Posted on 08/08/2020 4:16:13 AM PDT by gattaca
Genealogy websites have become increasingly popular in recent years. These platforms are able to scour the web in search of documents and archival data, which can help users build historically accurate family trees.
There’s also another side to genealogy websites that has attracted attention from privacy advocates: DNA testing. Websites like Ancestry.com can use DNA testing to find matches, but the fact that these platforms store this information on their end means that hackers could try and steal it. Tap or click here to see how Ancestry.com suffered a huge data breach.
Since genealogy websites collect so much data, their user database can be quite valuable in the corporate world. And that’s exactly what’s happening to Ancestry.com thanks to an acquisition by Blackstone — its new parent company. This means if you sent your DNA to Ancestry, Blackstone has it now. Here’s how you can remove it.
Blackstone buys out Ancestry.com According to new reports from Reuters, the multinational private equity firm Blackstone Group has purchased Ancestry.com for the staggering price of $4.7 billion. This acquisition includes all debt accumulated by Ancestry.com as well, which shows just how eager Blackstone is to add the company into its vast portfolio.
Now that Ancestry.com is under new management, you’re probably wondering what kind of company The Blackstone Group is? Well, for starters, Blackstone deals mostly with private equity, credit and hedge fund investments. Most of its properties are in the financial sector, which makes Ancestry.com a curious purchase altogether.
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Email address Enter your email address SIGN ME UP But if you read between the lines, you can see why the website is so valuable. Ancestry.com is the biggest provider of home DNA testing services, which users can apply towards finding genealogy data and personalized health information.
Ancestry.com boasts more than 3 million paying customers from around the world, and the DNA data it manages is highly valuable to anyone who would be interested in selling it to, say, pharmaceutical companies or medical data firms. It’s almost a no-brainer that a big hedge-fund company would want a slice of the pie.
Of course, if you submitted DNA information to Ancestry.com, this also means your data is at risk of being sold or traded. No, this isn’t illegal either. Once you give the information to Ancestry.com, it’s theirs to use. The terms and conditions more or less spell this out. Tap or click here to see a tool that can read the terms and conditions of websites for you.
I don’t want a hedge fund having access to my DNA. How can I remove the data? Thankfully, if you’re a member of Ancestry.com, you don’t have to settle with leaving your DNA data in Blackstone’s hands. The website gives you an option to expunge your DNA results through its settings menu, and all you’ll need to do it is your Ancestry.com username and password.
Follow these steps to remove your DNA data from Ancestry.com:
Tap or click here to visit Ancestry.com’s DNA settings page. Scroll to the bottom of the Settings page and tap Delete next to Delete DNA Test Results And Revoke Consent to Processing. You’ll be asked for your password next to confirm you want your information removed. Enter your password and tap Delete test results and Revoke Consent. Clicking this removes your results permanently from the website. Unfortunately, you’ll end up losing access to anything you might have learned from taking your test, so we’d recommend writing the information down or taking a screenshot or two before continuing.
Then again, it might not even be worth it to take these DNA tests or use genealogy websites going forward. As we’ve seen in the past, they contain a lot of personal data (that can be bought or sold by third parties) for very little in return. Tap or click here to see another scary ancestry website you should remove your data from.
All i know is i signed up for Ancestor.com about 10? years ago..and then i decided to drop them...or tried to.
It took like 5 years to get them from spamming me ...several times a week for years!
Walmart..Amtrak ...State Farm ...are almost as bad.
Well said.
My dad’s brother did the dna test,
.....( I never will)....
....no Native American connection
Dad constantly told me his grandmother was American Indian, from his mom’s mom.....she helped raise him......I’ve seen pictures......definitely I believe what dad said is true
His brother, however found no connection with the dna thing.....
And yes they had the same mom
We have Cherokee in our family, great, great grandmother for me. It didn’t show up. I wonder if you have to do a Native American DNA test for that.
The military has been including a packet containing large bloodstains in the member’s medical records to be used to identify any unidentified casualties. When the Veterans Administration requests service medical records to process disability claims, the packet with the bloodstains in it ends up with the VA. The military also takes finger prints which are also sent to the FBI. The Air Force also takes foot prints.
I’m immune to this problem. I know I’m hienz 57, the best seven dogs in town. I don’t need to pay someone to find that out.
Have you noticed on the beer summit guy’s genealogy TV show that a lot of white actors have their slave-owning history exposed?
You are 64, but couldn’t your data could be used against your progeny?
I have no illusions about privacy. I’m just against freely handing my info over to them - and paying to do it. Insurance companies are the next frontier of misuse of DNA. Law enforcement has already gone there. Sadly the law has not kept up with the technology. Willfully submitting a DNA sample to a private company that doesn’t have even HIPPA controls on the data, when their Ts&Cs allow them to do anything they want with it is a mistake.
Just because millions have done it doesn’t make it a wise thing to do...
Pretty much what I was thinking.
I’ve never believed that once you supposedly delete your data on any of these services that it’s actually gone.
Everyone who believes that Google truly deletes your data when you tell it to, raise your hand. And then slap yourself, because you’re an idiot.
My great great grandmother was 100% North Carolina Cherokee. My cousin for whom she was her great-grandmother had the DNA test and it said she had zero Cherokee blood. So that’s baloney.
The thing is, as I understand it, DNA is a great tool for connecting familial relationships. But as far as ethnic and racial ancestry it ain’t so hot. I hold up my example above as proof
That happened to me too. I found out that they have a database that matches your DNA to a geographical region. And they can only go by the DNA samples they have on file.
“More than 1,000 global regions make up the ethnicities displayed in our DNA test. As DNA science improves, the number of regions we test for (and the countries covered in each region) may change.
This article lists each region, but to see which areas of the globe are included in the regions, you’ll need to view the list from your DNA Story page (which will highlight an area of the map when you click a region). To see all the regions, click See other regions tested at the bottom of your ethnicity estimate and click on a region on the next page.”
https://support.ancestry.com/s/article/List-of-AncestryDNA-Regions
bump
“What’s the other ancestry database from which we should remove our data?”
If I clicked through correctly the other site is “Family Tree Now”
“Can’t anybody here play this game?”
Keep your hands off my chromosomes!
I used Ancestry.com and got in touch with my birth family on my mother’s side. It was also fun to find out my nationality, which, as an adopted child, I didn’t know.
I will investigate and consider removing my DNA.
“Here is a scary thought for you. Even if you do not join any social network site online, but your friends and family have, then you have a folder with your name on it somewhere”
In the late 90s I’d already been on the internet for years and I would search for my name and find past posts on newsboards.
My wife had put nothing on the internet, but when I searched for her I found her whole family tree. Apparently a cousin had put the family tree online, including her and me, her husband.
Needless to say, she was surprised.
Much of your logic is mine plus a few years. I’m 81 and heading rapidly into 82.
I and two cousins on my mother’s side (sons of her sister) had traced our maternal grandad’s side from Devon to descendents all over America going back several hundred years.
When my Dad died in 1976, his aunt, who basically raised him and a brother (who died in the Spanish Flu era from the flu), gave me a copy of her bible ancestor page with my dad’s ancestors going back to pre Declaration of Independence with some really fascinating history.
So between my maternal cousins and my Dad’s aunt I had some interesting ancestors to research. I took early retirement and full over a year I was a librarian at the local Mormon History center for about 2 years. (not a Mormon)
A niece did the Ancestry DNA thing and her mother, my sister paid for a free subscription and DNA testing to get me hooked again, on both sides of my family.
My immediate family told me to go ahead and to inform them of interesting stuff. They and my wife could care less than besides who their grandparents were.
Meanwhile, a retired doctor and friend had submitted his DNA and he found some very interesting ancestors. I asked him if he was concerned about his DNA data being misused.
He laughed and said that it was a safe bet that any of us who had medical blood tests in the last decade were in some DNA library to be used for a fee.
My wife and our adult off spring could care less, and they told me to get started. Our adult sons are cynics and also said that our DNA data was probably tagged and stored in a repository that anyone could tap for a fee.
3 years later, I am just under 30,000 documented relatives.
I will be sending my DNA to an outfit that does the deep DNA digging.
We apparently have African DNA. My sibling and I have adjoining tribal areas. Yet her daughter and grandkids have the same tribal DNA that I have.
Our great DNA mystery is the lack of American Indian DNA on both sides of my family and yet over 100 documented Cherokees on my mother’s side (documented with birth records, marriages, deaths and other historical genealogy records). That was a big surprise and no one ever commented about Cherokee/Indian ancestors on my mother’s side.
Supposedly, the Cherokee blood came from my father’s side. Yet nothing DNA wise. Photos of his family from the civil war to about 1900 had some very dark haired and tanned skin ancestors.
I just posted the title of Kim’s article. I’m sure many people won’t see a problem with the data.
I like Kim Komando, having followed her since the 90s or early 2000s. But her articles tend to have clickbait type titles.
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