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General => Ancestral Family Tree DNA Testing => Topic started by: JaneyH_104 on Thursday 06 December 18 14:42 GMT (UK)
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If, like me, you’re stuck with Ancestry matches and a lack of people uploading to other sites with chromosome browsers, you may be interested in this new website: https://www.geneticaffairs.com/
It’s free to register; you upload your data and it runs a cross-tabulation of all your matches (within defined parameters either of closeness of relationship, or a cM range). The clever bit is that it reorganises the massive chart into clusters where several matches all match each other. This doesn’t PROVE they’re all on the family line, but it does help to narrow things down and focus your research.
There’s a helpful blog post here: https://dna-explained.com/2018/12/04/autoclustering-by-genetic-affairs/
The first few runs are free and then you can either pay for ad hoc updates or regular ones. As I have just my own data and new matches are only trickling in I’ll probably re-run it every couple of months.
Janey
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https://www.geneticaffairs.com/
The above is the website link (it got merged into the text in the above post)
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Here’s a photo of the output from my data (names removed).
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Janey, thank you I shall investigate that almost straight away. That picture matches our kitchen wallpaper by the way.
Martin
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I was alerted to this as well, by Roberta Estes blog, DNAeXplained – Genetic Genealogy
https://dna-explained.com/2018/12/04/autoclustering-by-genetic-affairs/
I don't quite understand how the charging system works, I suppose the only way to find out is to use it.
It certainly looks interesting.
Regards Margaret
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This is the subject of Roberta Estes latest blog!
I am having a problem registering as Ancestry is sending an "error" message to my log-in,but I have had a welcome e-mail and 200 credits from the company ???
Will follow it up tomorrow :)
Kim
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On the charging, you can choose to subscribe or just pay for ad hoc updates.
For subscription there is the choice of 3x per week, weekly or monthly automatic updates, then multiply by the number of kits you administer to get a charge.
I have just my own kit so the 200 free credits will last me for a few months if I only update once a month. I have nearly 200 matches at 4th cousin or closer, and this only goes up by 3-5 per month at the moment. Once all the Black Friday / Cyber Monday kits come online then I guess matches will speed up again!
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So, a credit is one set of auto clusters?
I have just signed up and am going through the set up details.
I manage mine and my husband's and have access to my first cousin's DNA. So presumably 3 credits will do for the first set?
Regards Margaret
Modified.
Monthly updates cost 18 credits per profile search
Weekly updates cost 9 credits per profile search
Daily updates cost 3 credits per profile search.
AutoCluster analysis cost 25 credits per search.
Also - 'You are currently within your free trial period. Your trial will expire on October 16th, 2020.'
Margaret
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Am interested but need a bit of clarification.
Presumably, if all tests (including those you manage) are with Ancestry it is automatically doing the job that currently we have to do manually using the DNA match search option and just tidying up into clusters those testers who match with you and each other - i.e. the shared matches
If I also upload someone who has tested with FtDNA but not with Ancestry is there any overlap between the tests at the two sites with the clusters?
Any disadvantages?
Pheno
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Pheno,
I’m still a comparative newbie on DNA testing. On your first question, I think you’re correct. The image I’ve attached here is a manual cross-tab of a group my matches I had identified in Ancestry. This has now become the 6th cluster in, coloured bright pink.
On the second question, I’m less sure. I would imagine that there will only be an overlap to the extent that people on Ancestry have also uploaded to FTDNA. You may be better posting the question at the end of Roberts’s blog article.
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Well something has gone wrong.
All I have is empty CSV files as results. A problem my end or theirs?
I might settle for searching manually.
Regards Margaret
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What about the ethics of taking other people’s data without their consent and uploading it to another website?
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What about the ethics of taking other people’s data without their consent and uploading it to another website?
I thought about that as well. The problem initially is that if you give Genetic Affairs access to your ancestry account, it can look at all of the accounts you have access to.
As far as I know, it doesn't access the individual accounts until you ask it to do so, settings are set to 'Update Interval - Never', when you first go into it.
You can delete any account you don't want it to access at startup. I was left with three, mine and my husband's plus a first cousin.
I ran the cluster test on my DNA only, and haven't got anything back as yet. I am manager of my husband's DNA account and he has given me permission to do what I want with it
I have since deleted the first cousin's account as well, after realising the implications. She gave me access, but no express or implied consent to do anything else but look at the results
I am having second thoughts about it though. I have used 34 credits with nothing back, other than to tell me mine and my husband's 20 closest matches.
I'll see if I can sort the CSV file out and report back.
Regards Margaret
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You make good points about other accounts, Sugarfizzle. However, I may have misunderstood what the site does, but are you not also loading information about your matches?
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You make good points about other accounts, Sugarfizzle. However, I may have misunderstood what the site does, but are you not also loading information about your matches?
I don't fully understand as yet how it works, but you don't actually upload information to the site.
It is like giving someone else access to your results, just like a few people have given me access to theirs.
There is no personal information given about any matches.
Whether it is wise to give someone unknown and unconnected access to my results is another matter, but I don't think it is a matter of 'taking other people’s data without their consent and uploading it to another website'.
This is a very important aspect that you have raised, and I will be interested to see what others think.
Regards Margaret
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Well something has gone wrong.
All I have is empty CSV files as results. A problem my end or theirs?
I might settle for searching manually.
Regards Margaret
A very prompt reply from Genetic Affairs in answer to my problem.
"So the files were present but completely empty? Perhaps your mail client is removing them, could you download using a webversion of your mail?"
Worked straightaway, but got to go out, no time to look through!
Regards Margaret
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Observation
I have looked at the site (Genetic Affairs) and read the Roberta Estes blog a few times and from what I can make out you have to give your log in to Ancestry, ftDNA or wherever to a third party site (Genetic Affairs). That third party site then logs into your account and mines the information there on your account and those of people who match it. If I have got this right I am unhappy about it because
1. you are giving out your log in and password to a third party to use
2. the third party is accessing your data, well that's OK if you give them permission but it is also accessing the information of who you match with and who have not given their permission for third parties to access it.
3. I am not sure how sites like Ancestry, ftDNA etc can justify this (yes I know they will argue that it is the account holders giving their permission but that is not wholly true is it, see 2 above).
So on reflection I will not be using this facility.
Question
What is of more interest to me is how is this new company doing this. A major gripe people have with Ancestry is that it does not have a chromosome browser to interpret tree matches. Yet this new site must gain access to the raw data of results if they can tabulate matches the way they do. That being the case why can't we have access to the data the new website is obviously getting? Anyone fancy questioning Ancestry about this and whether a chromosome browser is on the horizon?
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A major gripe people have with Ancestry is that it does not have a chromosome browser to interpret tree matches. Yet this new site must gain access to the raw data of results if they can tabulate matches the way they do. That being the case why can't we have access to the data the new website is obviously getting? Anyone fancy questioning Ancestry about this and whether a chromosome browser is on the horizon?
Exactly what's been going through my mind
Jane :-)
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[quote author=davidft link=topic=804727.msg6631204#msg6631204
3. I am not sure how sites like Ancestry, ftDNA etc can justify this (yes I know they will argue that it is the account holders giving their permission but that is not wholly true is it
[/quote]
I wonder if they do justify it or whether it is a breach of the terms and conditions to allow it? Do not FTDNA and My Heritage at least say they comply with EU privacy standards? But if they are not able to stop users handing over their passwords to other sites which then mine the data, that sounds to me like a major breach of privacy.Every person has many thousands of matches linked to their account who will have no say over the decision to allow access.
I am now wondering whether I should delete my results from the sites if my matches are giving access to random third party sites?
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I have just emailed FTDNA to ask whether use of this site is consistent with their terms and conditions.
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I have just emailed FTDNA to ask whether use of this site is consistent with their terms and conditions.
I'll be interested in what they say (yes I am a customer of theirs).
As it says on their home page "we will not share your DNA" which is surely what this new company is being allowed to do. I also read the privacy policy quickly and am not sure they should be allowing Genetic Affairs to operate on their site if they follow their own rules.
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I agree. I do wonder if they are allowing access to the company concerned, however, or if customers are breaching their terms and conditions by handing over their login ( which seems an extraordinary thing to agree to do by the way). Nonetheless FTDNA has a responsibility to the rest of us (or at least I hope they do!) and should have been able to detect this activity and the use of their name on the Genetic Affairs website, if this is unauthorised.
Added: clause 6C(iv) of the Terms of Service for FTDNA says users agree not to post or share any person’s personal, proprietary or confidential information without their permission.
I have also emailed Ancestry to ask about consistency with their terms and conditions of service.
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Some very important points have been raised here, and I will be interested to see what ftDNA and Ancestry have to say about the matter.
To view things from another perspective, have you uploaded your DNA to Gedmatch?
Run one to many.
You are presented with a list of 2000 matches, complete with email addresses.
Click on 'L list' for one of those matches
Another 2000 matches with email addresses.
Click on 'L list', another 2000
Ad infinitum
Details about millions of testers.
What can you do with the details? - Not a lot.
What can you do with the email addresses? - Quite a lot if you wanted to do harm.
I realise that there is a difference - you have willingly and knowingly uploaded there, and are happy for your DNA details and email to be shared with thousands of other people.
In reality, we have opened a can of worms in having DNA testing in the first place, who knows what will become of it in years to come.
I hope ftDNA and Ancestry reply soon.
Regards Margaret
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Another viewpoint again. I am trying to get my head around this.
You aren't sharing any details of your matches with anyone, other than username and amount of cMs shared.
Ancestry allows people to give access to their results, as viewer, collaborator or manager.
I have shared my ancestry results with my husband and cousin, they have shared theirs with me. A couple of others have given me access to their results.
I have access to names and cMs shared of all my cousin's matches, approx half of them unrelated to me in any way.
The bare facts of the other half, if I knew for certain which they were, mean nothing to me.
Does this make sense?
Regards Margaret
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[quote author=davidft link=topic=804727.msg6631204#msg6631204
3. I am not sure how sites like Ancestry, ftDNA etc can justify this (yes I know they will argue that it is the account holders giving their permission but that is not wholly true is it
I wonder if they do justify it or whether it is a breach of the terms and conditions to allow it? Do not FTDNA and My Heritage at least say they comply with EU privacy standards? But if they are not able to stop users handing over their passwords to other sites which then mine the data, that sounds to me like a major breach of privacy.Every person has many thousands of matches linked to their account who will have no say over the decision to allow access.
I am now wondering whether I should delete my results from the sites if my matches are giving access to random third party sites?
The problem is not with the companies the problem is with the individuals who share their data and the individuals who share their passwords with other sites.
When you have your DNA tested you are given a choice regarding groups of people you wish to share with. It is up to you to share carefully, the tighter you control such sharing the fewer matches you will receive.
If you then download your DNA Data and upload it to another DNA site you relieve your testing company the responsibility as to who the new company shares your data with that is between you and the new company and is decided by the new sharing rules you agree to.
Every match you can see has given their testing company the authorisation to share that Data.
If however you give a new company your sign on details you are giving that company permission to be you and receive all the information you are entitled to receive, in other words you have breach the trust of everyone who has trusted you with their information in order to gain additional information.
It is no good crying that the companies are sharing the information they are simply following their instructions and sharing with people you have told them they can trust and share the data with.
Look at it this way if you have a credit card (cc) the cc company has a duty not to share your login details with anyone else. If you breach their security process by giving your details to someone and lending them your cc then if that person withdraws all the money in your account it is not the cc card company that is at fault it is you.
People have to start accepting responsibility for their actions rather than trying to blame others.
Cheers
Guy
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I agree. I do wonder if they are allowing access to the company concerned, however, or if customers are breaching their terms and conditions by handing over their login ( which seems an extraordinary thing to agree to do by the way). Nonetheless FTDNA has a responsibility to the rest of us (or at least I hope they do!) and should have been able to detect this activity and the use of their name on the Genetic Affairs website, if this is unauthorised.
Added: clause 6C(iv) of the Terms of Service for FTDNA says users agree not to post or share any person’s personal, proprietary or confidential information without their permission.
I have also emailed Ancestry to ask about consistency with their terms and conditions of service.
I will be interested to read the responses from the companies.
I haven't been to the website, but I read through the blog post which is linked to at the start of this thread, the first time I read the part about the credits I quote below, I thought it was quoting from the website, reading again, it might only be from the blog post, . . .
quote:
[The great news is that everyone begins with 200 free credits which may last you for quite some time. Or not. Consider them introductory crack from your new pusher.]
. . . disturbing, I think.
But I am very concerned about data being accessed/shared without the consent of the person whose data it is.
Lisa
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What is of more interest to me is how is this new company doing this. A major gripe people have with Ancestry is that it does not have a chromosome browser to interpret tree matches. Yet this new site must gain access to the raw data of results if they can tabulate matches the way they do. That being the case why can't we have access to the data the new website is obviously getting? Anyone fancy questioning Ancestry about this and whether a chromosome browser is on the horizon?
I don't think it is accessing the raw data.
I think what it is doing is going through and finding ALL the shared matches (i.e. two people who share more than 20cM) for you and putting this in a table.
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It’s free to register; you upload your data and it runs a cross-tabulation of all your matches (within defined parameters either of closeness of relationship, or a cM range). The clever bit is that it reorganises the massive chart into clusters where several matches all match each other. This doesn’t PROVE they’re all on the family line, but it does help to narrow things down and focus your research.
In a way, these clusters seem similar to the Ancestry DNA Circles. To quote Ancestry "A DNA Circle is a group of individuals who all have the same ancestor in their family trees and where each member shares DNA with at least one other individual in the circle. These circles are created directly from your DNA and your family tree in a five-step process."
It may be worth a look.
:)
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I don't think it is accessing the raw data.
I think what it is doing is going through and finding ALL the shared matches (i.e. two people who share more than 20cM) for you and putting this in a table.
It still involves people handing over their log ins so that a third party website can access data (including names of course) of people who have not consented to this.
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What is of more interest to me is how is this new company doing this. A major gripe people have with Ancestry is that it does not have a chromosome browser to interpret tree matches. Yet this new site must gain access to the raw data of results if they can tabulate matches the way they do. That being the case why can't we have access to the data the new website is obviously getting? Anyone fancy questioning Ancestry about this and whether a chromosome browser is on the horizon?
I don't think it is accessing the raw data.
I think what it is doing is going through and finding ALL the shared matches (i.e. two people who share more than 20cM) for you and putting this in a table.
I don't think that is the full picture though. The fuller picture is that they are matching specific matches on specific chromosomes to specific people i.e. going into greater detail that can only be achieved by accessing the underlying data to some extent (sorry if I have not explained that very well).
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I don't think that is the full picture though. The fuller picture is that they are matching specific matches on specific chromosomes to specific people i.e. going into greater detail that can only be achieved by accessing the underlying data to some extent (sorry if I have not explained that very well).
We don't know that though.
I think it just goes through all of your mutual matches at whichever site and takes note of who matches whom, which is the same information that any of us can access at Ancestry. It doesn't need to access that at a chromosome level.
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We don't know that though.
I think it just goes through all of your mutual matches at whichever site and takes note of who matches whom, which is the same information that any of us can access at Ancestry. It doesn't need to access that at a chromosome level.
Well if it is not accessing data at the chromosome level and making matches there it is much less useful than matching at say Gedmatch, ftdna or MyHeritage all of which have chromosome browsers and if that is the case then why use Genetic Affairs at all ?
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Well if it is not accessing data at the chromosome level and making matches there it is much less useful than matching at say Gedmatch, ftdna or MyHeritage all of which have chromosome browsers and if that is the case then why use Genetic Affairs at all ?
I agree that it's a lot less useful than matching at a site with a chromosome browser.
But most matches at Ancestry never upload anywhere else so this is a way of speeding up the process of finding which of your matches share 20cM or more with your other matches. This info is already available if you want to go through hundreds of pages match by match.
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I agree that it's a lot less useful than matching at a site with a chromosome browser.
But most matches at Ancestry never upload anywhere else so this is a way of speeding up the process of finding which of your matches share 20cM or more with your other matches. This info is already available if you want to go through hundreds of pages match by match.
I really am not trying to be difficult here but if Genetic Affairs is just telling you that you share 20+cM with bob, sue and mary without giving any indication what chromosomes its on then it could be false matching in that whilst you do share 20+cM with each of those people it could be a different 20+cM in each case but you would not know that unless you had the chromosome breakdown. (In other words you have made matches with three different ancestors to three different people and not one ancestor matching with three different people). That is why I think there "must" be more to this matching and Genetic Affairs must somehow be getting access to underlying data.
And just for the record I do accept I could be wrong on all this but it is not possible to tell from the Genetic Affairs website that I can see
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Hi there,
I found this thread and thought it might be a good idea to come over and try to explain some more. First, I am not accessing any hidden data source on Ancestry, I wish they would provide the chromosome data but I still haven't found it :-). In addition, I am not sure if you have the Leeds methodology (https://www.danaleeds.com/) but my method is more or less a Leeds on steroids. The added value is in the automated clustering of the matches and the visualization also helps in the analyis. I could try to come up with reasons to use it but luckily yesterday a similar question was raised on FB, the replies are excellent so if anyone wants to read about how people employ the AutoCluster approach: https://www.facebook.com/groups/geneticgenealogytipsandtechniques/permalink/549573322173039/
Now for the aspects of privacy. I understand that it might difficult for quite some people to hand out the login credentials of these sites. Personally, I would probably feel the same. I wish I could use the old API system of 23andme. Using that approach, I could just ask a user for permission to only see his relatives. For Ancestry, it is possible to create a dummy account which is then given limited rights. I think it is impossible to download the raw results without performing some manual invocations on the concerned websites. The DNAGedcom tool that is already around for quite some years is using a similar approach with respect to downloading matches but ofcourse they don't store the passwords on their server, everything is local. I address several of the aspects of security on my site, so feel free to look around.
Feel free to ask for more info, I don't have a lot of time but I do think it's important to explain as much as possible.
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I try to keep groups of shared matches in a spreadsheet. Obviously, the clustering, visualisation, and time-saving offered by Genetic Affairs would be a bonus.
The drawback with Ancestry is that Shared Matches only show people with above 20 cMs (“4th cousins” or closer). If you look at someone with, say, 10 cMs it only shows those with 20 cMs or more. You cannot see shared matches between “Distant cousins”.
Does anyone know if this new tool picks up the shared matches between these, say, 10-19 cMs or distant cousins?
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I know they have minimum cMs set as 9 if you want, but you can also set cousin matches anywhere from 1st to 5th cousins. Unfortunately they are having problems with Ancestry at the moment so that isn't currently working, but I did do one with FTDNA which has helped me no end. This is what it looks like, as a visual aid, but you also get loads of the info represented in spreadsheets etc.
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I try to keep groups of shared matches in a spreadsheet. Obviously, the clustering, visualisation, and time-saving offered by Genetic Affairs would be a bonus.
The drawback with Ancestry is that Shared Matches only show people with above 20 cMs (“4th cousins” or closer). If you look at someone with, say, 10 cMs it only shows those with 20 cMs or more. You cannot see shared matches between “Distant cousins”.
Does anyone know if this new tool picks up the shared matches between these, say, 10-19 cMs or distant cousins?
Distant cousins also have shared matches, but in that case the share at least 20 cM while they could share less with you.
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I know they have minimum cMs set as 9 if you want, but you can also set cousin matches anywhere from 1st to 5th cousins. Unfortunately they are having problems with Ancestry at the moment so that isn't currently working, but I did do one with FTDNA which has helped me no end. This is what it looks like, as a visual aid, but you also get loads of the info represented in spreadsheets etc.
Have you and whoever is calling themselves Genetic Affairs considered the privacy issues raised earlier in this thread? You are not just giving access to your own data but to that of other people. I have not yet heard back from either Ancestry or FTDNA but I have asked if handing over log ins to Genetic Affairs and thus access to information belonging to other people is consistent with the conditions of service. In the meantime you might like to have a look at those conditions yourself, including clause 6 of the FTDNA ones.
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To be frank, I'd trust Genetic Affairs to just run the matching and produce the table and not share the match list more than I would trust some of my matches to not go sharing a mutual match list somewhere they shouldn't.
Here's their privacy policy
https://www.geneticaffairs.com/privacy-policy.html
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This is a business model which is based on gaining access to information belonging to people who have not consented to that access.
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To be frank, I'd trust Genetic Affairs to just run the matching and produce the table and not share the match list more than I would trust some of my matches to not go sharing a mutual match list somewhere they shouldn't.
Here's their privacy policy
https://www.geneticaffairs.com/privacy-policy.html
It is up to you who you trust with your data. It is not (or at least should not be) up to you to decide who to trust with other people’s data.
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I've been using this method, manually, for the last few months. Of course I've not finished and, as new matches are added, it needs constant updating. I've not completed all the match groupings but, by doing it manually, I'm getting to find more about each match than I would if it was done for me.
Gadget
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Gardenshed
You say 'It is up to you who you trust with your data. It is not (or at least should not be) up to you to decide who to trust with other people’s data.'
What part of other people's data is being shared? I am still trying to get my head round this.
Nobody responded to my analogy with loading to Gedmatch and the ability to garner millions of email addresses, or my comment about sharing DNA access with others.
As long as you personally have not uploaded your DNA to Gedmatch, or shared your results with even one other person, or manage the results of even one other person, you are being consistent with the views expressed by you in this thread.
If you have done any of those things, then your viewpoint is that, your viewpoint. Others have different ones.
I am surprised that you did not raise any questions with Genetic Affairs.
You were rather rude about a first time poster -
'Have you and whoever is calling themselves Genetic Affairs considered the privacy issues raised earlier in this thread'.
I contacted him about the views being expressed in this thread so that he could explain things here, but nobody got back to him specifically.
He said at the end of his post
'Feel free to ask for more info, I don't have a lot of time but I do think it's important to explain as much as possible'.
Regards Margaret
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I have asked for this thread to be closed as unproductive now it has descended into people calling other forum members out.
To answer the question that others had not specifically asked Genetic Affairs questions, answering for myself my reasons are
1. I have detailed my concerns upthread and GA has already had the opportunity to answer them fully but did not.
2. I indicated upthread that I was not going to make use of GA so to continue asking questions about it could be seen as argumentative and disruptive.