It told me I was .1% Chinese and .1% Native AMerican, how the hell can they detect that miniscule of a percentage?
The company that bought Gedmatch is dedicated to using DNA to help with missing persons and with law enforcement purposes.
It continues the Gedmatch practice of letting people chose whether their uploaded kits should be available for matching for law enforcement purposes, but unlike the previous hobbyist owners they have the resources to fight subpoenas demanding access directly to all the data.
Giving in to law enforcement demands that violated their promise to users was threatening to ruin Gedmatch’s credibility. Of course being sold to a company with an unknown track record and requiring all European kits to be re-authorized for sharing has led to a significant exodus, so who knows how well that whole ecosystem will be doing in the near future.
It’s not about wanting relatives to commit violent crimes unencumbered. It’s about worrying about slippery slopes. Personally for instance I had uploaded my data, and with their permission a few relatives data to the site, but I had only opened my personal data for law enforcement purposes.
Some users have uploaded dozens of kits for relatives, or even clients, and having to include “you must be okay with your data being used by law enforcement” in their requests for permission would be a problem. Sure, it’s only being used for violent crime today, but some people don’t want to open the door for other purposes, even if it’s a slim chance that the US will be the next nazi regime.
Other not-very-likely-in-my-opinion-but-the-less-I-have-to-defend-that-opinion-with-my-relatives-the-better developments are access by insurance companies, or other commercial use.
I didn’t like the sale of gedmatch myself, and chose to delete all my kits since it has served little use for me.
They test 800 000 base pair locations. .1% is a sequence of 800 such base pairs being a better match to their Chinese references than to any others.
That said, it is an estimate, and at 23andMe you can change the default confidence, which is just 50%, up to 95%, and in most cases the .1% Chinese will then disappear and your “50% English” (made up example) will dissappear into “broadly North West Europe”.
If I trusted law enforcement to limit themselves to just serial rapists and murderers or specific rapists and murderers, that might be more compelling. But I don’t. Over time, I expect them to try and use it for less and less serious crimes and to try to take advantage of access to the database. I do not trust law enforcement to not use the access or the results they get back prejudiciously or to not use them to harass people, especially marginalized communities - because that’s what happens when LE gets a new tool. I’m also somewhat unimpressed that this tech is being used for cold cases. The current stories that we’re hearing aren’t of LE trying to stop people who are actively going around raping and murdering, they’re uncovering people who committed crimes decades ago.
I had a .1 percent “broadly Chinese and Southeast Asian,” I think it was called, until one day last year they decided to change it to “unassigned.” When I was a child, my great-grandfather had told me his mother was part Native American from a northeastern tribe, so I wondered if that was what this mysterious .1 percent was.
Now, I have two half-Vietnamese kids. I’m 99.9 percent “European,” mostly northern European. One of my kids has dry earwax/no body odor, like his dad. So I had to have a recessive gene, and it might be because the .1 percent mystery me is of Asian/Native American ancestry.
I got an Ancestry kit for Christmas, which I haven’t sent in yet. I think it will be fun and interesting, along the lines of reading a horoscope. I don’t know a whole lot about my family, though I’m told we’re Scotch/Irish on one side, German on the other. So we’ll see. If there are any surprises, or any new relatives out there, I plan to keep my mouth shut about that.
Just in under the wire but this post wins for the most idiotic strawman of 2019. Do you seriously not see the civil rights issues with allowing law enforcement to have unfettered access to people’s private genetic data?
Back to the OP, I think it’s insanely reckless to submit your DNA to a database list that? A lot might happen over the next few decades and such a database could be dangerous in the wrong hands.
As for my own selfish reasons, I was a sperm donor in 1982. I was assured that my information would forever be held private. I don’t know if I have biokids out there and I would rather never find out. My sister and mom have submitted kits to either Ancestry or 23 and Me and I could be found that way. I would be horrified if that happened. My only comforting thought is that they are enough like me that they are equally adverse to a meeting.
The 0.1% is statistical noise. It doesn’t indicate anything. Another unintended consequence of these sites is that people’s family lore of Native American heritage is busted. In some cases they are all plain old white bread. In others it was actually African blood.
Ever since I had it done, I have had no less than 5 experiences where one of my cousins or parents’ cousins had an illegitimate child and I ended up being involved in the drama of people either trying to solve the mystery or hush it up. 10/10 do not recommend.
The nationality part wasn’t really that interesting, the medical part wasn’t really that interesting either.
I ended up tugging on the thread of deeper ancestry for a while, but what I basically found is every single one of my ancestral lines was cut by the US “great migration” to the west, around 1820.
Long story short… you’re probably not going to find a link to British royalty, you don’t have a Cherokee princess ancestor, and you probably don’t want to know what secrets your cousins are sitting on.
My dad did Ancestry and was happy with his results. I’ll be doing either Ancestry or 23 and Me when I feel like paying for them. Can’t wait!
I got my results today! I know you’ve all been waiting, so I won’t keep you in suspense any longer: I’m English/Scotch-Irish/Norwegian/Swedish! You’d think I’d be blonder.
I am surprised that there’s no German in there…I was always told that my father’s parents immigrated from Germany. No more lederhosen and Black Forest cake for me…
Giving up the lederhosen is quite OK. Giving up Black Forest cake is unacceptable.
@ Those concerned with privacy: Is it not possible to keep your identity unknown by using a throwaway e-mail account, and some sort of bundling service for snail-mail address and money transfers?
You mean English/Scottish-Irish…you’re not a drink 
I wouldn’t bother my arse doing one of these tests. I’m English, we’ve been invaded or settled so many times, we’re all mongrels.
I’ve been corrupted by these lowly Yanks! 
I had it done. It didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already expect based of a glance in the mirror. I’m not one to yearn to have some hidden exotic trait, so it didn’t disappoint me either.
It did confirm that whispers of Cherokee Indian blood from my Ozark relatives was total bullshit.
I guess if I could do it again, I would. There was no harm in it and it’s mildly entertaining.
I don’t know the answer to that, but as Ca3799 notes upthread, your privacy for some purposes has already been largely blown if any reasonably close relative has already contributed.
Your health insurance company, now that it can discriminate freely for preexisting conditions as well as genetic markers for the likelihood of payouts, thanks you.
Notwithstanding the remarkable Golden State Killer story, I find it hard to believe submitting our DNA to the cops is going to allow them to save all the little children suffering in silence. We had to pass a law in California to compel the police to test rape kits, for God’s sake, and they’re still working through the backlog.
It’s a tricky ethical situation too, as has been noted, because your DNA isn’t just yours. Some of my extended family members have been getting into this stuff recently, and I wish they wouldn’t because I don’t want my data out there. We did already find out one of my uncles isn’t my grandfather’s son, which was merely interesting to me but seems to be upsetting to him; he’s refusing to acknowledge it (saying the test didn’t work) and we’re just following his lead.
Someone gave me the test, and there is no need to provide an address. I registered with a throwaway email account and a pseudonym. Not kidding myself that anyone has real privacy anymore, of course.