To not want my DNA on 23 and me / Ancestry etc?

Quite boringly, I am exactly who I thought I was. I am related to people of the ethnic group to which I belong and there are no unfamiliar names repeatedly cropping up. I am not quite sure what anyone is going to do with the information that I am likely to have the blue-green Celtic eye colour. You could probably hazard a guess on dark hair and light skin too. I was relieved to find out that my mother was not a carrier for the cystic fibrosis gene because quite a lot of her siblings died young. I think finding out my grandmother died of tuberculosis in her 40s is something to keep in mind given that about a million people worldwide die from it but that was from old digitised records not 23 and me.

Well that’s scary!

As others have said though, you may not have the choice of others in your family have already made the decision.

Effectively I'm screwed as a result. That information is now out there.

It's even worse if you come from a large extended family.

I am relatively selective when it comes to my data even when dealing with a company or organisation that I deem to be benign. There is no guarantee of them continuing to be benign or the data always being safe

I won't do it. I work for an insurance and pensions company and know there is constant research into dna/genetic predictors for health conditions/mortality rates etc. If at some point in the future certain markers etc are identified as predictors of disease you could be identified and be ruled out as a customer for pensions, insurance potentially mortgages and all sorts of stuff. The use of voluntarily given dna is not properly regulated and could be used against you in the future.

I did it years ago and now I wish I didn't. I had no idea it would be used in the way it is now, but I should have known I guess. Anyway, nothing I can do about it now

For the price it's not worth it just to find out your heritage breakdown. It doesn't really tell you much tbh.

It is worth it if you want to use it to help build a family tree / prove your family tree is accurate.

Honestly I felt the same. Unfortunately that decision was taken out of my hands by others in my family. Since they've done it, I have used their results for research as I felt the cat was out the bag and I am really into my family history.

I would say that the privacy policies of all the DNA sites are not equal though. Some are more of a concern to me than others. You can transfer your results to other sites to gain additional information. This is something I've asked my family not to do.

Between the three DNA tests my family members have done, we've found a number of 'naughty' family members.

One person who turned out not to be who they thought they were and had a different father than they thought.
One illegitimate woman who took the test in the hope of finding out who her father was. She was born during WWII and sadly died recently before we saw the result. We've been able to tell the daughter some information to help her further.
Then an uncle who had a fling with a woman and it turns out had a daughter no one knew anything about.

We HAD expected something to come up given characters within the family. However the surprise has been that the unexpected results have not been where we were anticipating them!

I don't think you can remotely prepare yourself mentally for the results because even if you expect something unusual, the possibility of other hidden stories is just too unpredictable.

It's been interesting but I can't say I'd recommend others to do it. It's a can of worms to say the least.

That said my family members are who they thought they were and it has helped prove a large amount of research and break a few brick walls which would otherwise been impossible using the surviving records.

Do you mean submitting your DNA sample to find out your heritage as in you could be a % of Irish, mostly American and a fraction Scottish? I'd love that, is that a different thing to the ancestry family tree builder?

Considering the info people put on social media, I don’t really consider the DNA sites to be much of a problem. You can tick the box for your sample to be destroyed after the analysis is done.

To be honest, unless your cousins and aunties and grandchildren etc are all thinking the same way as you, the changes brought about by this science are probably coming for you whether you personally submit to it or not.

I think if you're interested in wanting to trace your family tree, DNA is the only way to go.
Yes, you have to be prepared for some possible surprises, (my Dad found out he had another 7 half siblings he knew nothing about!), but, there's no point in tracing your Ancestors if you don't do it, in my opinion, as you could be researching people who aren't really related to you.

I’m with you on this, privacy around personal, sensitive information is important , plenty of considerable risks for not that much benefit

I don’t want to do it either even though someone bought me a DNA pack one Christmas. Not for the same reasons as you but I know a few people who have found that loved ones have some pretty shocking skeletons i the closet and my dad, who died a few years ago, was by all accounts a bit of a slag in his youth 😂 I wouldn’t want a half sibling coming out the woodworks. I just have a gut feeling about it. And once you’ve done it, that information is out there, there’s no going back. As you say it’s meant to be a fun thing but I think unless you’re REALLY into genealogy it could end in teats