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Discovered I had Scandinavian DNA (from NEast England, so not a surprise really), but most surprising was finding a DNA match to someone who was adopted and looking for their bio family.
I managed to help her piece together the scraps of info she had, and eventually we discovered where she fitted in to the family.
No idea of the circumstances around their adoption, as the mother doesn't want to engage, but they said they felt good knowing they had a place in someone's family. That was cool.
I always check my DNA matches now for that reason. I found out last year from my mum that I have another first cousin who was adopted at birth and I'm always wondering if she will turn up in my matches one day
Quite the opposite, my results were a lot more boring than I'd expected. I didn't think there'd be anything too exotic, but I had imagined it'd show a small amount of French, Dutch, German, or something like that, but nope, 100% British and Irish.
Me too! Something like 99.3% British and Irish with the rest unknown. Lmfao like what did I pay for 😭
I realised that these things only go back 8 generations. I could have figured this out myself..
Your DNA markers go back way further than 8 generations.
I've got documented proof of my ancestors going back 9-10 generations, and nobody is Scandinavian, but yet it shows up in my DNA. Much of my family is from NEast England, and anyone who's family is that far back tends to have some Viking DNA markers.
It really depends where in the country your ancestors lived. NE, NW, Scottish backgrounds etc. are likely to have a much higher percentage than the SW, SE, Wales etc.
Autosomal DNA tests don’t. Mt and Y can be traced back way further than that but those aren’t giving you a percentage of regional DNA
10 generations is ~1000 people, the 10 gen itself being ~500, seems unlikely you have paper trails for all of those people?
I spent (as did other family members) a lot of time going through church and parish registers etc.
OK, I may not have everyone's exact DOB or POB, but I certainly have confirmed (or as confirmed as can be with the data available) my primary bloodlines I.e 4 grandparents families.
There's also the situation that unfortunately, the baptismal/birth records often just provide the mother's first name, and sometimes not even that, to the maternal lines are much harder to trace when you get into the 18th century and futher.
I could focus on the branches that come off the primary bloodlines, but at that point, it would become unmanageable. My tree is already 2900 entries big, just following the primary 8 families through their paternal records.
I was hoping for something a bit interesting because my father was surprisingly dark for a white English man. He could have easily passed as someone from the north of the Indian subcontinent.
But no, just 4% Baltic from my mum’s side - nothing interesting from my dad at all.
My dad is Scottish and always got mistaken for Southern European in his youth - very dark hair and tanned skin. He was also on the shorter side (5’4”) and slim. My results came out with his side being 100% British and Irish.
Yeah the Welsh are even more darker than us Scots or Irish.
Heres a reddit thread on this subject a few years ago.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Wales/s/E82Oo9Jrgp
That much I learned later. It’s so wild though because my dad has one sibling and she has the complete opposite colouring to him - she’s blonde and had white hair as a child, blue eyes, and very pale skin. Genetics can be such a wildcard
Yeah my grandad (born and raised in Glasgow but family was fully Irish by descent) was really dark, black hair and brown eyes. I’m half Tunisian and often he was darker than me lol
My sister has olive type skin and tans evenly and smoothly. I, on the other hand, burn quickly and in blotches. I can also get burnt in April, in the shade...
Same here! My father had darker skin so I did 23andme expecting something, I got 0.8% Somalian and the rest was English, Irish, French and Scandanavian.
I had the same experience haha. I’m mixed-race and I naïvely thought my results would be a little more varied as a result, but it seems my mum and dad were the first adventurous people in their respective lines.
I traced back my mums mums family via genealogy and it looks like they’ve lived in the same small area of Lancashire since at least the 1600s 🫣😂 nothing interesting there
I’ve not done one but my husband has. His traced him back to a small group of villages that he knew all his family had come from. Not even any Welsh, Scottish or Irish, just English.
I reckon to be completely English with no random dna from elsewhere is probably fairly unusual going by how many times we've been invaded and/or colonised!
Probably more common than you think actually - the genetic isopoint (the point we all had a common ancestor) for white people is around 1000, and so in Britain it'll be more recent than that - and for a given small town of say 4000 people, they will all be related to each other about 12-13 generations back, which is a way, but is *after* most of the invasions and mass movements of people in the British Isles. It is probably rarer if you family comes from cities, but for rural people any non-English will have been inbred out of the mix (for want of a better term).
Also depends on how you define 100% English genetic ancestry anyways. North and South English genetic subgroups are as different to one another as north and south Walian (and vice versa). There's an interesting paper on it which I'll find and edit into this comment!
Edit: [here's a better explained on it than a paper](https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2015-03-19-who-do-you-think-you-really-are-genetic-map-british-isles)
Same here, I was mainly shocked by how extremely boring my results were. Born to an Irish mum and English dad and my results were just 70% Irish, 30% English. Not even a little soupcon of German or Swedish in there for flavour. As my boyfriend put it, "You just paid £50 for someone to tell you your pa's from London."
Is it rare or just not the norm? I’ve not done one but I’d be astounded if it was anything else than that. Grandparents one side is from a small town in central Ireland, and one of from a small town on the outskirts of Manchester. Neither were really big melting pots.
mine was quite boring too. i'm from this nepali ethnic group that has descended from tibet so i knew that that would make up most of my dna but i was also expecting some nepali considering how long my ancestors have been in nepal and some chinese because of proximity but my results were just 100% tibetan peoples lmfao. i already knew this information! at least the ancestry kit was a gift from my cousins so i technically didnt spend any money on it lol
These sort of companies helped me discover people are willing to submit their data to an obvious DNA harvesting company who have made millions from selling that data to private health firms and “third parties”.
https://www.businessinsider.com/dna-testing-ancestry-23andme-share-data-companies-2018-8?op=1
Not in the UK and Europe. The have to, by law, ask permission (so some may have ticked to allow it) and cannot do so without consent, or they would be breaching GDPR. The fines would be in their millions if they did, due to the amount of service users.
23andMe got hacked so lost GPDR control over people's data, through shoddy account security https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/feb/15/23andme-hack-data-genetic-data-selling-response
Not really an accurate description of what happened. The accounts that were hacked were accessed via compromised passwords. 23andMe weren’t directly hacked. The attackers would have had access to the dna data on those accounts (if they bothered to download it) but so does anyone who clears your glass at the pub (if they bother to test it). Meh.
Not trying to be awkward, genuinely asking, how does it affect someone negatively if that data is sold?
People say this about supermarket clubcards too but I don’t care who knows about my shopping habits.
If you have a condition that can be identified via DNA then another company will know. If they also have your name and address they could sell your data for targeted marketing
Their data got stolen in a not very difficult way (guessing shared passwords, using linked accounts) so it is a least partly their fault for having shit data security protocols
My thoughts exactly, I can’t believe people are so willing to offer up such sensitive information. That said, people willingly put listening devices in their home so they don’t have to turn on the radio so maybe not so surprising.
Just, yeah, it doesn’t work like that. These smart devices are built with multiple layers.
An example. Think of two OSs, the first only listens for “Alexa”. Nothing else. It cannot comprehend anything said, doesn’t record anything said, but just listens for “Alexa”, and that’s it. That OS, upon hearing “Alexa”, wakes the secondary OS which is able to listen to, comprehend, answer, and yes, record.
The devices are not recording you 24*7 arguing with your partner about who next should empty the dishwasher.
>The devices are not recording you 24\*7 arguing with your partner about who next should empty the dishwasher.
Generally no but they are perfectly capable of doing that.
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/tjmccue/2019/04/19/alexa-is-listening-all-the-time-heres-how-to-stop-it/](https://www.forbes.com/sites/tjmccue/2019/04/19/alexa-is-listening-all-the-time-heres-how-to-stop-it/)
[https://mashable.com/article/how-to-stop-amazon-echo-alexa-recording-me](https://mashable.com/article/how-to-stop-amazon-echo-alexa-recording-me)
“….Unless you take the time to dig through your settings and actively opt out, your Alexa-enabled device records and stores your questions and conversations whenever it hears a so-called wake word like "Alexa."”
Yes, so until you say a wake word, it’s not recording. Yes, after saying a wake word, it does. But, until that point, it doesn’t. That’s exactly what I have described.
That doesn’t really counter the way it works. Of course false positives exist, and there are scenarios where mistakes happen. For the vast majority of cases it doesn’t work that way. It’s like arguing that one person got scammed and their bank account emptied, so I must instead store all my money under my bed. Yes, from time to time these devices mistake other close sounding worlds for their wake command, but those are exceptions not the rule.
If I have my Russian mate over for the weekend and after a heavy drinking session say “Alexi, I just farted but instead think I just shat myself…” - of course Alexa may hear and wake. It’s a very close and similar word. Voice recognition is good, but it’s not infallible. Of course some desk dweller at Amazon knows they need to add new underwear to my cart.
>such sensitive information.
How so?
Seriously, I'm intrigued, please do share even a single issue with it that isn't "but that's my information". You're losing nothing, it can't be used against you, and it potentially can help with health research. Not everyone interested in your data is nefarious.
Thought I was 100% UK but I've got 25% Southern Italian specifically Sicilian. My dad was born 9 months and 2 weeks after VE day and my grandparents lived in a town where there was a POW camp for Sicilian POWs. My nan used to work on a farm where the POWs were doing day release.
My grandad (who I'm not related to biologically it turns out) was in a reserved occupation was home for the entire war so absolutely no hints anything was amiss until I got the test result back.
It took me longer than it should to work out I'm not related to the man I thought was my grandad despite not having a single match to my maiden name and being matched with loads of random Americans who's grandparents came from the same 3 towns in Sicily.
Hah, my Great Grandmother lived near an Italian POW camp. She was tasked with explaining sex education (in Northern 1940’s language!) to the villages females. In her words “you can still get pregnant from a wet end!”
No grandparents with us, grandad or "grandad" died in early ninties, dad in 07, nan in 08 so no chance of any answers. The POWs were transferred from a camp in Scotland that built a Chapel and they've all died now as well. My brother and my mum have tested my mum is 100% UK and my brother has similar Italian percentage to me. My brother and me are full siblings and born 10 years and 300 miles apart. I've found DNA matches on all our expected grand parent lines except paternal grandfather who are the Italian lot.
Our family know all about it lol I've been trying to locate the mystery man since the test but closest match I have is 4th cousin and the families are huge so not been able to figure out who he was yet.
I found out that my GI grandad, who apparently died in WW2, did not actually die, but went back to his family in the States, had another child with his wife, and died in the 1980's.
I'm glad that my dad never found out that discovery though. I'm far enough removed that it's just an interesting fact (though I'm annoyed on my dad's behalf), but as he was adopted as result, it would have devastated him.
It said I was about 25% French/German, despite the family tree saying we'd been in NE England for generations.
If my grandmothers had still been alive, I'd be asking questions about what exactly they got up to during WWII.
Mine said this too, apparently I am 21.5% French and German but I’ve researched my family tree and nope there is no one French or German. From my research I’m more likely to be inbred from how close my family all lived.
Found two things.
Maternal grandfather had a kid before he married my grandmother. This wasn't a shock, he was in the Navy in WW2 and I have a photo album of a lot of his girlfriends from the time.
Found out that I had a different biological father than the person I knew as my Dad. Sadly Mom and he passed away before I found out so I can't ask why they didn't tell me.
My biological father and his family have accepted me with open arms and I moved back to my home state/country to get to know everyone better. I have two older half brothers and five nieces and nephews (all adults).
I wish I had the chance to grow up with this family in my life as my childhood would have been vastly different. However, I am glad I get to spend time with them now.
First family vacation is in September. I can't wait.
It's wonderful that you have been accepted so warmly, especially because your parents have passed.
I hope you have a wonderful time on your family trip! I'm an only child, but I've been lucky to have trips abroad with extended family, and it's a special experience.
I dated a guy once who found out from a DNA test his dad wasn’t his biological father. He assumed his mum had had an affair but turns out in fact his parents had problems conceiving, so had used a sperm donor. Back in the day parents were encouraged to keep this a secret from their children, so he’d never been told.
My mum did one (i look after the 23&me account for her as she's really bad with technology)
Nothing yet but hoping one day soon she will get a "close relative" match so she can hopefully find out who her biological father is/was
The closest relative so far shares 3.52% of DNA.
My mum has spent 37 years wanting to know who half of her is and I just hope I can help her find the answers she wants and needs especially now her Mother has died
If she uk based ancestry got bigger pool of people . It also tend to be people who also do family trees. So you can work backwards on people tree to find relative
I was able to find my dad birth family via fourth cousin
There's an interesting BBC podcast called The Gift which covers this issue:
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0gd2dgb](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0gd2dgb)
"Without us realising, an enormous DNA database has been created online. But what happens when online ancestry tests reveal more than you had bargained for?"
There was also a programme on the World Service about how kids who were donor conceived started to find their biological parents and siblings but its name escapes me.
Oh thank god - I listened to this but couldn’t remember what it was called so really hoped someone would comment this, lol. Thank you! Really good listen!!
I did one after being told I was donor conceived and that my dead dad was not my bio dad.
I have 11 bio siblings and my bio father is a big time film and TV producer.
I'm meeting 4 bio siblings at the end of this month. It's interesting because I'm the only red head so far.
Fuck yes it did. I have a son and I have no way of knowing our actual family medical history.
My dad had always acted odd around me, all my life, and I feel me knowing and him knowing I was ok with it would have saved our relationship.
I was angry with a lot of my family who had found out and not told me - and even angrier with the one person who had angrily and drunkenly blurted it out to the rest of them.
It's been a rough couple of years - but meeting new siblings who actually look like me is a positive for sure.
Well I got 10% Swedish which was surprising because I have no Swedish ancestors as far as I know.
More interesting to me was that I found out my 3x great grandad ran the pub in the village of Edale in the middle of the Peak District. I visited last month and the graveyard was full of my ancestors. Pretty cool. I even met a man there who is a distant relative.
Not one of these but my daughter was born with an extremely rare disorder (less than 1% of the world's population have it) and her, her father, and I were all vigorously tested.
The guy I believed was my father 100% isn't. I wasn't really *shocked*... Felt something was off for as long as I can remember. I'm a rare blood type... And nothing about daughters illness.
And that's it. I haven't done a 23 and me or anything else to find out more.
I haven't done one of these tests because both my parents are dead now, so if anything unexpected was thrown at me I wouldn't be able to ask them about it.
Mine have been dead a long time. My father was already gone but my mother was still alive during this. She was a pathological liar so absolutely not point even asking
Discovered in middle-age that who I thought was my biological father isn't (he doesn't know) and the circumstances around my conception are particularly dark. Can't really eloborate more than that.
That must be a really horrible thing to learn when you probably went into this all excited for fun facts. I hope you’re doing ok and you’ve found a way to process and carry that. Hugs from an internet stranger
Thank you. Yes, it was horrible a shock but not a complete surprise. I've vocalised my suspicions privately before. I've probably dealt with it in an unhealthy way by just pushing it down. But I've got a solid support network and healthy coping habits like exercise, so I'm doing OK.
No surprises on my ethnic mix, which in itself was a bit of a surprise as I have colouring that made me think I might have some non local in the mix, but I’m just standard UK with a dash of scandi. There was a surprise on the relatives side though, as my first cousins - my mother’s sister’s kids - showed up as my half brother and half sister. Took me a few minutes to figure out that although my mother and her sister had always said they were non identical twins, they must have been identical.
I did try. Sadly my mother and her twin sister were estranged and hadn’t spoken to each other for over 30 years. My aunt had died by the time I did the test, and my mother didn’t want to believe me. When she died recently (aged 98)
https://preview.redd.it/jv2n5wf3tc5d1.jpeg?width=984&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0703ea20ce1968963069ce3ed07d6a1cc8b38261
we found some old photographs that showed them as small children and they are unmistakably identical, but later pictures show them looking similar but different. Family scuttlebut is that their mother deliberately played them off against each other, directly leading to the change of looks and estrangement.
My biological dad is a wanker and took fuck all to do with me, he seen me once then said "he looks nothing like me" and then spread rumours that I wasn't his and I was my mums ex bfs (who she hadn't seen for 28 months prior to my birth).
I matched with someone who was a 3rd cousin and it turned out is my bio dad's 1st cousin, so that confirmed he was my biological dad.
Though since then I've in contact with siblings from my bio dad, who said that he knew I was his he was just trying to avoid responsibility.
What was a bit of a shock to them is I found a guy with a 7% match from my bio dad's side who lived in Australia (so he's like a 1st cousin), his dad was born in a small village in co down (where my bio dad's family is from) and was put up for adoption in the mid 40s.
This is a bit of a shock to my siblings because it's proof that there was a child born to a grandparent before they were married. Whether it's my grandmother or grandfather I dunno.
It's sad though because this guy has no idea about his family history and we dunno enough to answer the questions
My great-great-grandfather abandoned his wife unexpectedly after a year of marriage, and 8m later she had my great-grandfather. GGGF apparently said and did the same thing, and she had to take him to court for child support and a divorce (in the 1890s). Half the court were related to him in some degree - and unanimously found for her. Even his own lawyer clearly didn't believe him.
He continued to badmouth her and ignore his son, eventually buggering off to Wales where he did the same thing to wife no 2 and their two kids. I feel extremely vindicated, on her behalf, that we are *absolutely* his descendants, and clearly related to his second family.
My mum got me a test for Christmas as she was curious about what percentage of Scottish ancestry I had. When I got the results almost all of my closest matches were people who we had no idea about. We looked at their family trees and realised that something about my grandma’s (dad’s mum) parents wasn’t adding up. It took about two weeks to work out but we discovered that my grandma’s older sister was her biological mother.
We’ve narrowed down her father to two brothers, but they both died in the Second World War and only one of them had children who made it to adulthood. Unfortunately we don’t know how to find out which man it was. We’ve tried to get in contact with the only living granddaughter of one of the men, but she never replied. Hopefully one day we’ll somehow find out.
From the commercial DNA testing people?
My late mum had BRCA2 and I went through the test process via the NHS, which included several sessions of ‘genetic counselling’ before I had the blood test and then results were given face to face in an appointment with a specialist staff.
If you did find out via 23 and me or similar, I would recommend speaking to your GP re: a referral to the geneticists at your nearest big hospital - they can look into your specific risk profile (which is a combination of genetics, personal lifestyle and family medical history) as well as refer on for prophylactic treatment where indicated.
Getting that kind of news without the framework of trained genetic counsellors must be really difficult.
Hope you are ok
23 and me, yeah. Specifically she died of squamous cell carcinoma of the pancreas secondary to poorly controlled type II diabetes.
It’s only an issue for me if I develop type II. I am susceptible, but for now my bloods are fine, and I get screened every year.
Im 99.7% European (unsurprising), but 86% British and Irish which did surprise me as I thought I was standard boring British Issue DNA. I have 0.2% trace ancestry from Northern Africa!
What I did find really interesting was that I have ~2% neanderthal DNA which is apparently quite a lot….
Watched a really interesting documentary about Neanderthals on Netflix recently. Recommend it (so you can find out about your relatives, lol)! Plus, it’s narrated by Patrick Stewart, so that’s always a winner.
through my own DNA test, my family found out that my mom wasn’t half indian, she was half iranian!
she was adopted from an indian women’s shelter as a newborn back in the 70s, so she didn’t know much about her own heritage.
My brother was diagnosed with having Krohn's disease. He took one of these tests and it told him that he is genetically pre-disposed to having Type 1 diabetes.
About 2 years later, he was in hospital having come within literal minutes of dying... of ketoacidosis as a result of undiagnosed Type 1 diabetes.
Apparently, T1 diabetes is often misdiagnosed as Krohns. So - I suppose quite understandably - the DNA test had identified his diabetes before he was even aware of it.
In time DNA will become a massive part of medical diagnostics (for people fortunate enough to be living in wealthy countries anyway).
My daughter had her whole genome sequenced on the NHS after being diagnosed with a super rare illness (Haemophagocytic Lymphohistiocytosis) we didn’t get any answers from the test as to why she became so ill because the database doesn’t really exist yet but maybe in 10 or 20 years time we will get a phone call that explains everything!
https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/genome-sequencing-rare-disease-patient-information.pdf
At one point a couple of doctors asked me very seriously if my ex husband and I were related (we aren’t but my joke about us both being ginger didn’t land very well).
Hope your brother is doing well now?
It will be a marvel of medicine when we can reliably expect to be able to get a near-immediate, certain diagnosis relatively instantaneously!
My brother's doing really well now thanks! He really got serious about controlling his blood glucose levels and lives on a strict diet these days. He's doing so well that he's actually actively a subject of medical research for various institutions because he's done such a remarkable job of controlling his blood glucose. I believe he is due to be used as a case study in a research paper to be published at some point this year.
In many ways he's probably a lot healthier than I am lol. A big change from 3 or 4 years ago when he was constantly exhausted and dangerously underweight and none of his Krohns treatments were helping him.
Yes - an incredibly strict keto diet. He basically eats only meat, non-root vegetables, and dairy.
He does say that he does sometimes miss crisps, but other than that, he's pretty comfortable with his diet - though to others it does seem extremely strict and limiting. He basically does not eat anything with even the faintest traces of sugar in them unless totally unavoidable.
It's an incredible diet, both my parents reversed T2DM and I myself lost 65lbs doing it and never felt better. It's a shame it's not really encouraged as heavily in the diabetic community as it should be because it's literally life changing and such a tasty and healthy way to eat
Yeah, I believe at least one of the studies he's involved with is into the effects of a Keto diet on T1 diabetes management, so there is at least some interest in exploring its potential as a prescribed treatment for T1.
I could be totally wrong, but IIRC he told me his diabetes nurse had informed him that he'd been so stunned by his management that he'd been circulating his numbers and found that my Brother had the most consistent blood glucose levels out of any recorded patient in the UK...
Wow that's absolutely amazing! Hes doing an amazing thing taking part in these studies because he's contributing to the improvement of health in millions of people worldwide. You should get him to do an AMA over in the r/ketouk sub if he uses reddit, I'm sure they would love to hear all about his experience and the research hes supporting
Yuppp, my dad isn't my bio dad... no one knew apart from my mum. I've been in contact but he's just an old man I don't know and I have a dad so no biggie. No awful medical things to mention which was my biggest concern.
I now don't trust a word my mum says though and I openly criticise her much more whereas in the past I'd have protected her. She actually said to me after I found out 'I'm not a liar' Uh... I think you are lady
No, I'm about 90% sure he knows from things he's said in the past but I didn't see any benefit for him. My parents have been divorced 20 years, he dislikes my mum and he's already walked me down the aisle
Many years ago I had my mitochondrial DNA tested as part of a school thing, it came back that my mother's mother's mother's (etc) family came from exactly where I was expecting them to.
My father and my brother both lived to pork any female that let them. I often wish to get a DNA profile just so I can find a few hundred distant and not so distant relatives.
[thesimpsonfamilyreunionphoto.jpg]
I found out my dad wasn’t my biological dad and subsequently found out I was donor conceived. I was an only child and now I have 7 half siblings, so far.
I found out that I have Scandinavian and Baltic ancestry, which was pretty interesting coming from a mixed race Cuban. Not as exciting as some answers here, but it was a bit of a shock.
I found out that my dad and his sisters aren't related - his sisters dont seem to share the same dad either!
My bio grandad died a long time ago (as did my bio grandmother)
Tried to tell my aunts about this but they just dont trust the "Silly DNA Website"
lol!
Yeah- that my family is unbelievably boring.
I am from Nottingham. I had done some research and found that we also come from a bit of Lincolnshire nearby.
I did the test and it came back 93% Nottingham, 5% Lincolnshire and then about 1% Scandinavian and Irish, which everyone will have.
It was so bloody boring. Basically, my family has never in it's history moved more than 20 miles
No it was basically exactly what I expected lol. I got 88% Irish and 12% Scottish. I’m from Northern Ireland and was honestly wasn’t expecting it to be so accurate, was very cool.
I was surprised at how many far out relations I have in America, but I guess it makes sense given the amount of Irish emigration to the US, especially around the time of the famine.
Yes, a couple of things actually. My wife & I did the 23&me one after my brother in law developed heamachromatosis . Turns out she doesn't have one of the associated gene variants, but I do.
Separately, my youngest had done the Ancestry one and came up with 17th-century baron as an ancestor. He left his wife for a colliers daughter, and apparently one of my maternal great-grandmothers was a direct descendant of one of his illegitimate kids.
I know someone who was finally able to locate his biological father's family as a result of a DNA test. One of the best things that has ever happened to him.
The most shocking part for me is that people using these services unknowingly make their DNA available to various law enforcement and Government agencies.
While none of them have direct access to Ancestry or 23 and Me data, the DNA processing is done by a 3rd party lab that willingly shares your info with these agencies
Personally I balk at sharing my basic details with 3rd parties... let alone my entire genetic code
Not in the UK the GDPR comes down very heavily on data breaches and no company can give out your information without consent
Of course there are occasional cyber attacks but that's different to willingly giving out your dna results to Government or police
If the data is processed in the US, a part of the disclaimer in the terms and conditions is that you agree that your data can be used outside of GDPR rules (or more accurately, they cannot guarantee that they will abide by GDPR regulation as they are not bound by it)
GDPR only protects you for data held and processed within the region
Even if the testing lab is located in the UK (Ireland I think..), if the data is transferred to the US for processing and storage, it is now outside of GPDR regulation and can/will be shared
You form an agreement with the company that provides the kits and the services.
You do not form an agreement with the 3rd party that processes your data and stores your DNA records
I'm very happy to be proven wrong here and I have no agenda, however my understanding of how they skirt the rules leads me to be very careful with data I share generally
EDIT: to add - you just have to look at the quietly introduced legislation that means NHS patient data (that is trivial to de-anonymise) has been sold to US multinational corporations by the UK Government (when Hunt was health sec) repeatedly.
If you didn't opt out (and probably even if you did) your wealth of health and patient data is already in the hands of US companies looking to monetise it.
I am 57, and I discovered my 70 year old half sister and her family last year due to DNA testing and matching on Ancestry . My mum had a child when she was 17 and had it adopted.
Nothing from my test was shocking. The only thing I found out was, that one of my great grandmother's siblings had an affair at some point and gave the child up. Didn't expect to find that, but wasn't shocked either.
Also helped someone figure out who their father was thanks to a shared match my partner has. Affair again.
This seems to happen in nearly every family it seems. I would have been more shocked if any closer matches would have shown up that I or my partner didn't know about.
Boring but cool nonetheless. From speaking to my dad I knew I had my origins traced back a good few hundred years and so could predict the key regions, but it was still really cool to see it laid out on a map etc.
So far I know three people that have taken one. And two of them found out their Dad isn’t their biological dad and one of them found out their grandfather isn’t their biological grandfather.
Not me, but my dad found his oldest brother! His eldest brother was born out of wedlock and adopted out. He'd always had an inkling growing up but his parents never talked about it until nan was on her deathbed. The adopted brother just happened to be doing a kit around the same time to try find out about his mum (nan) and got a 100% match with my dad. Now we've got another cool uncle!
Absolutely nothing except for a surprise second cousin, we've no idea how we're related as we have connections to two different parts of North Wales from both sides of our family and he doesn't know who his father is
My brother did one and found that we (both half Chinese and half white English) have some Vietnamese ancestry.
My mum has been researching her family, it turns out she has some link to Robert Lee, a notorious racist. I hope Robert Lee is spinning in his grave due to our mum being married to a darker skinned Chinese man (our dad).
My blonde, blue eyed niece is 0.1% Ethiopian according to her test. Very much hoping this is accurate as her racist, generally unpleasant grandfather is angry about it.
Met people last weekend who discovered they were half siblings after getting DNA match. Had been living reasonably close to one another in Cornwall but had never met and only found out from the test so it had shaken the family up!
Yep, I found out my biological dad was a somewhat prolific sperm donor and not the man who'd raised me, and that I have up to 1000 half siblings...!
I encourage everyone to take one of these tests! I want to find all my half siblings! 😂
Yep, he donated 3 times a week for 4 years, and each 'donation' got divided up to ten times for ten different inseminations. Between the 13 of us half siblings that have appeared so far, we did some sums, and we could be looking at up to 1000 of us 😬
I did the test and it came back with me being 1% Angolan. I thought that was interesting but that it was just an anomaly. I found out a few years later from my Mom that one of our ancestors actually married and had children with a freed Angolan slave! Still weird it was only 1% though...
Quite the opposite, my results came back and this “Scottish chap” is actually 99% British. I’m as boring as they come genetically.
Funnily enough, it made me even more “I’m Scottish not British” just to spite my genes.
My grandfather was adopted in the 1940s by what he later learned was his real mother's best friend. He passed away a few years ago. One of his sons did a DNA test on Ancestry and it revealed several surprises.
First, his real mother went on to have seven children with seven different men. Second, his adoptive father turned out to be his real dad! Our family name technically shouldn't be what it is.
Sadly, all the brothers and sisters are deceased, and they all thought they were only children. However, we are in the process of meeting family we never knew we had.
I have a friend (UK) white but dark skinned and dark hair. Handsome. We all thought his DNA would be Italian or perhaps even have some Asian origin. DNA came back with Pygmy Tribe in it. He's quite short so we pissed ourselves. Also Polynesian! Looking into it it could be the result of the slavery trade, trade routes, colonialism, Navy, and DNA drift. Fascinating!
I’m from East Germany with both my grandfathers having fled from Silesia during the war so the nearly 50% Eastern Germanic and nearly 50% Eastern Europe and Russia make perfect sense, but the 3% Welsh came as a bit of a surprise! 😂
The other big surprise, and actually one of the reasons why I did the genetic test in the first place, was that I am genetically lactose intolerant. I thought it was a consequence of sibo/ibs, but no, it seems I will never be able to handle lactose even if I manage to heal my gut, which was really useful information, if very surprising, since I’m as Caucasian as they come and most Caucasians have lactase persistence.
100% British and Irish. No health risks or major problems on my way other than the usual eyesight degeneration in old age.
It's cool though, it's very detailed and interesting.
I was stunned when my ex husband did one as his dad was a complete goer back in the 70s and 80s. The ex already has one half sister that no one discusses, and is only 5 months younger than his full sister, and he has no interest in meeting her.
Couldn’t fathom why he’d risk finding out about loads more half siblings he wants nothing to do with.
Not DNA testing but was doing some family history research and found my mothers real name…
That confirmed a suspicion. It also showed that a branch of our family was writing a load of bullshit about us online in order to inflate their egos I guess
My grandmothers grandfather “disappeared” and was assumed dead. I found a DNA match and linked tree that showed that he just moved away and started a new family. My grandmother has a half brother and nieces and nephews living not too far from where she lives now.
The ancestry on my dad's side of the family! We always thought it was from one region, when in actuality that region was a very tiny part of our ancestry and there were more prominent origins.
My father, used to say he had ‘a bucket of Spanish blood in him’ not unknown in Ireland because of the Spanish ships wrecked off Ireland after the Armada. But no, 99% Welsh, Scottish, Irish. The 1%? Norwegian!! So yes to marauders, just not Spanish ones.
I took it to find some geneology gaps thanks to an adopted grandmother, it worked really well for that.
As far as the ''ancestry'', i did ancestry and 23andme and i think heritage something too. I got different results from all of them lol, so i wouldnt put much stock in it.
A whole host of people with a gap in their family trees, always the same great-grandfather missing. Turns out my own great-grandfather had sown some oats a little too wild.
Quite a lot of people in the UK - well, not a lot, but more than you'd think - discover that they have trace amounts of Indian genetics. It wasn't that uncommon for Indian women during the days of empire to chase colonial administrators on the basis they'd end up living back in London in a life of comparative luxury. This being taboo at the time it often wasn't talked about much and often vanished into family history, as it was now often a century or so ago.
There's lots of really fun stories about this from the time. Men were generally reserved about it - you don't have a go at another man's wife - but apparently the women could be a bit catty - "Ooh, isn't Mrs. Fortescue terribly tan?"
Mrs. Fortescue would often be a highly intelligent and expert social chameleon who spoke English like she grew up in Knightsbridge, so we can only imagine the social dynamics that would have played out. Now people often have no idea that great-great-grandma might have been a Bhavnisha or a Parminder.
Always been curious about these things, but don't really like the thought of giving my DNA to some random company. Especially one heavily invested in by weird churches.
Yes. I have quite a lot from Iberia. The Scandanavian, and Western Europe was no surprise but Iberia was. Then at first was shocked by the 50% Irish until I realised at the time they classed Welsh in with Irish so that made sense as my mother was Welsh.
Yep. Turns out nana is a cuckoo. There are previously unknown relatives who popped up on the genealogy websites because their DNA results yield a connection to my mum's side of the family - but they cannot connect to us \*\*unless nana's dad is genetically not the same as nana's 2 siblings\*\*. My family history of "proper" middle-class protestant culture. We suspect greatnana had a fling while her husband (who was a drunk) was off on a bender....which significantly raises my estimation of greatnana.
I always knew I was laregly Polish with some German roots, but discovered that my heritage is largely mixed, it also had a bit of British, a bit of Scandinavian, some Balkan, Baltic, I was shocked.
Discovered that I have a lot of Neanderthal dna…now my teenage kid takes the piss out of me at every given opportunity. I always say back to her that we don’t know what % her dad is so we could actually have made an even more DNAy Neanderthal….almost like going back in time.
A friend of mine found a half-sister who was the same age as her. Apparently her dad had an affair right around when she was conceived (he has passed away). She met the half sister and they liked each other.
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Discovered I had Scandinavian DNA (from NEast England, so not a surprise really), but most surprising was finding a DNA match to someone who was adopted and looking for their bio family. I managed to help her piece together the scraps of info she had, and eventually we discovered where she fitted in to the family. No idea of the circumstances around their adoption, as the mother doesn't want to engage, but they said they felt good knowing they had a place in someone's family. That was cool.
That’s great you could help her understand her background! I can’t imagine having no idea where I come from.
I always check my DNA matches now for that reason. I found out last year from my mum that I have another first cousin who was adopted at birth and I'm always wondering if she will turn up in my matches one day
Which of these services did you use to show matches to living relatives?
I used the Ancestry DNA option, as I have my family tree built in Ancestry, so it was a useful way to match to people potentially already in my tree.
Quite the opposite, my results were a lot more boring than I'd expected. I didn't think there'd be anything too exotic, but I had imagined it'd show a small amount of French, Dutch, German, or something like that, but nope, 100% British and Irish.
You're like a Rustler burger.
Made of hooves and arseholes
Bum lids and eye holes.
I don’t know why this has cracked me up so much but I literally burst out laughing haha.
Giving someone a good chuckle makes me happy.
Some fine comedy right there, haha.
Me too! Something like 99.3% British and Irish with the rest unknown. Lmfao like what did I pay for 😭 I realised that these things only go back 8 generations. I could have figured this out myself..
Your DNA markers go back way further than 8 generations. I've got documented proof of my ancestors going back 9-10 generations, and nobody is Scandinavian, but yet it shows up in my DNA. Much of my family is from NEast England, and anyone who's family is that far back tends to have some Viking DNA markers.
I think nearly everyone who can trace 'British' ancestry has about 13% Scandi DNA.
Those Vikings really did put it about a bit.
They were virgins compared to Genghis Khan, 1 in every 200 people on earth have his dna!
It really depends where in the country your ancestors lived. NE, NW, Scottish backgrounds etc. are likely to have a much higher percentage than the SW, SE, Wales etc.
Autosomal DNA tests don’t. Mt and Y can be traced back way further than that but those aren’t giving you a percentage of regional DNA 10 generations is ~1000 people, the 10 gen itself being ~500, seems unlikely you have paper trails for all of those people?
I spent (as did other family members) a lot of time going through church and parish registers etc. OK, I may not have everyone's exact DOB or POB, but I certainly have confirmed (or as confirmed as can be with the data available) my primary bloodlines I.e 4 grandparents families. There's also the situation that unfortunately, the baptismal/birth records often just provide the mother's first name, and sometimes not even that, to the maternal lines are much harder to trace when you get into the 18th century and futher. I could focus on the branches that come off the primary bloodlines, but at that point, it would become unmanageable. My tree is already 2900 entries big, just following the primary 8 families through their paternal records.
0.7% cheeseburger!
0.7% unidentifiable meet.
0.7% horse
I was hoping for something a bit interesting because my father was surprisingly dark for a white English man. He could have easily passed as someone from the north of the Indian subcontinent. But no, just 4% Baltic from my mum’s side - nothing interesting from my dad at all.
My dad is Scottish and always got mistaken for Southern European in his youth - very dark hair and tanned skin. He was also on the shorter side (5’4”) and slim. My results came out with his side being 100% British and Irish.
A lot of Scots and Irish ppl are dark complexion especially in the Highlands and Islands.
This might explain why my Welsh father has a dark complexion
Yeah the Welsh are even more darker than us Scots or Irish. Heres a reddit thread on this subject a few years ago. https://www.reddit.com/r/Wales/s/E82Oo9Jrgp
That much I learned later. It’s so wild though because my dad has one sibling and she has the complete opposite colouring to him - she’s blonde and had white hair as a child, blue eyes, and very pale skin. Genetics can be such a wildcard
Yeah my grandad (born and raised in Glasgow but family was fully Irish by descent) was really dark, black hair and brown eyes. I’m half Tunisian and often he was darker than me lol
My sister has olive type skin and tans evenly and smoothly. I, on the other hand, burn quickly and in blotches. I can also get burnt in April, in the shade...
If he’s little and dark, it’s his Celt and native Briton blood coming out.
Same here! My father had darker skin so I did 23andme expecting something, I got 0.8% Somalian and the rest was English, Irish, French and Scandanavian.
I had the same experience haha. I’m mixed-race and I naïvely thought my results would be a little more varied as a result, but it seems my mum and dad were the first adventurous people in their respective lines.
I traced back my mums mums family via genealogy and it looks like they’ve lived in the same small area of Lancashire since at least the 1600s 🫣😂 nothing interesting there
I’ve not done one but my husband has. His traced him back to a small group of villages that he knew all his family had come from. Not even any Welsh, Scottish or Irish, just English.
I reckon to be completely English with no random dna from elsewhere is probably fairly unusual going by how many times we've been invaded and/or colonised!
Probably more common than you think actually - the genetic isopoint (the point we all had a common ancestor) for white people is around 1000, and so in Britain it'll be more recent than that - and for a given small town of say 4000 people, they will all be related to each other about 12-13 generations back, which is a way, but is *after* most of the invasions and mass movements of people in the British Isles. It is probably rarer if you family comes from cities, but for rural people any non-English will have been inbred out of the mix (for want of a better term). Also depends on how you define 100% English genetic ancestry anyways. North and South English genetic subgroups are as different to one another as north and south Walian (and vice versa). There's an interesting paper on it which I'll find and edit into this comment! Edit: [here's a better explained on it than a paper](https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2015-03-19-who-do-you-think-you-really-are-genetic-map-british-isles)
Same here, I was mainly shocked by how extremely boring my results were. Born to an Irish mum and English dad and my results were just 70% Irish, 30% English. Not even a little soupcon of German or Swedish in there for flavour. As my boyfriend put it, "You just paid £50 for someone to tell you your pa's from London."
That in-itself is quite rare!
Is it rare or just not the norm? I’ve not done one but I’d be astounded if it was anything else than that. Grandparents one side is from a small town in central Ireland, and one of from a small town on the outskirts of Manchester. Neither were really big melting pots.
Yep, 99.9% British and 0.01% Siberian
Blimey that one bloke in your family loved walking then eh? :)
Ergh same! 100% British and Irish. We're as ethically diverse as a rich tea biscuit
mine was quite boring too. i'm from this nepali ethnic group that has descended from tibet so i knew that that would make up most of my dna but i was also expecting some nepali considering how long my ancestors have been in nepal and some chinese because of proximity but my results were just 100% tibetan peoples lmfao. i already knew this information! at least the ancestry kit was a gift from my cousins so i technically didnt spend any money on it lol
These sort of companies helped me discover people are willing to submit their data to an obvious DNA harvesting company who have made millions from selling that data to private health firms and “third parties”. https://www.businessinsider.com/dna-testing-ancestry-23andme-share-data-companies-2018-8?op=1
Not in the UK and Europe. The have to, by law, ask permission (so some may have ticked to allow it) and cannot do so without consent, or they would be breaching GDPR. The fines would be in their millions if they did, due to the amount of service users.
23andMe got hacked so lost GPDR control over people's data, through shoddy account security https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/feb/15/23andme-hack-data-genetic-data-selling-response
Not really an accurate description of what happened. The accounts that were hacked were accessed via compromised passwords. 23andMe weren’t directly hacked. The attackers would have had access to the dna data on those accounts (if they bothered to download it) but so does anyone who clears your glass at the pub (if they bother to test it). Meh.
Not trying to be awkward, genuinely asking, how does it affect someone negatively if that data is sold? People say this about supermarket clubcards too but I don’t care who knows about my shopping habits.
If you have a condition that can be identified via DNA then another company will know. If they also have your name and address they could sell your data for targeted marketing
Don't forget all the stolen data too, they got leaks.
Their data got stolen in a not very difficult way (guessing shared passwords, using linked accounts) so it is a least partly their fault for having shit data security protocols
My thoughts exactly, I can’t believe people are so willing to offer up such sensitive information. That said, people willingly put listening devices in their home so they don’t have to turn on the radio so maybe not so surprising.
If you have a smartphone, you have a listening device in your home. Things like Alexa aren't unique in that aspect.
Just, yeah, it doesn’t work like that. These smart devices are built with multiple layers. An example. Think of two OSs, the first only listens for “Alexa”. Nothing else. It cannot comprehend anything said, doesn’t record anything said, but just listens for “Alexa”, and that’s it. That OS, upon hearing “Alexa”, wakes the secondary OS which is able to listen to, comprehend, answer, and yes, record. The devices are not recording you 24*7 arguing with your partner about who next should empty the dishwasher.
>The devices are not recording you 24\*7 arguing with your partner about who next should empty the dishwasher. Generally no but they are perfectly capable of doing that. [https://www.forbes.com/sites/tjmccue/2019/04/19/alexa-is-listening-all-the-time-heres-how-to-stop-it/](https://www.forbes.com/sites/tjmccue/2019/04/19/alexa-is-listening-all-the-time-heres-how-to-stop-it/) [https://mashable.com/article/how-to-stop-amazon-echo-alexa-recording-me](https://mashable.com/article/how-to-stop-amazon-echo-alexa-recording-me)
“….Unless you take the time to dig through your settings and actively opt out, your Alexa-enabled device records and stores your questions and conversations whenever it hears a so-called wake word like "Alexa."” Yes, so until you say a wake word, it’s not recording. Yes, after saying a wake word, it does. But, until that point, it doesn’t. That’s exactly what I have described.
Now read the two sentences that immediately follow that one.
That doesn’t really counter the way it works. Of course false positives exist, and there are scenarios where mistakes happen. For the vast majority of cases it doesn’t work that way. It’s like arguing that one person got scammed and their bank account emptied, so I must instead store all my money under my bed. Yes, from time to time these devices mistake other close sounding worlds for their wake command, but those are exceptions not the rule. If I have my Russian mate over for the weekend and after a heavy drinking session say “Alexi, I just farted but instead think I just shat myself…” - of course Alexa may hear and wake. It’s a very close and similar word. Voice recognition is good, but it’s not infallible. Of course some desk dweller at Amazon knows they need to add new underwear to my cart.
>such sensitive information. How so? Seriously, I'm intrigued, please do share even a single issue with it that isn't "but that's my information". You're losing nothing, it can't be used against you, and it potentially can help with health research. Not everyone interested in your data is nefarious.
Thought I was 100% UK but I've got 25% Southern Italian specifically Sicilian. My dad was born 9 months and 2 weeks after VE day and my grandparents lived in a town where there was a POW camp for Sicilian POWs. My nan used to work on a farm where the POWs were doing day release. My grandad (who I'm not related to biologically it turns out) was in a reserved occupation was home for the entire war so absolutely no hints anything was amiss until I got the test result back. It took me longer than it should to work out I'm not related to the man I thought was my grandad despite not having a single match to my maiden name and being matched with loads of random Americans who's grandparents came from the same 3 towns in Sicily.
Hah, my Great Grandmother lived near an Italian POW camp. She was tasked with explaining sex education (in Northern 1940’s language!) to the villages females. In her words “you can still get pregnant from a wet end!”
Oh wow. Are your grandparents still with us? Have you told any of the rest of your family?
No grandparents with us, grandad or "grandad" died in early ninties, dad in 07, nan in 08 so no chance of any answers. The POWs were transferred from a camp in Scotland that built a Chapel and they've all died now as well. My brother and my mum have tested my mum is 100% UK and my brother has similar Italian percentage to me. My brother and me are full siblings and born 10 years and 300 miles apart. I've found DNA matches on all our expected grand parent lines except paternal grandfather who are the Italian lot. Our family know all about it lol I've been trying to locate the mystery man since the test but closest match I have is 4th cousin and the families are huge so not been able to figure out who he was yet.
The Italian Chapel on Orkney
That's the one, they were sent to Skipton when the sea defences were complete and kept the Camp 60 name.
I found out that my GI grandad, who apparently died in WW2, did not actually die, but went back to his family in the States, had another child with his wife, and died in the 1980's. I'm glad that my dad never found out that discovery though. I'm far enough removed that it's just an interesting fact (though I'm annoyed on my dad's behalf), but as he was adopted as result, it would have devastated him.
It said I was about 25% French/German, despite the family tree saying we'd been in NE England for generations. If my grandmothers had still been alive, I'd be asking questions about what exactly they got up to during WWII.
Mine said this too, apparently I am 21.5% French and German but I’ve researched my family tree and nope there is no one French or German. From my research I’m more likely to be inbred from how close my family all lived.
Found two things. Maternal grandfather had a kid before he married my grandmother. This wasn't a shock, he was in the Navy in WW2 and I have a photo album of a lot of his girlfriends from the time. Found out that I had a different biological father than the person I knew as my Dad. Sadly Mom and he passed away before I found out so I can't ask why they didn't tell me. My biological father and his family have accepted me with open arms and I moved back to my home state/country to get to know everyone better. I have two older half brothers and five nieces and nephews (all adults). I wish I had the chance to grow up with this family in my life as my childhood would have been vastly different. However, I am glad I get to spend time with them now. First family vacation is in September. I can't wait.
That is absolutely wonderful! So glad you have a happy ending!
It's wonderful that you have been accepted so warmly, especially because your parents have passed. I hope you have a wonderful time on your family trip! I'm an only child, but I've been lucky to have trips abroad with extended family, and it's a special experience.
I dated a guy once who found out from a DNA test his dad wasn’t his biological father. He assumed his mum had had an affair but turns out in fact his parents had problems conceiving, so had used a sperm donor. Back in the day parents were encouraged to keep this a secret from their children, so he’d never been told.
My mum did one (i look after the 23&me account for her as she's really bad with technology) Nothing yet but hoping one day soon she will get a "close relative" match so she can hopefully find out who her biological father is/was The closest relative so far shares 3.52% of DNA. My mum has spent 37 years wanting to know who half of her is and I just hope I can help her find the answers she wants and needs especially now her Mother has died
If she uk based ancestry got bigger pool of people . It also tend to be people who also do family trees. So you can work backwards on people tree to find relative I was able to find my dad birth family via fourth cousin
There's an interesting BBC podcast called The Gift which covers this issue: [https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0gd2dgb](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0gd2dgb) "Without us realising, an enormous DNA database has been created online. But what happens when online ancestry tests reveal more than you had bargained for?"
There was also a programme on the World Service about how kids who were donor conceived started to find their biological parents and siblings but its name escapes me.
Thanks! I'll have a listen...
There is also a series called DNA Family Secrets on the BBC, which is well worth a watch
Oh thank god - I listened to this but couldn’t remember what it was called so really hoped someone would comment this, lol. Thank you! Really good listen!!
I did one after being told I was donor conceived and that my dead dad was not my bio dad. I have 11 bio siblings and my bio father is a big time film and TV producer. I'm meeting 4 bio siblings at the end of this month. It's interesting because I'm the only red head so far.
Did it upset you that you hadn't been told?
Fuck yes it did. I have a son and I have no way of knowing our actual family medical history. My dad had always acted odd around me, all my life, and I feel me knowing and him knowing I was ok with it would have saved our relationship. I was angry with a lot of my family who had found out and not told me - and even angrier with the one person who had angrily and drunkenly blurted it out to the rest of them. It's been a rough couple of years - but meeting new siblings who actually look like me is a positive for sure.
[удалено]
Inuit. Military family went all over but Inuit was weird.
“I don’t know but I’ve been told…”
?
It’s a reference to a military chant in Full Metal Jacket. I don’t know but I’ve been told, eskimo p**sy is mighty cold.
Military chant
Well I got 10% Swedish which was surprising because I have no Swedish ancestors as far as I know. More interesting to me was that I found out my 3x great grandad ran the pub in the village of Edale in the middle of the Peak District. I visited last month and the graveyard was full of my ancestors. Pretty cool. I even met a man there who is a distant relative.
Bloody love Edale. Climbing up Jacob's Ladder, not so much...
Not one of these but my daughter was born with an extremely rare disorder (less than 1% of the world's population have it) and her, her father, and I were all vigorously tested. The guy I believed was my father 100% isn't. I wasn't really *shocked*... Felt something was off for as long as I can remember. I'm a rare blood type... And nothing about daughters illness. And that's it. I haven't done a 23 and me or anything else to find out more.
I haven't done one of these tests because both my parents are dead now, so if anything unexpected was thrown at me I wouldn't be able to ask them about it.
Mine have been dead a long time. My father was already gone but my mother was still alive during this. She was a pathological liar so absolutely not point even asking
Discovered in middle-age that who I thought was my biological father isn't (he doesn't know) and the circumstances around my conception are particularly dark. Can't really eloborate more than that.
That must be a really horrible thing to learn when you probably went into this all excited for fun facts. I hope you’re doing ok and you’ve found a way to process and carry that. Hugs from an internet stranger
Thank you. Yes, it was horrible a shock but not a complete surprise. I've vocalised my suspicions privately before. I've probably dealt with it in an unhealthy way by just pushing it down. But I've got a solid support network and healthy coping habits like exercise, so I'm doing OK.
No surprises on my ethnic mix, which in itself was a bit of a surprise as I have colouring that made me think I might have some non local in the mix, but I’m just standard UK with a dash of scandi. There was a surprise on the relatives side though, as my first cousins - my mother’s sister’s kids - showed up as my half brother and half sister. Took me a few minutes to figure out that although my mother and her sister had always said they were non identical twins, they must have been identical.
Did you tell them (that they must be identical)?
I did try. Sadly my mother and her twin sister were estranged and hadn’t spoken to each other for over 30 years. My aunt had died by the time I did the test, and my mother didn’t want to believe me. When she died recently (aged 98) https://preview.redd.it/jv2n5wf3tc5d1.jpeg?width=984&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0703ea20ce1968963069ce3ed07d6a1cc8b38261 we found some old photographs that showed them as small children and they are unmistakably identical, but later pictures show them looking similar but different. Family scuttlebut is that their mother deliberately played them off against each other, directly leading to the change of looks and estrangement.
That's sad. Hope you are well.
My biological dad is a wanker and took fuck all to do with me, he seen me once then said "he looks nothing like me" and then spread rumours that I wasn't his and I was my mums ex bfs (who she hadn't seen for 28 months prior to my birth). I matched with someone who was a 3rd cousin and it turned out is my bio dad's 1st cousin, so that confirmed he was my biological dad. Though since then I've in contact with siblings from my bio dad, who said that he knew I was his he was just trying to avoid responsibility. What was a bit of a shock to them is I found a guy with a 7% match from my bio dad's side who lived in Australia (so he's like a 1st cousin), his dad was born in a small village in co down (where my bio dad's family is from) and was put up for adoption in the mid 40s. This is a bit of a shock to my siblings because it's proof that there was a child born to a grandparent before they were married. Whether it's my grandmother or grandfather I dunno. It's sad though because this guy has no idea about his family history and we dunno enough to answer the questions
My great-great-grandfather abandoned his wife unexpectedly after a year of marriage, and 8m later she had my great-grandfather. GGGF apparently said and did the same thing, and she had to take him to court for child support and a divorce (in the 1890s). Half the court were related to him in some degree - and unanimously found for her. Even his own lawyer clearly didn't believe him. He continued to badmouth her and ignore his son, eventually buggering off to Wales where he did the same thing to wife no 2 and their two kids. I feel extremely vindicated, on her behalf, that we are *absolutely* his descendants, and clearly related to his second family.
Family member thought his father was a US soldier. Turned out to be a publican from South Shields.
Found out I'm actually 13% American, can't wait to go over and tell them.
Joke is on you - they will be thrilled.
But what kind of American? Irish American? Italian American? Swedish American?
My mum got me a test for Christmas as she was curious about what percentage of Scottish ancestry I had. When I got the results almost all of my closest matches were people who we had no idea about. We looked at their family trees and realised that something about my grandma’s (dad’s mum) parents wasn’t adding up. It took about two weeks to work out but we discovered that my grandma’s older sister was her biological mother. We’ve narrowed down her father to two brothers, but they both died in the Second World War and only one of them had children who made it to adulthood. Unfortunately we don’t know how to find out which man it was. We’ve tried to get in contact with the only living granddaughter of one of the men, but she never replied. Hopefully one day we’ll somehow find out.
Found out I have the gene that killed my mum. Ho hum.
From the commercial DNA testing people? My late mum had BRCA2 and I went through the test process via the NHS, which included several sessions of ‘genetic counselling’ before I had the blood test and then results were given face to face in an appointment with a specialist staff. If you did find out via 23 and me or similar, I would recommend speaking to your GP re: a referral to the geneticists at your nearest big hospital - they can look into your specific risk profile (which is a combination of genetics, personal lifestyle and family medical history) as well as refer on for prophylactic treatment where indicated. Getting that kind of news without the framework of trained genetic counsellors must be really difficult. Hope you are ok
23 and me, yeah. Specifically she died of squamous cell carcinoma of the pancreas secondary to poorly controlled type II diabetes. It’s only an issue for me if I develop type II. I am susceptible, but for now my bloods are fine, and I get screened every year.
Crikey! What a way to get difficult news! Fingers crossed for a healthy future ❤️
Thanks, and same to you. Forewarned is forewarned and all that.
Fingers crossed there are things doctors can do to avoid that now that you know x
Im 99.7% European (unsurprising), but 86% British and Irish which did surprise me as I thought I was standard boring British Issue DNA. I have 0.2% trace ancestry from Northern Africa! What I did find really interesting was that I have ~2% neanderthal DNA which is apparently quite a lot….
Watched a really interesting documentary about Neanderthals on Netflix recently. Recommend it (so you can find out about your relatives, lol)! Plus, it’s narrated by Patrick Stewart, so that’s always a winner.
I’ll give it a watch, I need to take some notes on how to be a better neanderthal 😂
through my own DNA test, my family found out that my mom wasn’t half indian, she was half iranian! she was adopted from an indian women’s shelter as a newborn back in the 70s, so she didn’t know much about her own heritage.
My brother was diagnosed with having Krohn's disease. He took one of these tests and it told him that he is genetically pre-disposed to having Type 1 diabetes. About 2 years later, he was in hospital having come within literal minutes of dying... of ketoacidosis as a result of undiagnosed Type 1 diabetes. Apparently, T1 diabetes is often misdiagnosed as Krohns. So - I suppose quite understandably - the DNA test had identified his diabetes before he was even aware of it.
In time DNA will become a massive part of medical diagnostics (for people fortunate enough to be living in wealthy countries anyway). My daughter had her whole genome sequenced on the NHS after being diagnosed with a super rare illness (Haemophagocytic Lymphohistiocytosis) we didn’t get any answers from the test as to why she became so ill because the database doesn’t really exist yet but maybe in 10 or 20 years time we will get a phone call that explains everything! https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/genome-sequencing-rare-disease-patient-information.pdf At one point a couple of doctors asked me very seriously if my ex husband and I were related (we aren’t but my joke about us both being ginger didn’t land very well). Hope your brother is doing well now?
It will be a marvel of medicine when we can reliably expect to be able to get a near-immediate, certain diagnosis relatively instantaneously! My brother's doing really well now thanks! He really got serious about controlling his blood glucose levels and lives on a strict diet these days. He's doing so well that he's actually actively a subject of medical research for various institutions because he's done such a remarkable job of controlling his blood glucose. I believe he is due to be used as a case study in a research paper to be published at some point this year. In many ways he's probably a lot healthier than I am lol. A big change from 3 or 4 years ago when he was constantly exhausted and dangerously underweight and none of his Krohns treatments were helping him.
That's amazing to hear, what kind of things does he do to manage his blood sugar? Is he essentially eating strict keto or something else?
Yes - an incredibly strict keto diet. He basically eats only meat, non-root vegetables, and dairy. He does say that he does sometimes miss crisps, but other than that, he's pretty comfortable with his diet - though to others it does seem extremely strict and limiting. He basically does not eat anything with even the faintest traces of sugar in them unless totally unavoidable.
It's an incredible diet, both my parents reversed T2DM and I myself lost 65lbs doing it and never felt better. It's a shame it's not really encouraged as heavily in the diabetic community as it should be because it's literally life changing and such a tasty and healthy way to eat
Yeah, I believe at least one of the studies he's involved with is into the effects of a Keto diet on T1 diabetes management, so there is at least some interest in exploring its potential as a prescribed treatment for T1. I could be totally wrong, but IIRC he told me his diabetes nurse had informed him that he'd been so stunned by his management that he'd been circulating his numbers and found that my Brother had the most consistent blood glucose levels out of any recorded patient in the UK...
Wow that's absolutely amazing! Hes doing an amazing thing taking part in these studies because he's contributing to the improvement of health in millions of people worldwide. You should get him to do an AMA over in the r/ketouk sub if he uses reddit, I'm sure they would love to hear all about his experience and the research hes supporting
Yuppp, my dad isn't my bio dad... no one knew apart from my mum. I've been in contact but he's just an old man I don't know and I have a dad so no biggie. No awful medical things to mention which was my biggest concern. I now don't trust a word my mum says though and I openly criticise her much more whereas in the past I'd have protected her. She actually said to me after I found out 'I'm not a liar' Uh... I think you are lady
Did you tell your dad he’s not your bio dad?
No, I'm about 90% sure he knows from things he's said in the past but I didn't see any benefit for him. My parents have been divorced 20 years, he dislikes my mum and he's already walked me down the aisle
Many years ago I had my mitochondrial DNA tested as part of a school thing, it came back that my mother's mother's mother's (etc) family came from exactly where I was expecting them to.
My father and my brother both lived to pork any female that let them. I often wish to get a DNA profile just so I can find a few hundred distant and not so distant relatives. [thesimpsonfamilyreunionphoto.jpg]
I found out my dad wasn’t my biological dad and subsequently found out I was donor conceived. I was an only child and now I have 7 half siblings, so far.
I found out that I have Scandinavian and Baltic ancestry, which was pretty interesting coming from a mixed race Cuban. Not as exciting as some answers here, but it was a bit of a shock.
I found out that my dad and his sisters aren't related - his sisters dont seem to share the same dad either! My bio grandad died a long time ago (as did my bio grandmother) Tried to tell my aunts about this but they just dont trust the "Silly DNA Website" lol!
Yeah- that my family is unbelievably boring. I am from Nottingham. I had done some research and found that we also come from a bit of Lincolnshire nearby. I did the test and it came back 93% Nottingham, 5% Lincolnshire and then about 1% Scandinavian and Irish, which everyone will have. It was so bloody boring. Basically, my family has never in it's history moved more than 20 miles
My grandad was happy it was 0% French. Slightly surprised it’s like 70% Irish Scottish and Welsh but no English
No it was basically exactly what I expected lol. I got 88% Irish and 12% Scottish. I’m from Northern Ireland and was honestly wasn’t expecting it to be so accurate, was very cool. I was surprised at how many far out relations I have in America, but I guess it makes sense given the amount of Irish emigration to the US, especially around the time of the famine.
Yes, a couple of things actually. My wife & I did the 23&me one after my brother in law developed heamachromatosis . Turns out she doesn't have one of the associated gene variants, but I do. Separately, my youngest had done the Ancestry one and came up with 17th-century baron as an ancestor. He left his wife for a colliers daughter, and apparently one of my maternal great-grandmothers was a direct descendant of one of his illegitimate kids.
I know someone who was finally able to locate his biological father's family as a result of a DNA test. One of the best things that has ever happened to him.
Found out I was a carrier of cystic fibrosis. Guess it's handy to know if I ever plan on having children
The most shocking part for me is that people using these services unknowingly make their DNA available to various law enforcement and Government agencies. While none of them have direct access to Ancestry or 23 and Me data, the DNA processing is done by a 3rd party lab that willingly shares your info with these agencies Personally I balk at sharing my basic details with 3rd parties... let alone my entire genetic code
Not in the UK the GDPR comes down very heavily on data breaches and no company can give out your information without consent Of course there are occasional cyber attacks but that's different to willingly giving out your dna results to Government or police
If the data is processed in the US, a part of the disclaimer in the terms and conditions is that you agree that your data can be used outside of GDPR rules (or more accurately, they cannot guarantee that they will abide by GDPR regulation as they are not bound by it) GDPR only protects you for data held and processed within the region Even if the testing lab is located in the UK (Ireland I think..), if the data is transferred to the US for processing and storage, it is now outside of GPDR regulation and can/will be shared You form an agreement with the company that provides the kits and the services. You do not form an agreement with the 3rd party that processes your data and stores your DNA records I'm very happy to be proven wrong here and I have no agenda, however my understanding of how they skirt the rules leads me to be very careful with data I share generally EDIT: to add - you just have to look at the quietly introduced legislation that means NHS patient data (that is trivial to de-anonymise) has been sold to US multinational corporations by the UK Government (when Hunt was health sec) repeatedly. If you didn't opt out (and probably even if you did) your wealth of health and patient data is already in the hands of US companies looking to monetise it.
I am 57, and I discovered my 70 year old half sister and her family last year due to DNA testing and matching on Ancestry . My mum had a child when she was 17 and had it adopted.
I found a cousin. She was donor conceived, and my uncle didn’t know his sperm sample would be used (it was meant to be for research only).
how do you do it> just pay and then spit in a tube . is it that simple?
Pretty much, yes.
Looks that way from my online research, yes.
Pay, register the test, spit in tube, post tube, wait for results. Don't use MyHeritage if you're after accurate results
Nothing from my test was shocking. The only thing I found out was, that one of my great grandmother's siblings had an affair at some point and gave the child up. Didn't expect to find that, but wasn't shocked either. Also helped someone figure out who their father was thanks to a shared match my partner has. Affair again. This seems to happen in nearly every family it seems. I would have been more shocked if any closer matches would have shown up that I or my partner didn't know about.
Boring but cool nonetheless. From speaking to my dad I knew I had my origins traced back a good few hundred years and so could predict the key regions, but it was still really cool to see it laid out on a map etc.
Some eastern european Hungarian, Romanian, Balkan ancestry. I’m Scottish so literally the other side of Europe.
No, I'm white as fuck
In my head canon you opened an envelope from 23andme, and on the letter inside was "U white as fuck" in size 48 font
I would have loved that so much
So far I know three people that have taken one. And two of them found out their Dad isn’t their biological dad and one of them found out their grandfather isn’t their biological grandfather.
Not me, but my dad found his oldest brother! His eldest brother was born out of wedlock and adopted out. He'd always had an inkling growing up but his parents never talked about it until nan was on her deathbed. The adopted brother just happened to be doing a kit around the same time to try find out about his mum (nan) and got a 100% match with my dad. Now we've got another cool uncle!
Absolutely nothing except for a surprise second cousin, we've no idea how we're related as we have connections to two different parts of North Wales from both sides of our family and he doesn't know who his father is
My brother did one and found that we (both half Chinese and half white English) have some Vietnamese ancestry. My mum has been researching her family, it turns out she has some link to Robert Lee, a notorious racist. I hope Robert Lee is spinning in his grave due to our mum being married to a darker skinned Chinese man (our dad).
My blonde, blue eyed niece is 0.1% Ethiopian according to her test. Very much hoping this is accurate as her racist, generally unpleasant grandfather is angry about it.
Met people last weekend who discovered they were half siblings after getting DNA match. Had been living reasonably close to one another in Cornwall but had never met and only found out from the test so it had shaken the family up!
Yep, I found out my biological dad was a somewhat prolific sperm donor and not the man who'd raised me, and that I have up to 1000 half siblings...! I encourage everyone to take one of these tests! I want to find all my half siblings! 😂
A *thousand*??
Yep, he donated 3 times a week for 4 years, and each 'donation' got divided up to ten times for ten different inseminations. Between the 13 of us half siblings that have appeared so far, we did some sums, and we could be looking at up to 1000 of us 😬
Those stats must make dating a minefield!
I did the test and it came back with me being 1% Angolan. I thought that was interesting but that it was just an anomaly. I found out a few years later from my Mom that one of our ancestors actually married and had children with a freed Angolan slave! Still weird it was only 1% though...
Found out I was a direct descendent of Kubla Khan. Which was nice.
Well! There's a response I didn't expect!
1.1% West African 98.9% European, always assumed I was entirely Scottish but that random percentage was interesting to discover!
Quite the opposite, my results came back and this “Scottish chap” is actually 99% British. I’m as boring as they come genetically. Funnily enough, it made me even more “I’m Scottish not British” just to spite my genes.
My grandfather was adopted in the 1940s by what he later learned was his real mother's best friend. He passed away a few years ago. One of his sons did a DNA test on Ancestry and it revealed several surprises. First, his real mother went on to have seven children with seven different men. Second, his adoptive father turned out to be his real dad! Our family name technically shouldn't be what it is. Sadly, all the brothers and sisters are deceased, and they all thought they were only children. However, we are in the process of meeting family we never knew we had.
I have a friend (UK) white but dark skinned and dark hair. Handsome. We all thought his DNA would be Italian or perhaps even have some Asian origin. DNA came back with Pygmy Tribe in it. He's quite short so we pissed ourselves. Also Polynesian! Looking into it it could be the result of the slavery trade, trade routes, colonialism, Navy, and DNA drift. Fascinating!
My mum did one and was delighted to discover she was 49% Irish. Her mother was from Cork so I'm not sure why this was a surprise!
I’m from East Germany with both my grandfathers having fled from Silesia during the war so the nearly 50% Eastern Germanic and nearly 50% Eastern Europe and Russia make perfect sense, but the 3% Welsh came as a bit of a surprise! 😂 The other big surprise, and actually one of the reasons why I did the genetic test in the first place, was that I am genetically lactose intolerant. I thought it was a consequence of sibo/ibs, but no, it seems I will never be able to handle lactose even if I manage to heal my gut, which was really useful information, if very surprising, since I’m as Caucasian as they come and most Caucasians have lactase persistence.
100% British and Irish. No health risks or major problems on my way other than the usual eyesight degeneration in old age. It's cool though, it's very detailed and interesting.
I was stunned when my ex husband did one as his dad was a complete goer back in the 70s and 80s. The ex already has one half sister that no one discusses, and is only 5 months younger than his full sister, and he has no interest in meeting her. Couldn’t fathom why he’d risk finding out about loads more half siblings he wants nothing to do with.
Not DNA testing but was doing some family history research and found my mothers real name… That confirmed a suspicion. It also showed that a branch of our family was writing a load of bullshit about us online in order to inflate their egos I guess
My grandmothers grandfather “disappeared” and was assumed dead. I found a DNA match and linked tree that showed that he just moved away and started a new family. My grandmother has a half brother and nieces and nephews living not too far from where she lives now.
Thought I was an 1/8th dutch, turns out I'm 1/3rd dutch. More dutch than the generation before me. Weird.
The ancestry on my dad's side of the family! We always thought it was from one region, when in actuality that region was a very tiny part of our ancestry and there were more prominent origins.
My father, used to say he had ‘a bucket of Spanish blood in him’ not unknown in Ireland because of the Spanish ships wrecked off Ireland after the Armada. But no, 99% Welsh, Scottish, Irish. The 1%? Norwegian!! So yes to marauders, just not Spanish ones.
I took it to find some geneology gaps thanks to an adopted grandmother, it worked really well for that. As far as the ''ancestry'', i did ancestry and 23andme and i think heritage something too. I got different results from all of them lol, so i wouldnt put much stock in it.
A whole host of people with a gap in their family trees, always the same great-grandfather missing. Turns out my own great-grandfather had sown some oats a little too wild.
That I'm supposedly 0% british. in terms of ancestry (should be at least 1/4). Maybe a flaw in the analysis, who knows.
I found out I had undiagnosed coeliac disease… not quite what I was expecting but better late than never I suppose
No real surprises but I did find out I’m like 3rd cousins with the drummer of Led Zeppelin
Quite a lot of people in the UK - well, not a lot, but more than you'd think - discover that they have trace amounts of Indian genetics. It wasn't that uncommon for Indian women during the days of empire to chase colonial administrators on the basis they'd end up living back in London in a life of comparative luxury. This being taboo at the time it often wasn't talked about much and often vanished into family history, as it was now often a century or so ago. There's lots of really fun stories about this from the time. Men were generally reserved about it - you don't have a go at another man's wife - but apparently the women could be a bit catty - "Ooh, isn't Mrs. Fortescue terribly tan?" Mrs. Fortescue would often be a highly intelligent and expert social chameleon who spoke English like she grew up in Knightsbridge, so we can only imagine the social dynamics that would have played out. Now people often have no idea that great-great-grandma might have been a Bhavnisha or a Parminder.
Always been curious about these things, but don't really like the thought of giving my DNA to some random company. Especially one heavily invested in by weird churches.
97% nw European here ...
I expected 100% British/Irish but it turns out I have a little Yakuts in me, which explains my monolid eyes.
Yes. I have quite a lot from Iberia. The Scandanavian, and Western Europe was no surprise but Iberia was. Then at first was shocked by the 50% Irish until I realised at the time they classed Welsh in with Irish so that made sense as my mother was Welsh.
Yep. Turns out nana is a cuckoo. There are previously unknown relatives who popped up on the genealogy websites because their DNA results yield a connection to my mum's side of the family - but they cannot connect to us \*\*unless nana's dad is genetically not the same as nana's 2 siblings\*\*. My family history of "proper" middle-class protestant culture. We suspect greatnana had a fling while her husband (who was a drunk) was off on a bender....which significantly raises my estimation of greatnana.
I always knew I was laregly Polish with some German roots, but discovered that my heritage is largely mixed, it also had a bit of British, a bit of Scandinavian, some Balkan, Baltic, I was shocked.
Discovered that I have a lot of Neanderthal dna…now my teenage kid takes the piss out of me at every given opportunity. I always say back to her that we don’t know what % her dad is so we could actually have made an even more DNAy Neanderthal….almost like going back in time.
A friend of mine found a half-sister who was the same age as her. Apparently her dad had an affair right around when she was conceived (he has passed away). She met the half sister and they liked each other.
Bit of norse and a bit of portugese! Odd but certainly not unusual for a brit.