DNA/Ancestry test

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Has anyone used these ancestry sites? I want to get my Dad a gift of one but there are so many to choose from. I would like my Dad to do some research after getting the results. Can anyone tell me their experience or recommendations please?

I'd like to do this one day.
Not the family tree bit, but the ethnicity / health aspects.
but how much can they actually say re that?
Do they all test for the same stuff (if so what)?

Most people just want ethnicity... but you could find out you had relatives you never knew you had & didn't to know about. Make sure your dad could cope before you risk that.

That happened to my uncle (I found out he existed). He's still pissed off at me & won't communicate.

That's his problem, not yours. If he didn't want to be found, he shouldn't have put his DNA results up online.

But yes, putting your results up could lead to being contacted. For me, that's no problem at all, so I might one day do this, just to see.

They work best to identify ethnicity when they have a good number of DNA from the given region on the database. So there isn't the precision if you have heritage from Africa for example.
I read someone with strong heritage from the Solomon islands only got the Caucasian parentage identified.

I’d recommend reading up on the privacy / third party use aspects of DNA samples, especially for sending off to US labs. As it’s a non-medical sample there aren’t the usual privacy protections you might expect.

You can build a pretty extensive family tree without DNA data, but you do need a subscription to be able to access census data, parish records, county records etc online. Both myheritage and Ancestry are easy to use and will give you matches to other people’s trees, plus you can use free sites to search for people and records.