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What Does AncestryDNA Do With My Data?

DNA tests are an increasingly popular way for people to learn virtually their genealogy and family history, and AncestryDNA is one of the most pop, with over fourteen million test kits sold since 2012. These Deoxyribonucleic acid tests are fun and informative, but have you ever idea most what companies like Ancestry do with your DNA?

AncestryDNA says that they keep your identity protected and shop your data in a secure location. They do accept steps to ensure that your information is safe, but there are risks to submitting your information to any company. Here's a wait at how these tests work and what happens to your data when you submit your Dna for a exam.

How Do You Take a Dna Test?

To collect your Dna, AncestryDNA sends customers a kit that includes a plastic tube. While taking care to follow whatever additional instructions provided, simply have a swab of your saliva, put information technology in a tube, mix information technology with a solution that stabilizes the Dna in your saliva and return information technology to AncestryDNA in the included prepaid envelope. In a few weeks, AncestryDNA emails you the results of your Deoxyribonucleic acid analysis.

How Dna Tests Work

So what happens to your Dna when y'all submit the examination? How do scientists decide your ethnicity from a sample that came from inside your oral fissure? AncestryDNA breaks downwards your Deoxyribonucleic acid sample into a 1000 of what they telephone call "windows." Each "window" looks at over 700,000 fragments of your DNA.

The scientists at AncestryDNA compare the code in your Dna "windows" to historical samples and public databases of Dna from different groups of people all effectually the earth. If your DNA matches certain fragments of Deoxyribonucleic acid that are known to exist unique to a given group of people, then some of your ancestors were probably members of that group. AncestryDNA is constantly refining its methodology, and then you may receive updates to your DNA information from fourth dimension to fourth dimension.

How Does Ancestry Protect Your Data?

AncestryDNA has a detailed statement of how it protects your privacy on its website, and information technology takes specific measures to protect the DNA samples that y'all and other customers submit. It stores your DNA information in a protected database with multiple layers of security, and your physical Deoxyribonucleic acid sample remains in a facility with limited access and 24-hour security. The laboratories that perform your DNA analysis do not accept your personal information when they test your DNA sample. AncestryDNA also does not comply with information requests from law enforcement unless forced to do then by a warrant or other valid legal process, and it advocates for customer privacy in the consequence that it is made to turn over whatsoever information to law enforcement.

Federal constabulary protects your Dna equally well if you live in the U.s.. The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Human action (GINA) statute makes it illegal for most employers or wellness insurance providers to acquire Dna data for the purposes of discrimination.

The Risks of Submitting Your Dna

While Ancestry DNA strives to go on your Dna and the data that information technology contains secure, at that place are risks that you take when you submit your DNA for assay. Like any company, Ancestry DNA could hypothetically have its data hacked and compromised. When signing up for AncestryDNA, you're also given the pick to anonymously share your DAN with various universities and companies for enquiry purposes. Most people tend to opt-in.

The police doesn't always protect your DNA. GINA excludes members of the military, federal employees, veterans and beneficiaries of the Indian Health Service, though internal policies for those organizations offer some protections. Federal authorities and other police enforcement agencies accept used Deoxyribonucleic acid from testing services in past investigations.

How Y'all Can Protect Your Data

It'south worth noting that if you use AncestryDNA or one of the other large Dna testing companies, your information has a much greater risk of remaining safe than if you lot use a smaller company. Regardless of which company yous choose, even so, in that location are still measures you lot tin accept to protect your data. The biggest primal to keeping your DNA data secure is reading the privacy policy thoroughly and merely agreeing to uses you approve of — and not signing up if that isn't possible. You lot tin also report a company to the Federal Trade Commission if they violate the terms of its privacy policy.

Don't forget that yous have the right to delete your data from Ancestry Deoxyribonucleic acid at whatever fourth dimension. While you will lose access to your data, no ane else will be able to meet it, either. Yous can also revoke access for companies and nonprofit organizations to use your DNA anonymously, although any companies that already accessed it volition all the same take that information. You can turn off the power for other people to run into if your DNA is close enough to theirs for you to be related.

Notwithstanding, if relatives share their DNA (on Ancestry.com or elsewhere) and their data somehow falls into the hands of law enforcement or some other organisation, they would hypothetically exist able to identify if you lot are a relative of that person if they also have a sample of your DNA. This is how the infamous Golden State Killer was caught, although GEDmatch, the specific company that provided the information, has stated that information technology volition no longer cooperate with constabulary enforcement without a warrant.