AncestryDNA: Genetic Ethnicity Test, Ethnicity Estimate, AncestryDNA Test Ki

 

I’m writing this review after reading others and hopefully this will help some people decide whether or not to buy this test.

What are you buying?
There are three parts to this product, all linked to the Ancestry family tree service/website.

1 – ethnicity estimates:
Your DNA is passed down from generation to generation and can be traced back a couple of hundred years. What Ancestry – and other DNA ethnicity providers – do is to compare your DNA to a database of other people’s, to estimate where in the world your ancestors came from.
If your result says 70% Egyptian it does not mean your direct ancestors were Egyptian, it means people who are in the company’s DNA database and match with your DNA pattern, usually have roots in Egypt. It gives you a guide, or hint of what to look for when building your family tree and to where a paper trail might lead – although you might have to look back hundreds of years to get there.
It also does not mean you are what the results say. Mine tell me almost half of my DNA can be traced back to Scotland, but that does not mean I am Scottish.
DO use this service if you are interested in your roots, want help to trace your family history and can accept that the results are an estimate and not a guarantee.
DO NOT use this service if you’re looking for confirmation that you’re one thing or another and feel the need to prove it, or if seeing a result that you don’t recognise will hit your mental health and lead you to think you’re not the person you always thought you were, because you are you, no matter what.
BE AWARE: These results are estimates. They change over time as the reference database improves. You can expect to get refreshed estimates every couple of years which might change the locations or percentages reported. This does not change who you are!

2 – Finding family
The number one reason for most Ancestry DNA users to get this product is to see which other Ancestry DNA users they are related to. Adopted people often use it to try to trace their biological family, other’s, like me, out of pure curiosity and to help build their family tree backwards in time. This part of the service is optional, you can opt out of it before or after getting your results.
By opting in you should be aware of the risk of surprises – you might find a relative that shocks you and reveals old family secrets – no matter how much you think you know already! Also, you might not, how many DNA linked users/relatives you see depends entirely on how many DNA linked users/relatives have also taken the test.
For me, I discovered that my dad has a sister he never knew about, and a grandad that didn’t know he had a daughter, now living on the other side of the world. Unfortunately it was too late for my dad and grandad to find out, by my mum, sister and I were lucky enough to meet my aunt and cousin, something that wouldn’t have been possible without this product. It also helped my aunt to learn about her biological father after a 10 year search for information and only knowing his name and roughly where he was from.
I’ve got over 40,000 DNA matched users on my list, 400+ classed as ‘close’ relatives. One of which helped piece together a whole branch of my family tree that we had no idea about. I’ve learned so much about my roots from this 6th cousin and it’s been fascinating.
On the other hand, I have a 2nd great grandad who wasn’t British and left no trace behind after (we assume) leaving England in the 1800s, but there’s no DNA linked people that I’ve been able to identify to help piece together this part of the jigsaw. The good news is, if somebody sharing his DNA takes the test in future, they will appear on my list and we can hopefully start to fill in some blanks!
This means, even if your initial results are disappointing, don’t give up. Keep coming back to them each year and see what new matches you have, one day somebody important in the chain might just take the same test and help you answer your unanswerable questions.
DO take this test if you want to build your family tree and find out more about your history, use it to build outwards and add distant cousins whose linked family tree’s can then help you go backwards in time to fill in your blanks.
DO NOT take this test if seeing a surprising result will have an adverse affect on your wellbeing. It happens more often than we might expect.

3 – Thrulines
This is a feature specifically for those who have a family tree with Ancestry. Thrulines analyses your tree and the tree’s of your DNA matches (see 2) to look for common ancestors, then helps you to fill in the blanks. You have 16 great grandparents, you might know who 12 of them were and have four question marks, Thrulines will help you fill in those blanks if it can link the people you know to people in somebody else’s tree.
DO use this feature to help build your family tree backwards.
DO NOT use this feature blindly – just because another user has a relative in their tree that matches your relative, the other users tree is only as good as their research. Use the information as a basis for your own research to make sure the suggestions are correct before adding information to your tree.

What are DNA test results?
Scientists will test your DNA and map out each part to build a genetic picture of you. This is basically all in numbers that computers and scientists will understand. You can download the data from Ancestry’s website after you get the results and take a look for yourself, but it won’t mean much.

Ancestry will look at each strand (chromosone) of your DNA to see what it looks like, they’ll then compare it against their ethnicity database to see if it looks like other samples from certain places around the world. They’ll also compare it to other DNA customers to see if any have the same bits of DNA.
This forms the basis of the results you see on the website.

Will they sell my DNA?
Your DNA is a sample you send off in a tube, it will be destroyed after testing. All that is left are a few lines of information in a text file that I mentioned above. You will not be cloned by Ancestry or any other organisation!
You will be given the option of allowing Ancestry to use the information in this file for research purposes. If you give permission then the information is used, but not your name or other identifying data. You’ll also be given the option of completing surveys about yourself – what colour eyes, hair do you have, illnesses, food preferences etc. Your answers can be linked back to the answers of other people with similar DNA and if everybody who matches one particular part of DNA all have blue eyes, the scientists might predict that the next person with that DNA will also have blue eyes. More usefully, if everybody that repots having a serious illness all have the same strands of DNA, they might be able to investigate that a bit deeper to find underlying causes or cures – not in the next year or two, it takes a long time, but you could end up helping your children or grandchildren.

What about my privacy?
Of the three features of your DNA test results, the most useful one is family matching, where Ancestry lists other Ancestry DNA users who have the same bits of DNA as you. You can use this feature to find family members, message them securely (without giving out your contact details) and research your/their family trees. This is optional and you can opt out of it, but it’s also the main feature so think carefully before buying if this isn’t what you want. You also have the option of signing up using an alias, there are no ID checks, so you don’t have to list your actual name (although again, family names are really useful for family research, so don’t be too worried about it).
Big Bad Tech DO NOT have access to your DNA, DNA results, or family matching lists. The only thing anybody will see is your (user) name, any profile information you type in and choose to make public, and any family trees that you build and choose to make public.

Are there any other charges?
Related to the DNA test – NO.
To get the most out of Ancestry as a service, you will build a family tree, this is also free, however there is a subscription charge to view historic records (census details, BMD registers etc). This is optional but will really help you build your tree. You can subscribe for six months or a year, then cancel; your tree will stay as it is, links to the records you’ve found are retained, but your ability to view images of those records is lost until you resubscribe.

My Ethnicity is wrong!
See above – it is an estimate and one which is regularly updated as the background reference data improves. You can take a DNA test with four different companies and get four different ethnicity estimates. It’s all relative to the amount of information they have to compare against – and Ancestry has arguably the biggest reference database, but it will never be more than an estimate.
I see lots of complaints from people who say their ethnicity is wrong, “it says I’m English but all my family are German”, well, somewhere down the line, way back in time, your ancestors might have moved from England to Germany, maybe as part of a larger community that stayed together and bred together. You just haven’t found the evidence or paper trail yet. Persevere. Remember, the results are telling you that of the matching samples Ancestry have, they mainly originate from the places reported. It might not be true for you, but it is for the majority.
There’s also people who don’t like how right the results are, “It tells me I’m English but I already knew that.” Well, congratulations, you don’t have the problem the others did and your paper trail is spot on! For some areas of the world, such as Asia, the number of Ancestry users is much lower than for North America or Europe. Rather than discouraging other Asians from using Ancestry DNA, the answer is to encourage them! The more users there are, the more accurate and details your results will get. It’s only once there are enough samples to narrow down to smaller areas that your results will get more detailed.