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Change your password!

23andMe suffers data hack Like everyone else who’s DNA-tested at 23andMe, The Legal Genealogist was dismayed this past week to learn of an apparent data hack at the DNA testing website. If the reports are accurate, it’s not exactly a security hole that...

Tweaks, traits and a paywall

Ancestry’s DNA updates Apparently The Legal Genealogist is a risk-taking light-haired morning person who was below average in birth weight and didn’t get all four wisdom teeth. Um… no. Although with the grey creeping in my hair isn’t quite as...

Truth

… but no consequences The hits keep coming for that part of the genealogical community called investigative genetic genealogy — IGG for short — the use of DNA to identify human remains and solve crimes. A statement posted this past week, on the website of...

A time for reflection

… and past time for an attitude change The disclosures of the past week or so that highly regarded investigative genetic genealogists working for law enforcement deliberately and knowingly violated company and website terms of service and — well —...

Not whether, but how

The alarm is sounding An affidavit filed by an expert genetic genealogist in an Idaho murder case ought to have alarm bells ringing throughout the genealogical community. All of us — The Legal Genealogist included — want to use DNA as a tool in researching...

About those origins…

Where the African DNA might come from So it’s been a week since RootsTech 2023 wrapped up and The Legal Genealogist has just had a chance to sit for a second, take a deep breath … and dive into a new tool announced at RootsTech that Ancestry now offers to...

GEDmatch sold again

GEDmatch changes hands again in Verogen sale It isn’t mentioned on the website of GEDmatch, the third-party DNA tools site at the heart of much of the early privacy debate over law enforcement use of consumer DNA databases for criminal investigations. And The...

Those spreading genes

Where they are today So The Legal Genealogist was poking around on Ancestry today, and justforthehellofit decided to look at that part of what’s called the DNA Story that records “Where your family lives today.” Of my 54,768 total Ancestry DNA matches, it turns...

No soup for us!

Not in 2022, either! Let’s do it again. Chant along with The Legal Genealogist: they’re just estimates. Again: they’re just estimates. One more time: they’re just estimates. So… we all got our new admixture estimates from Ancestry, right? And most of us...

Not through with ThruLines

… even when they’re frustrating The Legal Genealogist owes readers an apology. Between the June week of the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh (GRIP) and a hard-to-diagnose technical issue with the website, the blog has been really quiet this...