% Sweden and Denmark.

So, the labels have changed over time but the overall geography is the same. The most likely explanation for Iberian being included the first time is that people on the west coast of Ireland share DNA with Spanish and Basque people because many integrated into western Ireland a long time ago. When the Iberian went away, the share of Irish went up by the same amount.

These tests look at your deep ancestry, not what has happened in the past 200 years. I have newly-discovered Scandinavian ancestors because they came to Britain (my mother's family's birthright for several centuries) in several waves in the past 1200 years.

Just a secret affair of my father’s and a half brother and a half sister, both of whom were put up for adoption and lived just down the street from each other, never knowing that they were siblings….

[quote]Myself, Frederick Douglass’ great great great great granddaughter, pictured with Maya, Harriet Tubman’s great great great great niece in 2018.

It is true, R327. But they have to be severe enough to cause marked or extreme limitations in functioning. despite medical treatment.

Actually, that is for children, R327. For adults the conditions have to be so severe they are unable to work. Typically, cases like this have psychiatric involvement, possibly inpatient hospitalizations for suicidal issues or other decompensation and a long history.

My test results revealed my real father is Gianni Agnelli.

[quote]My test results revealed my real father is Gianni Agnelli.

GO FOR THE MONEY!!!

He looks just like his daddy...

Are there other tests to do beside the Ancestry or 23andMe?

What other information would I find out if I did another company's test? Doesn't one of them go farther back?

I found out I'm a very distant cousin of Lady Diana Spenser. Who knew. I found out that I have cousins who are one hundred percent Asian. My mother always claimed she was part Asian. I have Baltic DNA. I have distant Jewish cousins. Eerily one had the same last name as my neighbors. I had cousins of all races all around the world. I have a second cousin who speaks Spanish living in Argentina. Honestly it was inspiring and well worth the money.

I did it through 23 and me and just don't ever consent to the prompts to find out if I have relatives. I did just a family tree on ancestry and have had 2 people reach out to me because they did DNA through ancestry which told them they were related to someone else on my tree and they were trying to track down parents. They also tried to get me to do DNA on ancestry ("hey, have you ever thought about getting DNA done on ancestry?") I am a little worried one of my relatives committed some crimes or something.

I posted this winter that my siblings and I discovered a half-brother we had no idea we had.

Our dad got his h.s. girlfriend pregnant when they had a fling at Christmas when he was a college, and she did not know if it was hers or her current boyfriend's, so she married the latter--fast--and he raised the child as his. Neither he nor my dad ever knew this child was my dad's, though the mom figured it out as the child grew up.

[quote]Neither he nor my dad ever knew this child was my dad's, though the mom figured it out as the child grew up.

Ugh! That unredeemable slut!

I’ve done Ancestry.com and 23&Me. Ancestry.com I did years ago, and they’ve subsequently refined my report many times as their sample database grew. It’s really quite close to what I expected with my known genealogy. For Christmas, 23&Me was running a sale, so I did their combo health and ancestry DNA test. It took freaking forever, but the results recently came in. They are radically different from the Ancestry.com results. Ancestry put my main heritage group at 56% while 23&Me says it’s 91% and misses several other groups. If I go off paper and not DNA, that main heritage group would be around 60%, so Ancestry is much closer. Honestly, if I had only done 23&Me by itself, I would think there was an affair somewhere in my family tree. Their health insights didn’t give me any new info, so I suppose no news is good news, but I’m not giving much credence to any of it due to the discrepancy between reports. Lesson of the story: fool me twice, shame on me,