to ask about ancestry etc DNA tests?

[ASpookyUsername]

I have asked for a DNA test for my birthday as I'm really interested in my family tree and really want to get a few questions answered.

Which company is best? Ancestry, My Heritage etc?

DH is complaining about the cost of the tests, and then seemingly you have to subscribe? It looks like it could cost £150 in total which is a lot of money!

I really want a test but DH Is refusing to pay that much.

So which is cheapest but also gives good results? Not just ethnicity which doesn't really interest me. I want to see family members.

Can you get good results with the kit alone?

Anyone got any advice and tips?

@givemeallthecoffee I also found out my dad wasn’t my dad from an Ancestry DNA test. Matched instantly as ‘parent or child’ (I’ve never had children) with a man I’d never heard of. Not a donor conception. It’s surprisingly common once you’d delve into the world of NPE (DNA not parent expected). Be aware you might uncover things you don’t expect.

@ASpookyUsername it’s not pink because you didn’t use the same name. One has capitals one doesn’t

@BuffaloCauliflower - yep same thing, quoted as 'parent or child' which was quite a shock.

As someone who didnt think they had any skeletons in the closet and just did Ancestry to be nosy about my ancestry. I would say that maybe have another think even if you think that nothing suprising can happen. Three of us 'donor children' weren't aware and found out from these sites... its verified now through a separate DNA lab. Secrets cant stay secret now with these types of sites.

Why would you send your DNA to a company? I just don't get it. It is valuable information that can be sold on to any interested third party. You have given away all of your privacy.

@BuffaloCauliflower was that revealed from the simple DNA test or did you have to go through the subscription process?

I have no concerns about my own paternity but I do hope that the DNA test will provide some answers about my dad's side especially whether I have additional aunts or uncles. My paternal grandmother had a hard life and was not a good mother/grandmother and was very secretive about her past.

@zokin agree! Why would you give your DNA to a company who could do lord know what with it?
I get it’s interesting to find out more about your ancestry but would never hand over my DNA to a company who will most likely store and sell it on to the highest bidder.

@givemeallthecoffee yep I definitely didn’t think there were any skeletons to find. It’s turned out well, he was a friend of DMs, a one off, she didn’t know. We’ve built a relationship and get on well. But for many people it could be devastating. It’s happening a lot and companies like Ancestry should have care teams to support such discoveries. People do them for a bit of fun but they ruin lives.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/tBX9dq9V9qWV687ddP6lK9/dna-ancestry-kits

I didn't watch the programme but heard the radio interview and the general feeling was that they are all rubbish. They all gave her different information which was massively varied.

Just had an email to say it's £59 again! https://www.ancestry.co.uk/cs/gifts?oxid=102821&oolid=102821&osch=Email+Campaigns

You will only find relatives IF they have already done the tests.

@ASpookyUsername it was the basic Ancestry DNA test, but you need a subscription to view your DNA matches, which are of course continually updated. So if you want to look for potential matches you’ll need a subscription.

Yes people need to be in the system for you to match them, obviously. As more people do tests the more matches you might have

I've done various dna tests and I'm also part of a worldwide research project for my surname which has involved some quite complex testing.
I have a big tree and have researched it for about 15 yrs and dna has helped me work out some new connections.
I also have an unexpected group of connections due to a NPE which I have not worked out yet.
It's frustrating when you just see single results without a tree as it's hard to connect.
I think the ethnicity data is not that reliable.

So the DNA test could potentially tell me SFA? Surely for the money it must tell me something? And not just that I'm part Irish (which I already knew...)

@ASpookyUsername - it will only tell you if a cousin is really a cousin if that cousin has tested.

Although if any of their close family has tested (especially maternal connections) it could strongly indicate (or prove) they were a cousin. For example if their child or sibling through their maternal line had tested and they matched with you then that would be proof

@GrimDamnFanjo I have my mothers paternal family tree all the way back to around 1820. I did this on genes reunited for free and someone with a match contacted me and that helped me build the tree.

My maternal GM is from another country so a bit harder to track but no suspected skeletons there. They all look like each other!

My paternal GPs is where my main interest is though. The tree is only what DF has told me and that might not even be true.

I will try to report back on my results although that may be a few weeks once its sent off. Might need some help understanding my results too.

And yes, the ethnicity stuff is a 'guesstimate' and best taken with a huge pinch of salt (and hence why different companies give different results) but matching your DNA against relatives is good science and very accurate, hence people find donor or birth parents and law enforcement in the US even using it to find criminals in long standing serial killer cold cases like the Golden State killer.

There was a report about dna kits on Watchdog a few weeks ago, was with PFB at the time so didn’t take a lot of it in 🤣 but here’s the link to their findings
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/tBX9dq9V9qWV687ddP6lK9/dna-ancestry-kits

In my family we've used both 23andme and Ancestry DNA and I manage the accounts for several family members on those sites, as well as doing some family history research through Ancestry. My main interest was ancestry ie where in the world ancestors came from etc, plus tracing relatives. I found 23andme much better in terms of the detail you're given about both your own DNA, and the research underlying their predictions. I have some background in health research so like to be able to read the scientific papers behind all this and I've been really impressed with the amount of material that 23andme offer, whereas I found Ancestry frustrating as they don't really tell you much about how they make their calculations or predictions. 23andme is much more transparent about how they make their predictions and how much guesswork is involved. You can adjust the confidence level of predictions to refine / broaden them.

23andme offer some things with their basic DNA test that you don't get with AncestryDNA. First, they have some really nice tools for tracking DNA inheritance through the family if several members of your family join, and comparing which bits you have in common. This is particularly interesting if you get a grandparent and grandchild participating. You can opt in to allow your results to be used for health research if you choose. 23andme also looks at your maternal haplogroup, or paternal for men, showing the migration pattern of your male or female line through history. They also now give you DNA trait information, which is about physical traits which don't have a health impact, eg they'll say "Based on these data we predict you have detached earlobes / blue or green eyes / find Coriander tastes soapy / find Broccoli and sprouts taste bitter" and then you can, if you wish, feed back on whether it's accurate.

Both 23andme and Ancestry give you matches for people who may be related and I've had just as many people contact me for the family members on 23andme as for the one on Ancestry. You can upload the raw data files from either to the free GEDMatch site to get wider comparisons, although that is quite nerdy and hard to get the hang of. If you use 23andme you get raw data for more things than if you use AncestryDNA.

Ancestry's subscription service is useful if you're doing family history research but I think it's really pricey - otoh you can just do it for a short while then unsubscribe.

If you're a bit nerdy and interested in biology and heritability, definitely go for 23andme in preference to Ancestry. If all you want to do is trace lost relatives then maybe AncestryDNA would be better as it has more users and the interface is quite simplistic. I have to say that I felt quite let down by it after 23andme because of the lack of nerdy details though!

How exactly does it work?
You send iff the kit, it's analysed, then what ?
What results do they send back ?

Test with ancestry as you can then upload to the majority of other sites for free once you have your results. You cannot do this the other way around. This then gives you access to several databases not just one.

It is definitely worth the money if you use it as a tool. We found my grandmother’s birth family and my Dads biological family through ancestry which we would never have found otherwise.

I love how people in UK argued against national ID because "all the data gov would have on us" and then send their DNA to soma company😂

I contemplate doing this sometimes but then I remember my dna giver spread himself far and wide and I don’t want new siblings in my life 😓. Maybe one day I’ll do it and then never log in again but so it’s sat there for future generations.

@beanaseireann you get a link to your results online. They show what your likely ethnicity/geographical origin is based on how you match other results in the system (this can change as more people take tests, refining the results, mine have been updated once) and all your DNA matches ordered by how closely they’re related to you.

@OneForMeToo those people may be desperately seeking any knowledge of their origins though, and testing could help them. You don’t need to care about that though