What is Reddit's opinion of
23andMe?
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
➔ 23andMe website
By popularity on Reddit, this Service is:
100 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
If that's the case, use 23 And Me. It uses a DNA sample to figure out where you came from (hint: Africa), but shows you how your genetics traveled including where and what local ethnic groups you belonged to.
You can even find your relatives on there.
Just use 23andme.com. I'm Mexican and I'm ~20% native, rest from Europe according to the test. Here's my test results visualized. https://imgur.com/R5OQ19Z
edit: Here's the chromosome view for those interested: https://i.imgur.com/SgC8MI4.png?1
Brussels sprouts contain a chemical propylthiouracil which some people are able to taste (and it tastes very bitter) while others can't taste at all. So if you're one of the many unlucky ones who just do NOT like Brussels sprouts because they smell and taste disgusting to you (and not because you don't like the texture/color/anything other than smell or taste) then you have solid science backing you up when you politely turn them down.
For DNA only it's $99 but with the US holiday season coming up I've seen it drop down to around half that. Might be worth it to wait 2 months for the cheaper price.
> 23 and Me specifically reserves the right to sell their consumers genetic information...
No, they don’t. You quote one part of the privacy policy, but not the parts where they specifically say that you have control over whether or not your data is used for anything other than your own personal knowledge.
23andMe does publish peer-reviewed research papers with the genetic information they receive from efforts like this though. In 2011, they were looking at the genes underlying Parkinson's onset and found people to submit samples from online PD mailing lists: http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1002141
I think everyone should take a look at 23andMe's explicit privacy policy and make a decision with balanced information: https://www.23andme.com/privacy/
It allows you to connect with ppl you are genetically related to... Expect drama though. People find thinks like half sibling that ate 3 months younger or older than they are and then are all like... Dad? WTH? or that dad is NOT dad genetically... And sibling are half siblings...
Expect crazy.
If you're curious, you can get your DNA tested and find your biological family to make sure they did in fact have you adopted. I referred an adopted former co-worker of mine, and she found her birth family in just a few weeks: https://www.23andme.com/
I mean, their privacy page explicitly says:
- We do not share customer 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
Of course, they still could do it, but they'd be opening themselves to huge lawsuits and basically kill their company. Why? They already have a great business not doing that.
Per 23andMe's privacy policy, see excerpt below, GlaxoSmithKline's investment allows 23andMe to keep the party line of "we don't sell your DNA"
>23andMe will not sell, lease, or rent your individual-level information to any third party or to a third party for research purposes without your explicit consent. > >* We do not share customer 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 (visit our Transparency Report).
> Waarschuwing: als je dit gaat doen komt je DNA in een fijne grote databank die aan iedereen doorverkocht kan worden.
Let wel:
Het is niet 'je DNA', maar een profiel op basis van een beperkte DNA-typering. De sequencing die men toepast voor oa. onze nationale DNA-database is véél uitgebreider (en duurder).
Je samples worden bij myheritage in principe bewaard, maar 23andme vraagt er expliciet toestemming voor.
Aan 'iedereen doorverkocht' is niet specifiek genoeg. Natuurlijk verkopen ze data (businessmodel hé), maar ze beloven beide enkel niet-herleidbare gegevens te verkopen. Geen samples, wel gegevens afgeleid uit profieln..
Voldoende redenen om er terughoudend mee te zijn (mij niet gezien), maar een beetje nuance mag wel hoor...
Bonus trivia: de FBI heeft laatst nog een zaak opgelost door een DNA sample naar één van deze twee te submitten en dan de verwanten op te vragen (dat is de service immers, richting de eindgebruiker). Interessant neveneffect van dit soort diensten...
Am folosit https://www.23andme.com pachetul Ancestry. Costa 99 usd dar am prins o oferta si l-am luat cu 79.
Mi-au trimis acasa o eprubeta cu un fel de palnie si un capacel cu o solutie speciala pe care il insurubezi dupa ce umpli eprubeta ca sa se pastreze adn-ul proaspat. Apoi am expediat in plicul preplatit trimis de ei. Am trimis pe 23 martie si am primit rezultatele azi.
Stiu ca expediaza si in Europa din Olanda daca nu ma insel si sunt destul de multi romani care folosesc serviciul. Pe langa partea cu “originile” iti listeaza si toti utilizatorii cu care te potrivesti genetic. Veri de gradul 2,3,4 si tot asa. In total eu am 1046 de persoane inrudite intre gradul 3 si 6 si minim 3-400 sunt romani (inca nu am avut timp sa parcurg toate profilurile) deci incepe sa prinda si la noi.
Faza interesanta e ca te lasa sa iti downloadezi raw data pe care apoi le poti uploada pe site-uri precum GedMatch pentru comparatii genetice mult mai detaliate si developed de geneticieni si programatori. Mai poti uploada si pe site-ul Promethease de unde primesti un raport complet despre predispozitiile genetice pentru anumite boli. Am aflat de exemplul ca am predispozitie spre Diabet de tip 2, si ca sunt imuna la virusuri gastrice. Sau ca am parul drept si risc de a transmite predispozitia de cancer la prostata urmasilor. In total 160 pagini cu info despre sanatate bazate pe gene. Dar si chestii mai funny precum predispozitie sa ai sanii mari sau spre a prefera gustul sarat in favoarea dulcelui etc.
Mai exista o alta companie AncestryDNA care oferta aceleasi servicii de testare dar pe care nu am incercat-o.
Link catre pagina de rezultate ca screen caption e de kko:
https://you.23andme.com/published/reports/52369f83ccb145e4/?share_id=b5e62a07f2cd475f
Yeah, I'm a biologist and I wouldn't trust 23andMe results for people with significant admixture. Think of it this way--when you have a limited number of genetic markers, the chances that any one of them gets passed down with each generation decreases. You could have legitimate anything heritage, but the markers that 23andMe uses to infer that may or may not have gotten passed down. Here's some info from them: https://www.23andme.com/ancestry-composition-guide/
In my case, I'm 50/50 two unique populations based on my genealogical info (I had some seriously inbreeding ancestors due to religious reasons). 23andMe does a pretty good job of nailing it, but none of this is perfect, and as it turns out for me, I got only 45% of the markers from one side of my family (this is not uncommon). Imagine a few generations of this and you could quite easily see my descendants not having any markers at all from that side of the family.
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.
This will probably be buried by this point, but if you get a direct-to-consumer DNA test, such as 23andMe, don't assume that your doctor will be able to interpret the results for you.
Many doctors, especially older doctors and those that focus on family care, are not especially educated on all of the latest advancements in genetic testing and diagnoses. Always go for a second opinion.
As a geneticist, I'm always a little scared to realize that I know more than the doctor I'm sitting beside.
Direct to consumer genetic testing is still in it's infancy, so there are some issues to know about in regards to accuracy and privacy. good places to start: https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/testing/directtoconsumer https://www.23andme.com/about/privacy/ https://www.wired.com/story/23andme-is-digging-through-your-data-for-a-parkinsons-cure/
Have you ever thought about getting a personal genetic "map" from a company like 23andme? You'll get a rough idea of where your family is from and potential relatives using the same service (they do this with haplotypes, SNPs and so on) and information about your chances of getting a specific disease like, say, type II diabetes or some types of cancer etc.
Hi,
Not a dumb question. Take a look at this diagram: http://i.imgur.com/3Lf6twK.jpg
23andMe looks at more than just the Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA. You and your niece don't match there, but you match on chromosomes 1-22. This is what 23andMe is picking up on. You can use these tools https://www.23andme.com/you/inheritance/ & https://www.23andme.com/you/labs/multi_ibd/ to visualize the shared pieces of DNA.
All of your 23andMe results are based on your autosomal DNA, the DNA in the middle of the diagram, except for the paternal and maternal haplogroups. Your Ancestry Composition includes both sides of your family and your DNA Relative matches could be related to you on any side.
Hope that helps. First cousin is a normal prediction for half-niece, by the way. You share about ~25% with your half-sister and about half that much, ~12.5%, with your niece. ~12.5% is also what first cousins share (on average), so that is why 23andMe spits out that prediction. There are more first cousins in the database then half-niece half-uncle predictions.
Cheers Andrea
To pretend that whole exome sequencing is "new" made me giggle. Just looking at one sequencing center, The Broad Institute at MIT has sequenced >100,000 whole exomes. Exome sequencing is at this point routine and inexpensive. Hell, 23andme had a pilot a few years ago where they would sequence your exome for $999. https://www.23andme.com/exome/
Currently a whole exome will cost you about $450 and can be turned around in a few weeks.
23andme - you spit into a vial and they test it in a lab. They accurately predicted my eye colour, hair colour, ear wax type and reaction to alcohol, so I know it's not nonsense.
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.
23andme have been linked with Google since the very beginning so there's even more reason to be concerned with privacy and data protection of such sensitive information. Sergey Brin's ex-wife, Anne Wojcicki, is one of the co-founders of the company and Google also invested millions of dollars in 2007 when the company was just getting started.
Edit: Their privacy policy also states that they may store your sensitive data in countries outside of the one you reside in which is concerning since they don't disclose which countries those are or how the laws differ.
Oh boy. If you were still in contact with her, it would be hilarious to get her a 23andMe packet as a gift. They sequence your genome enough to break your exact ancestry down. Really fascinating stuff for regular people, but potentially so entertaining in this situation.
> but they are are not tested for by these companies.
What? OP asked about 23andme, which is probably the most popular place to get genetic disease/carrier testing and the only site to be FDA approved for direct-to-consumer testing.
>If you lined up a Swede's DNA next to an Ethiopian's DNA, you might very well have a hard time telling which is which.
No.
No you wouldn't. That's absurd to even say. In fact, given something as information-rich as a DNA packet, you'd be MORE LIKELY to be able to tell a Swede (vs, say, a Finn or German) apart from an Ethiopian (vs. say, a Ghanian or any other person from that massive continent) than just looking at them. Which is to say, you could say with certainty that one was a Swede and the other was an Ethiopian, rather than making an educated guess on appearances. DNA is MORE precise than physical appearance.
The ability to tell peoples' origins apart based on their DNA is why services like 23andme can exist:
Are you telling me you sincerely believe that science cannot look at a person's DNA and trace their biological ancestry to a particular location (i.e. Sweden vs. Ethiopia) AND predict what said ancestors probably looked like?
If so, why do you believe that, given that its the opposite of the truth?
>They are not biologically defined. What was "Black" 60 years ago is not the current definition of "Black," etc.
The genetics of the people involved haven't changed, though. Has there EVER BEEN ANY POINT IN HISTORY where a person with white skin, blonde hair, blue eyes, and ancestry that goes to Europe... HAS BEEN CONSIDERED "BLACK?"
You can say the definition of a word changes, but you can't just make a word have a definition IT HAS LITERALLY NEVER HAD BEFORE if nobody else agrees to that.
Is there some reason she won't tell you? Maybe she doesn't know? Maybe it was a one night stand? Maybe even a rape? Has she given any explanation as to why she won't tell you?
If she legitimately is never going to tell you, you could try and join one of those DNA sites like 23andme to see if any of your relatives are also members.
I got the DNA test from https://www.23andme.com/, which evaluates your ancestry only. Then I paid $5.00 to https://www.promethease.com/ to run the report against their mapped relationships to genes based on their universe of knowledge when it comes to known medical associations and other studies / reports.
This article and the 23andme one don't make sense.
The article title says that 23andme shared the data of 5 million people. But the article says that only 100 people were contacted.
Their privacy policy explicitly states regarding sharing of your data for research by saying:
> With research collaborators, only if you have given your explicit consent.
https://www.23andme.com/en-ca/about/privacy/
So it's likely this article is bullshit. It should probably say "23andme searched it's database for people, and then asked 100 people if it could share their data with researchers".
I had to send in a saliva sample to 23andme then once I got the results back, I downloaded the raw data and uploaded them to Nutrahacker. Not only did it tell me my neuro supplements to take, but it gave me foods to avoid and promote as well.
It was pricey, but I think it's worth it in the long run. There are other sites similar to Nutrahacker that aren't as expensive. Promethease comes to mind, cause it's a lot cheaper, but it doesn't tell you exactly what supplements might benefit you.
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/
As we state in our privacy statement, 23andMe will not provide information to law enforcement or regulatory authorities unless required by law to comply with a valid court order. 23andMe actively resists law enforcement requests for customer information and we have never given customer information to law enforcement officials (we also do not share information with employers or insurance companies). We publish information on law enforcement inquiries in our transparency report, which is available online to anyone. We don’t plan on changing this policy, to answer your question on how long will this last!
They're saying YOU shouldn't share the information THEY GIVE YOU with any other people unless you're sure you can trust them. They're not warning you that they themselves will "use it against your interest".
Anything they do with your information is spelled out in their Privacy Statement. Specifically, Section 4, "How We Use and Share Information", Part D, "Information We Share with Third Parties".
You've taken your £300 guess, then used it as a factual basis for the rest of your point.
A human DNA analysis only costs £125, and that's with a profit margin attached. https://www.23andme.com/en-gb/
Furthermore, the people out collecting samples won't just collect one, then send it for analysis. Community wardens will be out patrolling all day and send in a batch per day, as they are in any case at present.
My concern with sharing my DNA with these companies is that they may share that information with law enforcement, and their findings may be used to inappropriately target people for criminal investigation. Here is an example.
23 and Me published a transparency report that seems to indicate they have provided information to law enforcement on five of their customers.
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.
Its not an insult, i'm trying to educate you.
HMU with a mentally ill person, ill pay for the DNA test and start the process of setting them straight.
Anything to help another person.
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.
Have you tried any Dna Testing Services like, https://www.23andme.com, or https://www.ancestry.ca. You want the well known ones, because they have a larger database to do the correlation.
After all, that's how they catch the golden gate killer. It seems to work very well.
If at any time you are no longer interested in participating in our services, you can choose to delete your data and 23andMe account from within your account settings. Once you submit your request, we will send an email detailing our account deletion policy and requesting that you confirm your request. As part of this deletion process, we delete all Personal Information and discard any stored samples with a few limitations detailed in our Privacy Statement:
- If you voluntarily gave consent to participate by opting into our 23andMe Research, we are not able to remove your de-identified genetic information and self-reported phenotype data from any completed studies.
- We are also required to keep certain information to comply with certain legal and regulatory requirements, including U.S. federal standards under the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA). 23andMe uses a CLIA-certified lab to ensure high quality testing. All CLIA-certified labs are required to keep a certain data for up to ten years to comply with federal law. You can read more about CLIA here.
- 23andMe will retain limited information related to your account and data deletion request, such as your email address, account deletion request identifier, and record of legal agreements for a limited period of time as required by contractual obligations, and/or as necessary for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims and for audit and compliance purposes
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.
Actually, I've seen the same arguments about how health insurance companies could use your DNA against you and the other ones about potential employers judging if they can hire you or not by your DNA in other sources. An example is this article for the Scientific American. Here's a quote from that article:
And as 23andMe <strong>warns</strong> on its website, “Genetic Information that you share with others could be used against your interests. You should be careful about sharing your Genetic Information with others.”
And this is 23andme saying this on their own website. So yeah, I was actually considering submitting DNA with 23andme a few months ago actually, I was doing some research online and I stumbled upon this Scientific American article that really gave me pause. I don't think I will be using their services any time soon.
ETA: Since I've been downvoted, haha, here's more fear mongering straight from the 23andme website (not the Scientific American article) for people who do not read the fine print:
While the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act was signed into law in the United States in 2008, its protection against discrimination by employers and health insurance companies for employment and coverage issues has not been clearly established....You may want to consult a lawyer to understand the extent of legal protection of your Genetic Information before you share it with anybody.
I saved $100 bucks and just went with the ancestry report. After reading reports from consumers on Amazon, it apparently provides you with the same genetic data as the health report does.
Also, it mentions it at the bottom, here: https://www.23andme.com/compare-dna-tests/
I guess I could have just checked that to begin with, but I do appreciate the reply.
While some sperm banks will forward a letter on your behalf to an "open identity" donor or even reach out to an anonymous donor to ask if they'd be willing to respond to you, some won't and some simply no longer have contact information for the donors. Some don't have records that old, some have lost them, and some people (like myself) were conceived at clinics that didn't use sperm banks or keep track of donors at all.
If you want to know who he is and going through the sperm bank doesn't work out, you may still be able to deduce his identity from an autosomal DNA test with 23andMe or AncestryDNA. If someone reasonably closely related to him has tested too (in my case, it was my biological father's father's brother's daughter's son, but I know people who have accomplished it with more distant relations than that), it's possible to deduce your biological father's identity from that and some internet searches. Whether you ever contact him would be up to you, but you'd know your full ethnicity from the DNA test as well as anything you could find about the guy from an internet search (probably occupation, education, family lineage, and possibly hobbies and photos if he's on social media). Good luck with whatever you choose to do.
>Our contracted genotyping laboratory may also retain your Genetic Information as required by local law and we may retain backup copies for a limited period of time pursuant to our data protection policies.
https://www.23andme.com/en-eu/about/privacy/
Didn't find info about their system architecture or multiple data redundancies tho.
I’ve heard that law enforcement has used data bases at sites like ancestry.com and 23andme to find family members of the suspect, which ultimately lead to finding Deangelo. I would be curious to see if this report is updated soon. https://www.23andme.com/transparency-report/
23andme isn't a sequencing service but rather a genotyping service. They use a chip which will bind and recognize specific sequences of DNA and will detect if you have any differences. I believe they are looking at a few hundred thousand individual SNPs whereas a genome is about 3 billions nucleotides.
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.
If by chance you're fully korean or chinese you could do the free 23andme global genetics project . https://www.23andme.com/global-genetics/
if you know anyone who is either full chinese or full korean, try to mention this to them and let them know there is no detriment or a wast of time (quite a few people are either scared of DNA or they think it's a waste of time because they think it's all about telling them their ancestry and they know their ancestry already).
Actually, quite possibly. There has been some research into whether it could be hereditary, and there is some evidence that a mutation in gene TENM2 is responsible for misophonia.
Greg from 23andMe: Thanks for asking what is a very important question! 23andMe has been a long-time supporter of legislative efforts intended to prevent genetic discrimination and to safeguard individuals' genetic privacy. As stated in the Third Party Sharing section of our Privacy Center, 23andMe will not provide any person’s data (genetic or non-genetic) to an insurance company or employer.
Many countries around the world have adopted legislation intended to prevent genetic discrimination and to safeguard individuals' genetic privacy.
Currently, U.S. federal legislation (the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act) protects Americans from discrimination in health insurance and employment decisions on the basis of genetic information. Under GINA, American health insurance companies and health plans are prohibited from requiring genetic testing, looking at results of tests before individuals enroll, and changing premiums based on genetic information.
In the UK, the Concordat and Moratorium on Genetics and Insurance is a voluntary agreement (the “Concordat”) between the UK Government and the ABI (Association of British Insurers) that prevents insurance companies from accessing or using genetic test results in making insurance coverage and rate decisions.
If you have additional questions about the extent of legal protection of your Genetic Information, you may wish to do additional research or consult with a lawyer to understand laws in your jurisdiction.
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!
DNA tests are sold at cost. This is because the companies running them are harvesting your genetic information to store in databases and sell to other companies(usually pharmaceuticals) for profit. It sounds kind of like a conspiracy theory, but its pretty clearly stated by the companies. https://www.23andme.com/about/privacy/ Basically they sell large batches of anonymized data without personal identifiers.
That being said... it's not as difficult as you would think to reverse that information: to take a single anonymized sample and figure out who that person actually is. Dr Yaniv Erlich kind of freaked out the Genetics community by doing exactly that, and bringing to light some serious privacy concerns about genetic data.
Sim.
https://www.23andme.com/en-int/
Pelo que vi dos resultados de Portugueses até agora, vai dar prai 80% ibérico, uns 10-15% de norte da europa/inglaterra/frança (raizes celticas provavelmente), <5% norte de áfrica (miscigenação com mouros provavelmente) e <2% de ashkenazi (judeu, normal visto que tivemos judeus em portugal até 1500)
Curiosamente (ou não) é raro encontrar sangue árabe, pelo menos dos vários resultados que já vi só um é que tinha e era cerca de 0,5%
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.
In Kanada machen sie jetzt Gentests (benutzt werden diese Genealogie Seiten wie https://www.myheritage.de oder https://www.23andme.com/ ) wenn sie keine Dokumente haben und auch nicht bereit sind Auskunft zu geben um dann zu bestimmen woher sie kommen.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-border-agency-migrants-dna-1.4765487
Sounds like she didn't know that gedMatch existed. I'm thankful that these companies take customer privacy seriously.
Her writing also makes it seem like this was some kind of willful obstruction of justice, which isn't the case at all and there is plenty of info out there for law enforcement to request access to their customer's information, (https://www.23andme.com/law-enforcement-guide/). A bit dramatic and misleading if you ask me.
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.
Remember Kidney harvesting in Dallas, 60 minutes? Steve Croft.
Imagine the whole internet as the organ harvesting platform!!!
smart phone, proximity, geolocation.
Sickness, sick people needing organs.
Indexed via 23 and me... DNA search match.
Just send someone down the street, surveillance, follow, harvest organ.
or the friendly way. telemarketer, calls, would you like to sell one of your kidneys..?
or anything else...Orwellian...
or army or rogue nation state, starting conflicts, sending army in,
Finding candidates, for mass harvesting of organs!!! during war...
I did their Health+Ancestry product. You learn not only about Genealogy background, but also get some insight into your health. It's more expensive now than when I took it, but now it's backed by the FDA.
I used 23andMe.
Right now because of FDA bullshit, new members don't get the medical side of the genetic test. Luckily I had mine done before that ruling, so I can still access my medical genetics too. 23andMe also gives you your raw genetic data, and I believe there are other sites out there where you can import said data if you want to know what genetic conditions you are predisposed to. I haven't looked into that obviously, so you'd have to do some of your own googling.
Just the ancestry alone is really interesting though, well worth the $99.
Yes, they can have pretty high geographic resolution, depending on tons of factors. This paper is a popular best-case scenario, where genetic markers were used to pinpoint (pure-bred) Europeans more or less right down to the country.
However, that specific test you're looking at is pretty skeevy and sounds like a ripoff for such a small number of markers. This one is about the same price but tests a million sites instead of 20, plus it has all sorts of features on the website that you can test out on play data without paying.
They actually kind of are- a lot of them are used for building family trees. One of my best friends did not know who her father was, took one of the DNS tests and allowed herself to be discovered on the platform and ended up finding her half brother (and a whole lot of other people through him) through it.
From the 21 and Me website-
> Discover people who share your DNA. From close family members to distant ones, you'll be amazed by the way your DNA relatives connect you to the world.
The dystopian aspects of this are going to get real interesting- there have already been crimes solved because relatives of the criminal put their DNA into open databases.
Their website says otherwise, and US businesses are all vulnerable to National Security Letters which they are required to lie about receiving under severe penalties from secret FISA courts. I have no trust in the rule of law to restrain the intelligence agencies of the US, much less the TOS of a small company:
> In certain circumstances, however, 23andMe may be required by law to comply with a valid court order, subpoena, or search warrant for genetic or personal information.
https://www.23andme.com/law-enforcement-guide/
If there is an incentive to misuse the genetic information you're providing, it would be reasonable to assume that will happen. Then it will be made legal post-hoc if and when abuses come to light, as with all the stuff Edward Snowden exposed.
Had dry earwax and never needed deodorant. Used it until I was 25 or so and then quit. Wife agreed that it wasn’t needed. Didn’t know about any genetic relationship until many years later.
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.
23andMe will be able to give you a breakdown of your ethnicity. There are hundreds of results posts on this subreddit to give you a feel for what results can look like. You can also read these on the 23andMe website for more understanding of the Ancestry Composition: https://www.23andme.com/ancestry-composition-guide/
https://customercare.23andme.com/hc/en-us/articles/212169298-Reference-Populations
As far as age, you have to be 18 to agree to their terms of service, so you may need to have your parent do it for you if you are less than 18 years old. https://www.23andme.com/about/tos/
> I don't need to know genetics to know that their whole process is full of shit. They did sample tests with relatively known lineages, and that's their base. Then they compare you to those, and similar traits/genetic markers are then associated with "regions".
Well, I don't know what can be said for each of the companies out there, but with 23andMe their data analysis is done based on DNA segments, assigning each one to a particular population group, with associated certainties; their SVM has a high precision and recall rate for most of the regions used. For my own data, it has been spot on in every instance that I've been able to compare using a conventional genealogical paper trail.
The thing is that they aren't just looking at (1) a few particular markers or (2) markers in isolation. They're looking at SNPs in particular which have a minimum 1% variance. Currently they sample 630,132 SNPs in the autosome. So that small variance quickly adds up to a unique and identifiable fingerprint when you sample a few hundred. It is unique enough that can be associated with a given ethnic profile according to the SVM's training.
As with anything, this is not perfect, but the results which it does give are not "full of shit". There are caveats, but it can be both highly accurate and very useful as a guide.
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.
I think the 23 and me one might be a good choice, because it gives you a medical background as well. If OP is trying to see if there is something that may be a threat to him, it might be a good place to start.
From 23andMe
>23andMe chooses to use all practical legal and administrative resources to resist requests from law enforcement, and we do not share customer data with any public databases, or with entities that may increase the risk of law enforcement access. In certain circumstances, however, 23andMe may be required by law to comply with a valid court order, subpoena, or search warrant for genetic or personal information.
This is completely false.
Many of us would quit the second we caught wind of law enforcement being permitted access to any genetic data.
There is a warrant canary for transparency on this very issue.
Rage_Boner here, at your service... >The presence of both rs7412(C;C) and rs429358(C;C) indicates the highest risk ApoE-ε4/ApoE-ε4. This is checked for by gs216.
>gs188, gs141, gs189 and other genosets also use this snp pair.
23 and Me offers a DNA testing kit. It's not definitive - different companies' testing kits tend to offer slightly different results - but it might give you an idea of where to start.
I don't want to guess myself! I'd probably be way off. :-)
If you are already a 23andMe member you can check out your results here.
It is pretty amazing.
Some of you may be familiar with 23andMe's old Ancestry Painting, which consisted of only three populations (Europe, Asia, Africa). This new tool has 22 populations!
If you're interested in seeing some screen clips and sample results, I have written a post here (disclaimer, it's my own blog but there are no ads and I don't make money off of it. Hopefully I am not breaking any rules by including the link)
Any questions, please ask! This is an amazing new tool for genealogists that far exceeds anything else currently on the market.
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.
Eh, it's pretty clear.
Taken from here https://www.23andme.com/privacy/
> 3. Third Party Sharing
> We will not sell, lease or rent your individual-level information to any third party or to a third party for research purposes without your ex~~~~plicit consent. However, we do use and share aggregate information with third parties in order to perform business development, initiate research, send you marketing emails and improve our services.
> Aggregate information has been stripped of your personal details (e.g., your name and contact information) and aggregated with the information of others so that you cannot reasonably be identified as an individual.
alguien se ha hecho un test genetico? valen 65 lucas y te dicen de donde chucha vienes, me parece bien interesante
https://www.23andme.com/en-int/
eso si aun no son especificos con las etnias americanas. te dan un porcentaje pero aun no son tan especificos como con las etnias europeas. quiza en el futuro cuando hayan mas muestras.
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.
FYI, they sell your data. Read here
I mean, 23andMe have a webpage that tells you everything in this article. You can't exactly say they're trying to hide it.
My question is: how do they even know to check with 23andMe? Given the particularity requirement of a warrant (without going into third-party doctrine; the site said they comply with warrants), how would the cops even know to look there? It seems like a niche industry, and as of 2015, they only had 1,000,000 customers (.3% of the population). It seems like a super rare possibility to hit on such a hunch.
I understood what you meant. The common critique of genetic surveys is that "Geopolitical boundaries shift and populations mix." He had primary sources, but cuckoldry was a concern for me.
23andme explains how they identified regions in two guides:
Reference Populations
Ancestry Composition
And you can always get the Raw Data Profile and figure it out for yourself, with your own taxonomical reference points. It has a generational overlay too that shows at which points this contribution must have been made given distinctive biomarkers.
To be honest, it was mostly for my health concerns, given my grandmother's Alzheimers. But the other stuff was interesting. I don't know why you seem so emotional about my genetic stuff. But I wish you well.
23andme is a genetic testing and analysis service where you send them your dna and they tell you where your ancestors originated from. Saying you are half Russian is in reference to the AKM he is shooting since AKM's were invented in Russia. Saying you are half Austrian is in reference to the Glock he is shooting Glocks are manufactured in Austria.
I know 23andme genetic screening will show it and it's a relatively cheap and quick way to know. My family (grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, parents, siblings) also had our DNA analysed by a study at a university in California. They confirmed celiac genes in several members (I think about 12/22) and the disease is active in 8 of us.
It costs $99/person. They mail you a tube you spit into and mail back. They analyze your genetic makeup using 23 pairs of chromosomes. They give you information about your ancestry, showing you where you likely came from (500 years ago before mass intercontinental travel), your haplogroups, certain health indicators (likelihood to develop certain conditions) - this part of the service may still be on hold, but the ancestry stuff is interesting on its own. You can search the database for relatives and compare your genes to someone else's to see what color eyes and hair your baby would have, etc. Lots of cool stuff to do. I highly recommend getting two tests and giving the other to a blood-family member. Pretty interesting stuff.
I can't find the info for Ancestry, but this link from 23andMe explains the precision and recall of all of their ethnic regions.
https://www.23andme.com/ancestry-composition-guide/
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?" Native American is one of only a couple ethnicities that actually has 100% precision. I may have exaggerated a little bit when I said it was litterally the easiest to detect, but it is certainly one of the easiest.
23andme's explainer for this is actually pretty good. https://www.23andme.com/brca/
They only have FDA approval to report results for 3 of the most common (especially in Ashkenazi Jews), severe, and well-studied BRCA1/2 variants, even though their chips are testing for hundreds of other variants that they can't report the results for without further FDA approvals. Those results for the other variants still show up in your raw data, and Promethease will report them to you.
If I were you, I would take the Promethease result to my doctor, who could advise if clinical testing is necessary to confirm your BRCA2 status, and what, if any, preventative strategy you should take. Keep in mind that there are thousands of variants in BRCA1/2, and not all have been well-studied yet like the three that 23andme reports on. They range widely in how strongly they are associated with cancer, and the error bars are still large - having one doesn't definitively mean cancer is in your future. On the other hand, 23andme is only testing for hundreds of the thousands of total possible variants, so even people that have no variants show up in their 23andme raw data could still have a variant in their BRCA1/2 genes. Talking to a doctor, or even better a genetic counselor, is the best way to figure out if there's any action you should take based on these results.
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
Tons of great suggestions here! But no one has mentioned genetic testing. If you’re feeling like you’re hanging by your fingernails and are sick of trial-and-error medicine, I strongly recommend genetic testing. There are places you can do as a consumer directly, and there are labs that doctors and psychiatrists can order for you. Things like MTHFR and COMT mutations are popular to test for. You may find you have one of the gene variants that decreases the likelihood of treatment with certain meds and implicates others. Can save you years of trial and error. I really don’t know why it’s not a mandatory test after failing first and second like AD meds.
If you like doing things yourself, get the full 23andme sequencing (like $140) and then run it through Promethiase ($5). A dr will likely prefer to confirm findings with a certified lab tests before using it as the basis for prescriptions, but it’ll definitely help with hopelessness just to read through your genetic mutations. And that seems like your biggest problem at the moment: hopelessness that you’ll achieve remission. I did it, after 15 years of suffering, and I **really **didn’t believe it was possible. You can too, but find a good psych, even if you have to call everyone on Psychiatry Today in your entire metro area. Do it now
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.
23andMe makes it very clear that they will not share information with law enforcement. I did 23andMe several years ago because it was a cheaper way to check for certain genetic mutations than what was available through a doctor’s office at the time. I am not a criminal, but I would not want law enforcement or anyone, really, to have access to my information. My biggest concern with law enforcement would be errors and not wanting some testing error to place me at a crime. I also have MS, which you wouldn’t know unless I told you, and I wouldn’t want that information known by employers or anyone else unless I choose to share with them. My children also have a genetic mutation that could be linked to an increased risk of blood clots and I wouldn’t wan that info used against them preemptively.
The other thing to think about is that the genetic tests run $100 - $200 per person. There’s a big portion of the population that can’t afford to do it. If your Doe is from a low income family, they’re not going to be found. Yes, a distant family member might, but that’s likely not useful. I have been linked to 3rd-4th relation family members all over the country and I have absolutely no idea who they are. That’s the closest they’ve found and I’ve been on there at least 7 years.
I did a similar thing to OP. I used 23 and Me to get my genome done and then Promethease for the in-depth analysis. I have about 20 genes of varying significance that are related to alcoholism.
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.
I tried 23andMe. It's only $199.00 and gives you a ton of good info. I found out I have genes that delay alcohol breaking down in my body, so it takes 4 times longer for me to get rid of it. Same with caffeine. I also have an MTHFR mutation, am 2.9% Neanderthal and have 2% sub-Sahara African genetic makeup. It's kind of cool. It was right on as far as the rest of my known heritage goes: Irish, English, Scottish, Swedish and Native American. I am also at 25% higher risk for diabetes and 30% higher for Alzheimer's (which is one of the reasons I'm completely off sugar, now, and cook in coconut oil.).
Try this. Or just google "European DNA principal components analysis".
There are lots of similar maps. Not all of them "recover geography from genetics" in quite such a striking way but they all support the broader point: that European genetics really are discernibly different as you move throughout the continent. (Even though each nation corresponds to a fuzzy 'patch', and even though the patches overlap quite a bit).
Have you thought of using https://www.23andme.com/? It's only $99, and it's pretty awesome. I didn't learn anything about my recent ancestry I didn't already know (I am half Chinese and half Greek, and my results cam up pretty much bang-on 50% Asian and 50% Balkan), but I think it could be really useful if you are interested in whether you actually have mixed blood or not. You get to learn all kinds of cool stuff (I'm in the top 2% for neanderthal DNA) and also you can choose to find relatives, which has put me in touch with distant cousins whose families kept much better genealogy records.