Yes, but also no.

Promethease pegged my general blood group as "probably" group A, but there wasn't enough info in my 23andme raw data for them to tell definitively.

My blood is actually A+, which I know because it was tested while I was pregnant.

It's a pretty simple test, easy to do yourself.

https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Type-Eldoncard-Typing-Test/dp/B00O2SRL12

Because French and German genes are so similar they can't reliably tell them apart. Even at that, they mislabel 81% of French & German in their own testing. Scroll to Testing & Validation to see all the error margins by ethnicity. French & German has the lowest precision and recall rates overall.

I'm sorry for your loss.

23andme has a known issue with people of mixed Middle Eastern/Northern European descent where they mislabel them with large amounts of Italian. It has something to do with the recent mixing looking very much like the ancient mixing that makes up the Italian gene pool. Examples like, someone with a French mom and Lebanese dad comes out 75% Italian and posts here very upset, trying to figure out what's going on. It's a frequent issue, you can search this sub and see. All of the 23andme ethnicities have various error margins in their own internal testing (see Testing & Validation) and cases like that fall into them.

What I'm getting at is that it wouldn't surprise me if they have a similar though less intense problem with Eastern European/Middle Eastern mixed people and are mislabeling some of your genes as Balkan. If you are really interested, it's possible that testing your father and phasing your accounts together would redistribute the Balkan.

Exactly.
Besides doing that, you can also look at the ancestry composition guide and check the precision and recall rates for each ancestry category. Native American DNA has a both a super high precision rate (meaning it won't be confused with another ancestry) and recall rate (meaning if it's in your DNA, the program will identify it). All of this means that if 23andMe says you have a trace of Native American DNA, it's legit.
Some ancestries have a much lower recall or precision rate, and trace percentages of those have a higher likelihood of being noise, especially if they disappear from one update to the next.
https://www.23andme.com/ancestry-composition-guide/

Siberian category based only on Yakut samples. 23andme doesn't have Chukchi or Koryak (or any other "paleosiberian") samples, who are probably Alaskans close to.

And Manchu-Mongolian category even in their official guide has extremely low precision and recall percents, so i think this category often works as a proxy for "uncategorized" east eurasian genes.

https://www.23andme.com/en-int/ancestry-composition-guide/

Oceanian, Melanesian and Southeast Asian maybe. It’s very worth it for her to get tested in my opinion. They might give you a free kit if they happen to be researching your country.

https://www.23andme.com/global-genetics/ It doesn’t show your exact country but they’re researching neighbour Oceanian countries like Samoa, Fiji and Papau New Guinea so if you contact them about their research and explain your grandma’s background they might give a free kit.

The Irish weren't always considered white. I haven't read the whole thing, but this book, How the Irish Became White, is pretty interesting.

1/16th averages about 6.25% and most people will show some amount around that. It would quite rare to not show anything.

In terms of percentages, here's a helpful chart of averages by generation: https://dna-explained.com/2017/04/21/concepts-percentage-of-ancestors-dna/

But what is going on with that South Asian? Do you have another explanation for it?

I see a couple of explanations here (you've probably thought of them too): 1.) your Maori ancestor was not fully Maori, hence the amount you would expect to get is much lower/did not come down to you; 2.) Your "Maori" ancestor was actually of South Asian extraction; 3.) 23andme is assigning your Maori ancestry to South Asian (doesn't seem likely, since their recall rate for Oceanians is--they claim--96%). https://www.23andme.com/ancestry-composition-guide/

When you look on your chromosome portrait (all the lines), is the "unassigned" bit sandwiched around or near any of the "South Asian"? That could be another clue they aren't really sure what it is. Also, see if the "South Asian" disappears at a lower confidence level.

If 23andMe doesn't have enough data to accurately determine Indian ancestry, then that would mean they are more likely to pinpoint your African ancestry, not less likely, right?

See this explanation from the company at how reliable their testing methods are for every sub-population (scroll to the list below "Testing & Validation"):

https://www.23andme.com/ancestry-composition-guide-pre-v5/

You can see that for Northern Indian, they have relatively lower precision and recall (this section explains those two concepts) than they do for virtually all African populations. However, their accuracy for other Indian populations is apparently much higher and fairly close to that of most African groups.

The bottom of the page says this was updated December of last year and I don't think there have been any significant updates to their testing since then. So those rough levels of accuracy are probably what you're getting. Take that for whatever it's worth.

They do sometimes have sales around the holidays (i.e. Christmas), so if you're feeling cautious, you might be able to save a bit if you wait to buy then.

That isn't what this study is aiming for, though. https://www.23andme.com/depression-bipolar/ >However, current treatment options do not always work for people living with these conditions. To develop more targeted treatments, scientists need to better understand the genetics of depression and bipolar.

That is where you can help: each person with depression and bipolar has unique genetic information and is shaped by their own unique experiences. Our study on these conditions is the first to combine data from genetics, cognitive tests and online surveys. This data will be analyzed to look for clues as to how genetics and environmental factors combine to impact brain function.

>This is a research study focused on better understanding the underlying genetic and environmental factors that contribute to depression and bipolar. The ultimate goal of this research is to improve the lives of people living with these conditions through better treatment options.

Like I said, they may be able to identify increased risk for bipolar disorder by in vitro testing for genetic components, but ultimately not everyone with a risk factor will have the disorder at some point in their life and not everyone with the disorder will have it. The point is to help making diagnosis easier and find better treatments, for example tailored to your genetics, for affected people, because there is a lot to learn. Same with MDD or anxiety disorders, there are a lot of treatments, but not all of them work for everyone - and for some, none work. That's a great thing to work on!

This is all you need to know to understand the accuracy and precision of your results: https://www.23andme.com/ancestry-composition-guide/

In other words, 23andme is almost always more accurate than Ancestry. For instance, Ancestry has you listed at 33%, however, 23andme has you listed at 6.6%. The recall rate for Scandinavian ancestry on 23andme is around 44%, so therefore it is understandable if you'd be missing around another 6-8%, however, 25%? Not so likely. Yes the seeming difference is adding northwestern to your 23andme Scandinavian, but that is not what "Broadly Northwestern European" DNA is. Broadly northwestern literally as says includes every country that is broadly north in Europe; Germany, Denmark, England, Ireland, Wales, Lichtenstein, etc. Therefore, Ancestry just saying hey this is all Scandinavian is entirely inaccurate. Furthermore, for most ancestrys that 23andme lists they have a precision of 90% +, meaning that they are saying that they are over 90% certain that this is truly "_____" (insert whatever nationality).

Ancestry, in my opinion, is really only good for the actual pedigree and ancestral tree tracking functions.

The dots are based on self-reporting by 23andme customers of their grandparents' birth locations. Considering how massive population transfers were throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia during the Soviet Union, it is not at all surprising that someone of Russian/Uzbek descent ended up matching with self-reported customers from Belarus. Take it with a grain of salt! It certainly doesn't mean she's ethnically 19% Belarussian.

Your largest ancestry category is Ashkenazi, which is distinctive and almost invariably accurate in 23andme's system. (Eastern Europe has a larger error margin-- you can look at the various error margins here under Testing & Validation: https://www.23andme.com/ancestry-composition-guide/) It looks like one of your grandparents was full Ashkenazi.

23andme is actually really unreliable at labeling French & German ancestry (it's lumped into one in the system). Here is their chart of precision/recall percentages-- scroll down to Testing & Validation: https://www.23andme.com/ancestry-composition-guide/

Most other populations are in the 90 range, but French and German has only an 80% precision rate (meaning, in testing where they already know what the answer should be, 80% of the genes labeled F&G actually are; 20% are labeled as such but incorrectly) and a breathtakingly bad 19% recall rate. The recall rate covers how well their system recognizes genes for what they should be in testing where they already know the answer. A 19% recall rate means that 81% of the time French & German genes are labeled as something else (usually "Broadly" categories).

Your British & Irish rate is a little high but not unheard of for a French person (some people from Southeast England get 40% French & German). Are you Breton at all?

If you got one of your parents to test and linked your accounts, there's a strong possibility they would recategorize a lot of the Broadly categories and even some of the British/Irish.

Tldr; 23andme buries the fact that they still aren't very good at deciphering closely related European populations from each other, and French, German, and British are all very close. They should really make this more transparent. Most of your French genes are pretty clearly in the 81% they fail to label correctly.

23andme is generally considered the more accurate of the two, but in this case you have a pretty simple explanation: Ancestry's England and NW Euro category includes some French and German results.

But to sort-of answer your question, it's definitely against their Terms of Service: https://www.23andme.com/about/tos/

>You are guaranteeing that any sample you provide is your saliva; if you are agreeing to these TOS on behalf of a person for whom you have legal authorization, you are confirming that the sample provided will be the sample of that person.

I assume the actual legality depends on jurisdiction, although I'm guessing that it's generally probably illegal.

If you search this sub for DNA Land/DNALand you will find some posts from people with confusing results...I think they are still figuring things out over there. 23andme has a 97% recall rate on Ashkenazi ancestry and a 99% precision rate. Scroll to Testing & Validation here to see. It's highly unlikely DNA Land is accurate on this one.

It depends on what kind of European. A 100% Finnish person is highly unlike to see that. A 100% Italian or French/German person can totally have 50% Unassigned at 90%

https://www.23andme.com/ancestry-composition-guide/

Scroll down to Testing and Validation.

23andme is not very good at identifying French genes. French & German is the least reliable category in their whole system. The precision recall rate for it is only 80%/19%, meaning in blind testing their system only labeled French & German correctly 19% of the time. Scroll down to the chart on here, under Testing & Validation: https://www.23andme.com/ancestry-composition-guide/

'This test looks at two classic measures of model performance, precision and recall. These are the standard measurements that researchers use to test how well a prediction system works. Precision answers the question "When the system predicts that a piece of DNA comes from population A, how often is the DNA actually from population A?" Recall answers the question "Of the pieces of DNA that actually are from population A, how often does the system correctly predict that they are from population A?"' (from the link)

80/19 for French & German...that's hardly reliable.

Here’s my results as an example of Mexican results. My mother and father were both born in Jalisco, Mexico. https://www.23andme.com/published-report/4d7a1aa335494f0e89f9f45e6efd6b3d/?share_id=87bcd52a527e403c

People use the word "noise" incorrectly, but what they're trying to say is that there are a number of estimations that are used while analyzing dna raw data, and each one of these can introduce errors that taken together can mean the source of dna is misinterpreted.

If you have 50% of your dna saying German, or whatever, you can be safe in assuming that even with all those little errors, chances are you have a large part of dna that matches reference samples for German. But if you have only 0.2% of your DNA saying Chinese, or whatever, in that small part of your dna it's possible that those estimations and errors have produced a rogue result that matches Chinese populations by chance.

23andMe has done a reasonable job in describing the various stages they use to get from your raw data to an ethnicity estimate, and might help you understand what people are trying to express.
https://www.23andme.com/ancestry-composition-guide/

You can see how complicated it is, how much extrapolation is used etc., and draw your own conclusions. It also should help you interpret your own Chromosome Painting, which can help with looking at the "noise."

Have a look at 23andMe's precision and recall rates. It also has to do with the fact that there are rarely any "pure" reference samples, since there's always a degree of population mixing across both national and geographic borders. You can see some of the data for how their various European labels transcend borders at EUpedia.

Have you read 23andme's Ancestry Composition Guide? You'll have a much better sense of what your results mean from reading it. If you do nothing else, scroll to the Testing & Validation section and look at the error margins for French & German. They are HIGH. The precision rate is 80%, meaning 20% of the time genes are labelled French & German in error.

In general 23andme has a really hard time parsing the various Northwestern European subgoups. Their British & Irish reference population seems to skew heavily Irish/Scottish, because southern English people routinely get 20% French & German.

Also Ancestry has a known issue of mislabelling British/Irish/Scottish ancestry as Scandinavian.

None of these companies make claims for 100% accuracy. They can all parse DNA at the continental level with close to 100% accuracy, but when it comes to breaking down European subgroups, it quickly gets into error-prone territory.

23andme has an enormous error margin for French & German ethnicity. Scroll down to Testing & Validation. The recall rate for F & G is only 19%, meaning 81% of French & German ancestry is labeled incorrectly when they test for it. Usually it seems to end up in "Broadly" but there are plenty of examples of errors like you're seeing floating around this sub.

Likely if you got your French parent to test, and phased your results, you'd see a drastic change.

At the end of the day the differences in genes among British, French, German, Dutch, etc. people are so small, 23andme really struggles to accurately pinpoint it.

Update my own post:

An email from their care team.

Thank you for contacting 23andMe regarding our research efforts in Canada. We are sorry if this email caused confusion. This pause in our research efforts will not impact the results we deliver to you or cause a delay in the processing of your sample. You will receive the service you purchased. This simply means that even if you consented to participate in Research, we will not be including your genetic data in any of our research projects at this time.

We will continue to monitor the status of your sample at the lab and will let you know as soon as there is an update on the progress of your sample.

Our research arm, 23andMe Research, gives customers the opportunity to leverage their data by contributing it to studies of genetics. As a customer, you can answer online survey questions, which researchers can link to your genetic data to study topics from ancestry to traits to disease. Your contribution helps drive scientific discoveries.

You can learn more about what it means to participate in Research here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VZlbsXr6HE For more on 23andMe Research, please visit our website: https://www.23andme.com/research/

We do plan to allow our Canadian customers to contribute their data to our research projects in the future. We will let you know when this happens.

You must be very new at this. We're more than familiar with this study. It's quite insightful, but you're interpreting it wrong.

For one, the test results above don't include Ireland on a whole, only Northern Ireland.

Also, The part you're focusing on is what Ancestry labels genetic communities. Those genetic communities are from pairings that happened due to recent regionalization.

https://www.ancestry.com/cs/dna-help/communities/whitepaper

The whitepaper will explain it further if you need more information. The article you linked clearly emphasizes that on an autosomal level, there is barely a distinction that modern tests can pick up accurately.

Ancestry has remarkable breakdown for this stuff. The only problem is the second someone goes beyond a certain degree of separation (usually the second grandparents) the genetic pairing test becomes incredibly unreliable.

Correct:

>Our Genetic Health Risk report focuses on only three out of the more than 1,000 risk variants that are among the most studied and best understood. These three variants are most common in people of Ashkenazi Jewish descent and are much less common in people of other ethnicities.

How common among Ashkenazi Jews?

>About 1 in 40 people of Ashkenazi descent has one of the three variants included in our report ... Whereas 1 in 400 in the general population has a BRCA variant

source: https://www.23andme.com/brca/

cool results.

​

do you know anyone in the united states who is somali who would be willing to do the free 23andme?

https://www.23andme.com/global-genetics/

This is a terrible idea. Getting someone DNA tested without their consent is a gross violation of privacy and quite possibly illegal, depending on where you live. At the very least it's a huge violation of 23andme's terms of service.

EDIT: 23andMe’s terms of service require that “You are guaranteeing that any sample you provide is your saliva; if you are agreeing to these TOS on behalf of a person for whom you have legal authorization, you are confirming that the sample provided will be the sample of that person.”

https://www.23andme.com/about/tos/

Section 6.d "User Representations"

There isn't a test that will tell you what tribe you're from. At this point, you've better following the paper trail. I have no idea about Mexican genealogy, but there are resources. FamilySearch has some good free resources and their blog offers a quick intro on where to start.

If they say Scandinavian they are 94% sure. They detect it at 49% accuracy. For French & German the precision is 81% and the recall is 20%. Both can definitely go into Broadly Northwestern European as well, precision 96%, recall 89%.

https://www.23andme.com/ancestry-composition-guide/

by the way in case any one here knows any Africans in the U.S. who aren't Nigerian, please bring this to their attention and inform them that there is no detriment in helping with this. https://www.23andme.com/global-genetics/ Not only Africans but also southeast Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Middle Eastern and central Asians.

The majority of British & Irish people show Scandinavian results on 23andme in the 0.5-2% range. They also show French & German even higher than that. 23andme's reference pops seem to skew to Ireland and Scotland, because it only seems to be people from Ireland & Scotland who score above 90% on British & Irish. Some people from southeastern England regularly show 10% or more French & German. It's really hard to tell all these related European populations apart. Look at the charts here in Testing & Validation. The precision & recall rates for B & I and F & G and Scandinavian are all pretty lousy. Big error margins.

Wow, yes, you likely had 1 fully Ashkenazi Great-Grandparent on your mother's side. (Or, potentially 2 half-Ashkenazi Great-Great Grandparents.) The reason the Ashkenazi stays and the British decreases as you increase confidence levels reflects the fact that Ashkenazi genes in general are easier to pinpoint. If you look at the Testing & Validation section of 23andme's Ancestry Composition guide, there's a chart of various precision and recall rates/error margins for various ethnicities. Ashkenazi has a 99% Precision rate and a 97% Recall rate, so it's hardly ever wrong and they hardly ever miss it. But the figures for British & Irish are 90% and 47%. That 47% recall rate is why your British genes turn into various Broadly and Unassigned categories at the higher confidence levels, and it's the usual thing that happens. I personally go from 51% British & Irish down to 7% when I increase the confidence levels. But 51% is accurate and reflects my real ancestry. (Actually, it's still low-- on paper I'm more like 3/4 British and Irish.)

Separately, what are your haplogroups? There are some distinctly Ashkenazi MTDNA groups which might be able to tell you if your Ashkenazi great-grandparent was likely directly maternal (your mother's mother's mother).

2% Scandinavian is in line with what most people with your percentage of British & Irish would get. Most British/Irish people get a small amount of Scandinavian, and most Scandinavians get a small amount of B & I, because of the intense gene mixing over many centuries. It usually reflects general ancestry, not a specific recent ancestor. The West African, though, is solid/not noise. If you go to the Testing & Validation section here: https://www.23andme.com/ancestry-composition-guide/ you can see 23andme's breakdown of the reliability of the various ethnic categories they test/sort. West African is accurate 98/97% of the time in their testing, but Scandinavian only 94/46%. (If you read that section in the link, it explains what the two percentages mean.)

"French and German" is famously the least precise classification 23andme offers. Customers from those two countries almost never score as more than 50% F+G, even if they have a thousand year old Parisian pedigree.

At the 23andMe forum there is a now defunct post on French genetics where you can look at typical results:

https://www.23andme.com/you/community/thread/31371/

The average Frenchman only scores as about 25% French and German. People from Normandy and Brittany will sometimes have extremely high British and Irish scores.

It said 4-6 weeks when I registered my kit and when it was received by the lab. Then 6-8 weeks when analysis started.

Progress seems to be halted as far as we can tell on the SEPTEMBER 2015 WAITING thread.

https://www.23andme.com/you/community/thread/39789/#most_recent

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.familysearch.mobile

This app is free and has benefited me almost more then my paid sub to ancestry.

You have to do the work, but you can upload also to gedmatch.com and my heritage and expand results with your raw DNA.

I have been doing some research for a couple years now on and off, so you can DM me with questions.

Notice that it says “British & Irish”. A lot of colonial Americans are typically a mix of German and English (especially in the Mid-Atlantic states like Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania, as well as the Midwest), but may culturally identify as German if they have a German surname. This is the case for my dad’s side of the family.

Also, 23andme is not perfect. They have an article about their precision-recall rate. If you scroll down, you will see that the recall rate for the French & German population is 28%, which means that true French and German DNA is identified that way only 28% of the time. The precision rate for British & Irish is 90%, so 10% of the time non-British/Irish DNA will be identified that way. So it’s quite likely you’re more German than the test is showing you.

Keep in mind that northwest European DNA is pretty similar due to migration patterns; the Anglo-Saxons migrated from Germany to Britain so there’s obviously a shared genetic component there. You can’t take your results literally. If you have actual Irish ancestry, you should find Irish matches on either 23andme or another website.

Good luck!

What Should I Do If I Sent My DNA Sample To The Lab Before Registering?

Your sample will not be processed until registration is completed. When your unregistered sample is received at the lab, an email titled "Action Required" will be sent to the email address provided when the order was placed. This email will contain your sample's barcode (see example below), which you can use to register online.

​

Got this info from the site.

French & German has the lowest recall rate (20%). As others have said there's likely more in your "Broadly Northwestern European".

https://www.23andme.com/ancestry-composition-guide/

That's because 23andme has very low confidence in its own ability to correctly recall (identify) German genes. If you scroll to Testing & Validation here you can see their own table of precision/recall rates for all the categories. French & German is the absolute lowest. The precision rate is 80%, meaning that 20% of the time genes labeled French & German are actually something else. The recall rate is 19%, meaning 81% of the time their system misses correctly tagging French & German and marks them something else (usually broadly). Because of this overall level of inaccuracy with the category, at lower confidence levels nearly all French & German vanishes for everyone and turns into "Broadly".

GEDMatch is mostly for fun and look at your ancestry from another angle, like your relationship to ancient population samples or to specifically sampled populations in Europe. Not for definitive results. 23andme's recall rate for SSA is 98%; if you had any, there is a 98% chance they would have identified it. 23andme also has a 99% Precision rate for Ashkenazi, so you're as Ashkenazi as they say you are.

Jtest's own creator has disowned it. If you google elsewhere, people report it routinely underestimates Ashkenazi for people who are significantly Ashkenazi. GEDMatch has removed inaccurate calculators in the past and should probably remove this one too.

By the way, your imgur link is broken.

23andme sucks for people from South Asia. A really topknotch competitor from India or elsewhere in South Asia needs to get in the game ASAP, or I'm afraid 23andme will just continue to be lazy about getting more detail to reports for people from there. TBH I don't get it--there are more than 1 billion Indians, Pakistanis, and Bangladeshis, including many middle class with science backgrounds and disposable incomes. Also a growing population in the US. Why aren't they tapping into this market?

But anyway. Unfortunately DNA Land is really unreliable too. Finnish DNA is incredibly easy to precisely identify, and one of 23andme's strong points. You can see in Testing & Validation here that is you really had Finnish genes, the chances are 96% they'd identify them. On top of that, the general "Europe" category accuracy is 99% (meaning, before breaking down into subgroups--that's when it gets lousy). So if you had European ancestry, 23andme would have found it. DNA Land has a lot of fine tuning to do.

Have you tried GedMatch? Some of their calculators are better than others, but there's a lot more to play with than at DNA Land, plus they have a much better reputation.

23andme doesn't have a perfect set of reference populations for every area and they have error margins for every ethnicity and region. The fact you have 1.3% unassigned is a tip-off they are struggling to place you, but that's about 23andme and its limits, not you. It's unsurprising that they are struggling, because Nepal is a diverse and multiethnic country, and it is at the fringe of what their South Asian category covers. The reference populations for SA are probably heavily weighted towards India.

Don't take this composition as something with godly accuracy.

You should read through their Ancestry Composition Guide.

You should also search Google and this sub for more example screen shots from Nepalis.

It's known for overestimating some ancestries, like Scandinavian. There are lots of past posts about it on here, like this one: https://www.reddit.com/r/23andme/comments/87xov0/23andme_and_ancestrydna_results_wildly_wildly/?st=jhwmvit3&sh=785a862d. I can't find anything by Ancestry that lists their testing & validation outcomes, but here are 23andme's: https://www.23andme.com/ancestry-composition-guide/ Scroll down to the chart under Testing & Validation. The error margins for some ethnicities are fine, others are dismal.

29% would typically imply one of your four grandparents. Take the Japanese identification with a grain of salt. Korean and Japanese genetics are not as clearly distinct as might be expected, as Japanese are descended from a combination of Jomon (aboriginal natives of the Japanese islands, possibly related to modern-day Ainu) and Yayoi (settlers that came from the Korean peninsula circa 300 BC). Before you jump to conclusions about Korean comfort women (though it's a possibility that should be considered), I'd confer with others who have similar testing results, by posting on the 23andme forums or the FamilyTreeDNA groups for your haplotypes.

How do the results shift when you change the dropdown menu at the top from Speculative to Standard or Conservative? What is your maternal haplotype? If you're male, what is your paternal haplotype?

edit: See these 23andme forum posts here and here.

I am CC for rs28934899, as are the other five profiles that I manage.

That is the normal variant, you are fine OP. Phenylketonuria is the type of disease where at the stage of life where you are DNA testing yourself, you would already know if you had it. Phenylalanine is in many consumer products.

This is from ~~a small mistake someone made in editing~~ the orientation, something that is ambiguous in certain situations because of current testing procedure.

Basically, in SNPs where the alleles are either (G/C) or (A/T), they can be mistaken for one another depending on which strand was tested.

See this page for more information.

~~You should send an email to ~~

edit: OP, just to be sure, check your 23andme page for the result.

If that says CC, you are all good.

edit2: The creator of Promethease & SNPedia, /υ/cariaso, gave a more accurate reason.

MyHeritage's results are considered unreliable at this stage. They don't publish methodology or details of the genetic panels they use so no-one has any idea how to evaluate their quality/reliability.

(In comparison Ancestry have published this whitepaper explaining their methodology in detail https://www.ancestry.com/dna/resource/whitePaper/AncestryDNA-Ethnicity-White-Paper.pdf)

It varies. The Anglo-Saxons didn't always wipe out the Britons they conquered, so a lot of assimilation took place. Arguably Welsh people from isolated areas like Snowdonia might be more 'pure' Briton, but in most places around the world there are very few people who are 'pure'.

I guess to answer your question the Welsh are the most ethnically homogenous, but most Welsh people will likely have English overlap from having a border with England.

My mother's family, both her parents are from South Wales, specifically Rhondda and Carmarthenshire. Every one of them has Saxon and/or Danish results also.

Have a look at this site:

https://www.ancestry.com/corporate/international/press-releases/DNA-of-the-nation-revealedand-were-not-as-British-as-we-think

And that's how AncestryDNA interpret DNA profile wrt the British Isles. This is blog entry from their head scientist explaining this because it was so controversial: https://www.ancestry.com/corporate/blog/why-your-latest-results-could-include-more-scotland-in-your-ethnicity-estimates

I'm Black American with 22-23% British Isles admixture(22% according to AncestryDNA and 22.7% according 23andme) so I wanted to understand all of this myself.

https://www.23andme.com/about/privacy/

They are very clear about how they would use your data for research. But you have to consent first.

Personally, and as a scientist myself I would rather they use away. There’s still a ton to learn about genetic diseases, and these new dna databases can help.

Siberian? Never saw one. Manchurian and Mongolian - yes. If you scroll down this page you can see that Manchu-Mongolian category has terrible precision and recall percents.

https://www.23andme.com/en-int/ancestry-composition-guide/

To be sure, 23andMe's reference panel has been updated since 2018 and they do better at detecting many Asian populations than they do some European ones (French/German, for example, has an extremely low recall rate.) Without knowing your family history, it's not quite possible to say that your results were inaccurate in any way.

https://www.23andme.com/ancestry-composition-guide/

Scroll down to where it says Testing and Validation. 23andMe has a hard time with Italian as it has one of the worst Percesion and Recall rates of any group.

23andme's Italian reference population is defined as "Italian, northern Italian, Tuscan". Those are their exact words 🤷‍♂️ That's a really poor way to explain it. The reference populations are all by definition 100% of whatever group they're in.

Can you prove that using actual records? If not then you're out of luck

However if you can then you night still be out of luck as European groups are well-represented so they are probably not gonna need your help

https://www.23andme.com/global-genetics/

Prussian heritage tends to get much higher Eastern European percentage compared to German than expected. This is due to the fact that they’re much more likely to be mixed with the Slavic people groups in what is now Poland, Czechia and the Baltics, and other surrounding states, and became “germanized” in language and culture, rather than DNA in the last few centuries. Also, their descendants probably make up some of the modern Eastern European reference populations and modern DNA of these countries.

Also French & German, as a 23andMe category, has very poor recall and precision, as identified by 23andMe here: https://www.23andme.com/ancestry-composition-guide/

Haha. Yeah, my French/German jumped from 7.8% to 17.1%. But that was what it should be. I'm pleased because French/German has some of the worst precision and recall rates in all of 23andMe's testing. It's just really tough to identify but apparently, they're getting much better at it.

The amount of confidence 23andme has in its abilities to correctly assign the individual groupings affects the likelihood of someone showing up as 99% or 100% of a single ethnicity. If you look at the Testing & Validation, you can see the various error margins. Ashkenazi has a 99% precision rate and 97% recall rate, so they rarely mis-assign any bits or default to broader categories for it. So, there are more people who show up as 99% Ashkenazi than, say, British & Irish or Iberian.

West African, South Asian, Finnish, and some others are also notably high in their accuracy.

At the other end, it would be really unusual for someone to score 100% French & German because the precision and recall rates for it are just abysmal. Take a look—19% recall, so they label 81% of French/German something else (usually "Broadly"). If someone came back 99% French & German (never seen it so far), I'd assume they were actually in the reference pool for it or closely related to one or more people in whatever studies/reference pools 23andme is using for that category.

French & German virtually always drops to next to nothing and changes to "Broadly Northwestern European" or "Broadly European" when the confidence level hits 90%, because it has really low precision and recall rates as a category in their testing. Scroll to Testing & Validation here for the stats. French & German only has a 19% recall rate, so at 90% confidence it mostly defaults back to Broadly categories.

Where's Poptech when he's needed?

There's a user on here called Poptech who can explain better about those sub categories. They don't equal the percentages above them and they are based on self-reporting by people who have signed up for 23andme. There's no quality control, it's really just group sourcing without checks, based on where people say their grandparents were born and whether you match with them in your DNA Relatives.

I recommend reading through 23andme's own Ancestry Composition guide: https://www.23andme.com/ancestry-composition-guide/

Also, I wonder a lot about the categories for Southeast Asia, because lots of people of Chinese descent pop up on here confused because they get those sub category matches for Vietnam, Malaysia, and so on. I wonder if people of who are of primarily ethnic Chinese descent in those places are marking them by 23andme's system, thereby making it seem like you have Vietnamese or Filipino ethnicity--but really you are matching to overseas ethnic Chinese who settled there. Southeast Asian ancestry shows up commonly in people of Southern Chinese descent, just like nearly all British people show some Scandinavian and French & German in 23andme. It's because of historic gene and shifting borders.

One way to narrow things down is to go into DNA Relatives and thoroughly look through your matches. Are you matching to people who are of fully Vietnamese or Filipino ethnicity? Or are virtually all of your matches Chinese? The matches can also tell you some things about where your ancestors likely lived and migrated to. Good luck!!

There's an explanation for this buried in 23andme's guide to the ancestry composition. Scroll down to the Testing & Validation section and check out the tables of error margins for various ethnicities. They have a very hard time with French & German accuracy. The recall rate in testing where 23andme knows the answer already is only 19% for French & German, meaning that 81% of the time French and German genes are assigned to something that is not French & German. Usually that means lots of "Broadly" but in your case it looks like they went with British & Irish. It's not unusual--search this subreddit and you will find quite a few head scratchers from French, German, and British people (because people from Southern England also run into this in the opposite direction, getting assigned lots of French & German). British & Irish's Precision rate is 90%, meaning that 90% of the time when they label something B & I it actually is that, but I think you're falling into that 10% that is incorrect.

At the end of the end, European populations are very closely related, especially French, German, British, Dutch, and Scandinavian, that it is quite hard for 23andme to consistently nail it in terms of assigning it correctly. There's a chance getting one of your parents to test, and phasing your results together, will help improve accuracy.

Your maternal grandma and paternal grandpa were likely still full Italian, with generations of residency in Italy, unless you have reason to believe otherwise. The Iberian and Balkan reflect more ancient ancestry or shared overlap with populations in those areas. 23andme's reference pool for Italy is not going to perfectly capture everyone and there are fairly few full Italians who score above 95% on their tests. Most show some Balkan, North African/Western Asian, Iberian, and sometimes French & German, just like nearly all people from the UK & Ireland show some Scandinavian and French & German. If you read the Testing & Validation section on 23andme's site, you can see the chart of error margins for various ethnicities. 23andme's recall rate for Italian genes is only 56%, meaning in testing where they know the genes are Italian and should be labeled as such, 44% of the time their system misses them and labels them as something else (seems like usually Broadly categories).

No, skin color is a red herring in the case of Aboriginal Australians and Africans--Europeans and East Asians are actually much closer genetically to Africans, when groups are paced on a plotting grid, than Aboriginal Australians and Melanesians. I can't find a good image link right now to a grid but this article talks a bit about how long ago Aboriginal Australians left Africa, it was much earlier than any other group: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/09/aborigines-the-first-out-of-africa-the-first-in-asia-and-australia/245392/. Also, in 23andme's Testing & Validation charts showing error rates for how well their system identifies various ethnicities, Oceanian (which covers Aboriginal genes) is one of the very few with a 100% precision rate. https://www.23andme.com/ancestry-composition-guide/

Completely normal. I've never seen a fully British or Irish person (as in, born to 4 British or Irish grandparents, and born in the UK or Ireland) who came back as 100% British & Irish. Virtually everyone comes back with some French & German, Iberian, and Scandinavian, plus the "Broadly" categories. If you read the Testing & Validation section in here: https://www.23andme.com/ancestry-composition-guide/ you'll see that 23andme is not especially precise at identifying B & I ancestry. Their precision rate is 90% (meaning, in testing where they know whether the genes are British & Irish or not, they are labeled as such incorrectly 10% of the time) but their recall rate is only 46% (meaning, in testing when they already know the genes should indeed be labeled as British & Irish, 54% of the time their system misses them and labels them something else).

23andme is awful at identifying German genes. In testing where they already know what the genes should be, they are only able to correctly label French & German (the shared category) 19% of the time. They openly admit it, but the info is buried. Scroll down to the chart on here, under Testing & Validation: https://www.23andme.com/ancestry-composition-guide/

"French & German" is the least reliable category in their whole system. The precision recall rate for it is only 80%/19%, meaning in blind testing their system only labeled French & German correctly 19% of the time.

Their explanation of precision/recall:

'This test looks at two classic measures of model performance, precision and recall. These are the standard measurements that researchers use to test how well a prediction system works. Precision answers the question "When the system predicts that a piece of DNA comes from population A, how often is the DNA actually from population A?" Recall answers the question "Of the pieces of DNA that actually are from population A, how often does the system correctly predict that they are from population A?"' (from the link)

80/19 for French & German...clearly, going by your genealogical records and the fact it's maternal ancestry (more reliable), you are in the 81% of the cases where their system doesn't properly predict (recall) French & German genes. Instead it is getting labeled under the "Broadly" categories.

As far as the rest, yes, as other posters said, Italians regularly show Balkan and North African DNA, and sometimes Iberian too, so that checks out.

Can you post a screenshot of the results (with your name blocked out)?

Second, read this in full: https://www.23andme.com/ancestry-composition-guide/

Note the precision/recall rate for Eastern European DNA. That means what their system is able to do in testing when they know what the outcome should be. For Eastern European it's 90/68, meaning it's precise 90% of the time and correctly labels it 68%. So, up to 32% of the time it misses Eastern European DNA and assigns it to something else (probably those "Broadly" categories).

That said, it's looking unlikely, going by this test, that your mom is 100% Eastern European. The best thing to do is to have her test as well and then link your accounts. That will enable 23andme to narrow down your genes and "phase" them together. A lot of times there are significant shifts with how European DNA is categories when parent/child accounts get phased. My husband, for example, went from 50% British & Irish to 70% British & Irish when his father signed up, and most of his "Broadly" categories disappeared.

Direct Link to Ancestry.com Upload to 23andMe: https://www.23andme.com/discover23/

'Discover23℠

4 free reports. 1 day only.

We're celebrating DNA Day by inviting Ancestry.com customers to upload their genetic data and receive 4 free reports.'

this explains the gist of things.

this is their privacy policy which explains a good amount too.

I've been 11 days on the last step. There is an entire thread on 23andme of people complaining about the delay. Apparently no one has reached the final step in more than 2 weeks. There is only speculation as to why (so no need to read the thread) because the company hasn't communicated anything and still maintain that everything is normal.

I have looked at a lot of people's results over the past 9 years when I had my first DNA test and patterns emerge from all of it. I have also read a lot of studies published by geneticists such one by Andrés Moreno Estrada on the genetics of Mexico at http://science.sciencemag.org/content/344/6189/1280. I have also tested a lot of relatives and done a lot of genealogy by reading lots of Catholic church records from Mexico at https://www.familysearch.org/hr/search

Ok so I saw your other post about trying to figure out who Louisa is and I think I found some info for you. One thing that makes it hard is that there are so many spelling variations there, and so many women had the first name of Marie/Mary but would go by their middle name or a nickname. I found an alternative spelling of Lyte which was Leyte and it led me here. I don't see an Annie Augustus but there is a "Lydia Louisa" born in 1878. It shows George's wife as Mary Wagg - idk if the link will work for you but I'll try it:

https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/151532629/person/112278089796/facts

I don't see many French connections from what info is available, perhaps the Myheritage groups just list it as a French Settler area if that's who mostly occupied the area at the time? Hope any of that helps!

Close. 23andMe+ is an add-on subscription that one can get in addition to the Health + Ancestry. I believe the subscription service is currently only available in the US and Canada. Everything else you said (Ancestry + Health will include health analysis on top of everything in Ancestry + Traits; raw data is the same either way) is correct. 23andMe+ will add additional health analysis on top of the baseline health analysis you get with the Health + Ancestry kit. Take a look at the link above, which shows a comparison of the different levels of service.

Hey this is what I found on their website.

1. Children's privacy 23andMe is committed to protecting the privacy of children as well as adults. Neither 23andMe nor any of its Services are designed for, intended to attract, or directed toward children under the age of 18. A parent or guardian, however, may collect a saliva sample from, create an account for, and provide information related to, his or her child who is under the age of 18. The parent or guardian assumes full responsibility for ensuring that the information that he/she provides to 23andMe about his or her child is kept secure and that the information submitted is accurate.

https://www.23andme.com/about/privacy/

Your data is not shared. You can consent to whether or not you want your data stored.

Please read the privacy policy, many of your questions will be answered there.

I guess it depends on exactly what you mean. This is their Privacy Policy: https://www.23andme.com/about/privacy/

This is what they say about it (sorry if the formatting is messed up, I did my best but it pastes weird):

"Your Personal Information may be shared in the following ways:

With our service providers​, as necessary for them to provide their services to us. With qualified research collaborators​, only if you provide your explicit consent.

23andMe will not sell, lease, or rent your individual-level information to a third party for research purposes without your explicit consent.

We will not​ share your data with any ​public databases​. We will not​ provide any person’s data (genetic or non-genetic) to an ​insurance company​ or ​employer​. We will not​ provide information to ​law enforcement​ or ​regulatory authorities​ unless required by law to comply with a valid court order, subpoena, or search warrant for genetic or Personal Information"

So, it's up to you whether that's good enough.

There was a post about it a little less then a month ago. Here’s the post:

Potential Incoming Algorithm Update (Ancestry Composition v5.9)

23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki's Ancestry Composition report displayed an algorithm update for a few hours before reverting back to normal. At the bottom of the report, it was specified as version 5.9, as opposed to the current v5.2.

There has been no official announcement for this update. What has been seen was probably not intended to be seen just yet. We don't know the release date. It could be tomorrow, next week, or in a month. It is even entirely possible this update maybe scrapped or merged with some other update several months from now. The point is that nothing is official yet, so expect a variety of possibilities.

What we know based on the current information:

• This update is an Algorithm update, meaning there will be no new reference populations. An Algorithm update usually brings an overall improvement to accuracy and precision in percentages. Past algorithm updates have seen trends of decreasing unassigned and broad percentages.

• There will be a new feature that allows you to switch back and forth between your pre and post updated results.

Please keep in mind that previous algorithm updates have sometimes been exclusive to a specific genotyping chip (usually the newest/newer ones) with older chips either receiving the update later on or not at all. This update could be different.

If you're interested in learning more about the inner workings of 23andMe's Ancestry Composition report, checkout this helpful guide: <strong>23andMe's Ancestry Composition Guide</strong>

Some ancestry is the last 500 years( on 23 and me it states that it can go beyond 500 years depending on the region in which they have a unique signatures which the Horn does). A person from Horn read her results on YT, and it stated within the last 2,000 years when 23 and me was explaining her ancestry from one of the Horn countries. I will assume it is within 500 years if a person is recently admix( like myself AA), versus a group that been homogeneous for some (longer than 500 years) like people from the Horn and other parts of African minus North Africa, and parts of Europe. When people are admix then tend to get more unassigned DNA as well. This is from 23 and me: https://www.23andme.com/ancestry-composition-guide/?ac33

The Ancestry Composition algorithm calculates your ancestry by comparing your genome to the genomes of people whose ancestries we already know. To make this work, we need a lot of reference data! Our reference datasets include genotypes from 14,437 people who were chosen to reflect populations that existed before transcontinental travel and migration were common (at least 500 years ago). However, because different parts of the world have their own unique demographic histories, some Ancestry Composition results may reflect ancestry from a much broader time window than the past 500 years.

>I believe there’s been some instances where 23 and me was forced to cooperate with law enforcement

To date, 23andMe has never been forced to turn over data to any government or law enforcement agency: https://www.23andme.com/transparency-report/.

Yes you have the option to opt-in to “DNA Relatives”, which will show you everyone in their system that you share DNA with (your closest 2000 or so relatives above a certain threshold, and only those that opted in as well).

You will see a chromosome painting, have the ability to compare dna with people in your relatives and connections list (other friends that you can connect with through their email and sending sharing requests).

https://www.23andme.com/dna-ancestry

https://www.23andme.com/dna-reports-list/

From 23andme: What are SNPs?

The human genome consists of more than 3 billion base pairs (i.e., the "bars" on the double-helix of DNA). But we share a lot of that with other life, so the parts that make humans unique is small, and the parts that differentiate one human from another are even smaller.

A Single-Nucleotide Polymorphism is a technical term for a mutation, a deviation in a single base pair from a "reference genome." 23andme uses NCBI human reference genome GRCh37)

Per the first link above:

> There are about 15 million known SNPs (aka Ancestry Informative Markers) for genetic ancestry but only 1-to-5 million are utilized by advanced genetic studies, and much less (~700,000) by vendors like DTC DNA testing companies

So, put another way, the analysis chips look at about a half million specific locations in your DNA to see if they are different from a baseline standard. v4 and v5 each look at a different set of locations; the set chosen for v4 was biased toward European ancestry, while the set chosen for v5 is more balanced for the rest of the world.

The French & German test is very inaccurate because the group is very indistinct compared to others. Basically, everyone is part something else, including all the people in their reference.

You can see here: https://www.23andme.com/ancestry-composition-guide/

It has 80% accuracy and 20% recall.

https://www.23andme.com/ancestry-composition-guide/

All of your major DNA groups except Chinese have awful recall rates, not surprising that at 90% they disappear. The drop in Chinese is a little surprising, most likely at least some of your ancestors didn't live deep in China, they lived relatively close to other groups.

It could either be from one country or from several Southern European countries.

23andme's recall rates (how often they can pinpoint DNA) for different Southern European populations:

Green & Balkan 60%

Spanish & Portuguese 60%

Italian 56%

Sardinian 69%.

If they're not sure which one out of those your DNA is, but it does appear Southern European, it goes into Broadly Southern European (recall rate 75%).

https://www.23andme.com/ancestry-composition-guide/

I looked into it out of interest when I got my results to see if they were typical and I could only find information on ancestry.com where they look at the average ethnicities per report per area of the UK and on a typical report on Scotland you would expect to see around 20% made up from Western Europe and Scandinavia and some smaller percentages in other areas. I’ll link you to it so you can have a look for your own family history.
https://www.ancestry.com/corporate/international/press-releases/DNA-of-the-nation-revealedand-were-not-as-British-as-we-think Obviously it’s not an exact replica of the 23 and me test but I would expect similar results

"Broadly" categories can be DNA from anywhere within that region, possibly a mixture, but yes it could just as easily be from a single region. French & German in particular has the lowest recall rate (20%).

https://www.23andme.com/ancestry-composition-guide/

Health analysis is still a newer feature with room for error and risk. It's more speculative -- as in, we don't know all there is to know about how genes interact and express and so forth, and they don't carefully test or analyze the full genome like a medical test can. They only look at specific known markers, and not even all the markers for each item. It's not a replacement for full sequencing $$$. It's not definitive and the disclaimer says it's not to be used for medical decisions. Read #5 of 23 and me Terms of Service for their disclaimers.

23&Me originally offered health carrier status and traits way back, but had to stop for several years due to FDA restrictions, before getting official approval. Ancestry and relative matching have been the mainstay of their business, health being a bonus feature.

Ancestry DNA focuses on Ancestry as that is their priority, genealogy came first, genetic genealogy is an enhancement to that research. They offer some traits predictions but not carrier status. Promethease is an outside site you can upload either to, but beware of misinterpreting your own results.

23andMe is pretty open about the accuracy of their DNA services. That is, they are generally accurate within a defined confidence interval. In your reports, you can adjust this so that it only reports things that they are more confident in.

Your DNA will be made available to law enforcement, and you should understand that any data connected to the internet will be made available to anyone that really wants it. Assume it is shared with anyone. What this means is that if your DNA is at a crime scene, you will be a suspect. If your brother kills someone, it will be easier for them to be caught.

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If you have an illegitimate child, and they do the test, they will have proof you cheated on your wife with your uncles best friends neice. but you already knew that part from the Jerry spring show that is /r/23andme

Those are the negatives.

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What you may not have been told is that 23andMe contributes to science: https://www.23andme.com/en-ca/publications/

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If a wide genetic sampling creates just ONE cure I am okay with the risk of my data being in the public domain. To me, that is the Nobelist of causes.

Sale is also on the European site...yay!

(Yes, the European site: https://www.23andme.com/en-eu/ is different frome the International site, it is meant for customers in certain European countries.)

23andMe cannot tell you if you are German or Dutch only if you have "French & German" DNA. 23andMe does not have a German or Dutch reference population.

French & German has the lowest recall rate of any of their reference populations at only 20% so it is the most likely to be under-reported.

https://www.23andme.com/ancestry-composition-guide/

Dealing with family myths is dependent on what the myth entails. It can help with some myths on a continental level. Say if you have Native American DNA or European ancestry or not. Everything below the continental level is much more speculative.

The French & German ethnicity has the lowest recall rate among them all at only 20%:

https://www.23andme.com/ancestry-composition-guide/

Never mind trying to break it down even further.

Are these sales only ever intended for American customers, or can European customers benefit from them as well (at least from time to time)? The last time there was a sale (which was earlier this summer), I noticed that it was only mentioned on the American website of 23andMe but not on the European website.

> For Europe there is no health report.

Wrong. There are a select few European countries that allow 23andMe to provide health reports to their citizens. These countries are: Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom. I am a citizen from one of those countries and I definitely received my health report without a problem. Also check out the European website of 23andMe as well as its UK website.

From the Ancestry Composition Guide: > The Ancestry Composition algorithm calculates your ancestry by comparing your genome to the genomes of people whose ancestries we already know. To make this work, we need a lot of reference data! Our reference datasets include genotypes from 11,091 people who were carefully chosen to reflect populations that existed before transcontinental travel and migration were common (at least 500 years ago).

This means the result shouldn't been seen as your ancient or Dark Age admixture. What is classified as British and Irish in you now, is itself a particular mix of older ancestry.

As you have already suspected, ancestry doesn’t fall cleanly in line with modern countries due to border changes and migrations over time. The Ancestry Composition for Germans in general will be a mix of French and German, Scandinavian, British, and East European, due to all the mixing that’s occurred over the centuries. French and German has lower precision and recall rates (80%, 19%) than other reference populations according to their Ancestry Composition information: https://www.23andme.com/ancestry-composition-guide/

Also check out this page on Eupedia: https://www.eupedia.com/europe/autosomal_maps_dodecad.shtml#23andMe

That timeline is a guess auto-generated from your own ancestry painting. It's a fairly new feature and it's REALLY misleading. Plenty of Southern Italians show 10-20% North African on their tests, as do some Iberians, so it's not surprising at all that you would get that. It's ancient. 23andme has trouble breaking down related ethnic groups from intensely interrelated geographic areas like the Mediterranean. Check out the error margins here in Testing &amp; Validation. Not so great for anywhere in the Mediterranean.

This blog post details more about how misleading the timeline can be, and is in your case.

Because it can properly correct for errors that may have been evident pre-phasing.

https://www.23andme.com/ancestry-composition-guide/

"Your connecting with a biological parent greatly simplifies the computational problem of figuring out what DNA you got from which parent (c.f., Step 1: Phasing). That may translate into better Ancestry Composition results, in the sense that you might see more assignment to the fine-resolution ancestries: more Scandinavian, less Northern European.

Why is that? Remember, the smoother — which generates your final Ancestry Composition estimate — has to correct two kinds of errors: those along the chromosome, and those between the chromosomes. When your chromosomes are phased using genetic information from your parent, mistakes between the chromosomes (switch errors) are extremely rare, so the smoother can be more confident."

Check the Ancestry Composition Guide, especially the precision and recall table near the end, and also the section on Aggregation and Reporting.

It tells you that their algorithm is worst at recognizing the French & German category. Although when it does, it's quite likely to be correct. Scandinavian and British & Irish have the second and third lowest recall rates. Not because of a lack of reference samples, but just because there is a lot of overlap and a lot of mixing historically. Especially if your German ancestry is from Northern Germany, there is going to be a lot of similarity between that DNA of yours and that of an Anglo-Saxon Brit.

Also keep in mind that all the "Broadly" categories are fallback options that are only selected for a segment if none of the more specific categories are ranked highly enough. It doesn't imply that one belongs to some vague, generic European ethnicity, just that it's not quite clear enough which specific group it is.

"dots aren't colored under specific countries in Europe" because of the limitations of 23andme's data, especially for the country matches which are new and a bit gimmicky. In the absence of non-paternity events, a paper trail always counts for more than 23andme's results in terms of specificity. If you read the "Testing & Validation" section of their website, you can see that even for the broader categories, there's a huge range in how well they are able to pinpoint origins. Link: https://www.23andme.com/ancestry-composition-guide/

The precision/recall rate for French & German, for example, is an abysmal 80/19.

For 2 https://www.23andme.com/dna-reports-list/

Doesn't seem like it. And the health reports claim they can't say for sure whether you will have a certain disease. There's also an option for you to take genome data from ancestor report and put it in other services like promethease which has more health info.

Based on precision and recall rates, I wouldn't say it's not accurate for East Africans - the precision rate is 95% and recall is 89% (more on precision and recall here: https://www.23andme.com/en-ca/ancestry-composition-guide/). These precision and recall rates are among the highest at 23andMe, which actually indicates a high rate of accuracy.

What I will say is that it's not especially detailed for people of non-European descent. Due to the small size of many non-European reference groups, most testing companies don't break these groups into more detailed geographic areas. 23andMe won't break this down to countries, largely because they just don't have the reference populations yet to do so. Instead, you can infer regions sometimes based on the groups used to create that population (more details on that here: https://int.customercare.23andme.com/hc/en-us/articles/217787977-Ancestry-Composition-Reference-Populations#Sub-Saharan_African)