Tag Archive | 23andme

23andme: Now and Then

Sep23

23andme started out by being a leader in the direct-to-consumer (DTC) genomic testing business. Time Magazine named it the 2008 Invention of the Year![1] It was the first place I tested my own autosomal DNA and that of many family members back in 2011-2012. Originally it had the best cousin matching tools, best ethnicity estimates, and had a well designed interface to examine the health implications in your own genome. Now I recommend to most that they start with Ancestry DNA and then upload that data to several other sites, including Promethease for the medical analysis, although 23andme still tests a wider range of health related genes.

23andme has been in the news this week because its entire board, except its founder, Anne Wojcicki, resigned over her plan to take it private again. It went public in 2021 but has yet to turn a profit and the WSJ reports that it will run out of cash next year [ref WSJ]. However there is at least one company interested in buying it according to a post on the DNA-Newbie list.

How should those of us who have tests there react to this news? Personally I am not worried, mainly because I hardly ever use the site anymore. I have long since downloaded my data and have contacted most of my closer matches. Roberta Estes has done a thorough blog post (click here) explaining how to save your data from 23andme.

The reason I rarely use 23andme is because it no longer allows you to compare your DNA to a relative in a chromosome browser; the feature I liked the best. I now do that at GEDmatch, Family Tree DNA, and MyHeritage. That tool was removed because of a data breach over a year ago where a hacker got lists of Jewish and Chinese testers and posted them for sale on the dark web. The break-in took advantage of users who had the same email and password on multiple sites, some of which had been exposed elsewhere.

Perhaps it is the resulting class action suit that caused part of 23andme’s financial woes. Click here for an article about how that is being settled with users.

My understanding was that the inspiration for the founding of 23andme was that Genia Brin, the mother of the then husband of founder Anne Wojcicki, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 1998 [ref michaelfox org]. The focus of 23andme has always been on discovering the genetic basis of various medical issues, not genealogy. However they have been quite supportive of adoptees (click here), since it is helpful to know what issues may lie in your DNA when you have no known family health history.

One way to look at the genetic basis of various diseases is to crowd-source lots of genomes.

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Much Ado About DNA Hacking

Nov8

The recent panic about hacking at 23andme in the press seems overblown to me. What exactly would someone do with my DNA? There is nothing in there of any monetary value nor do I have health risks that need to be private. Perhaps knowing which celebrities are Jewish or Chinese might be of use to some bad actors. The fact is that those lists are for sale on the dark web. Click here for an interesting article about that.
We have all been advised to guard our online privacy but our DNA is not our social security number nor our credit card so I am not worried about this yet. The hackers were able to use login credentials that were leaked from other sites to access those people’s accounts at 23andme. Then they could see information about other 23andme users whose DNA matched the compromised account. The type of information exposed was ethnicity, other relatives, and family tree information, plus whatever you said about yourself. This does not seem worrisome to me. My actual DNA was not exposed and even if it were, it would take a very DNA savvy hacker to use it to create a fake relative of mine.

Most of the DNA sites are now forcing two factor authentication (2FA) on their users when they log in. That is where a text or an email is sent to you when you log in to be sure it is you. This should prevent “credential stuffing” hacks in the future. If you try to log into 23andme, you will also discover that you must now change your password there. If your relative is deceased and their email of record is no longer available you may be out of luck. Perhaps customer service can help you.

Here is the text of the recent email all my Jewish accounts received:

“Specifically, there was unauthorized access to one or more 23andMe accounts that were connected to you through DNA Relatives. As a result, the DNA Relatives profile information you provided in this feature was exposed to the threat actor.”

The moral of this story is not to use the same passwords on more than one site. Several of my favorite passwords were leaked in various hospital system breaches. Google is kind enough to tell me when I try to log in to a site with a compromised password. My recommendation is to use several passwords which you vary by including a 2 or 3 character indicator of the site name.  So for example add “23m” somewhere in your 23 and me password. Most of us have browsers which remember our passwords for us and if they forget, we can use the forgot password link or have the site text us a code. I keep a text file of my passwords with written descriptions of which password used rather than spelling them out. Naturally I use unique, different, and difficult passwords with 2 factor security on sites that access money.

Personally, I am not leaving 23andme although I did change my password there. I am sad that many of the features that I love, like the DNA comparison tools, are temporarily closed down. I look forward to their return once the breach has been understood and dealt with.

The 23andme Family Tree built from DNA

May31

The dream of every genetic genealogist is to be able to build a family tree from just DNA. 23andme made a terrific start on this with their Beta family tree released in October. Now it is out of test mode and they have added good editing facilities. Being slightly obsessive, I tried it out with almost everyone whose login I have (my family and many friends and clients).

My paternal side tree built with DNA at 23andme is accurate (fixed one cousin)

I find it useful to fill in the names of my ancestors and the child from which my cousins are descended. On my own tree I was able to remove an incorrect generation turning a 3rd cousin into a 2nd cousin. I also like the compact display with nodes for each ancestor and the ancestors of tested relatives. Click here for an excellent and detailed help document at 23andme.

Major missing features are 1) no ability to export the tree and 2) no capability to share it with family members. Those are big drawbacks for serious genealogists like me. The other problem is that I cannot figure out how to get it to recalculate a tree although the documentation refers to that a number of times.

The family tree that 23andme builds from your DNA relatives only includes those who have opted into open sharing or those with whom you have “connected” via that button on their match page. According to the documentation there is a limit as to how many people you can have in a diagram plus the initial trees are built from your closest 20 matches. You can add people to the tree and there seems to be a provision for new relatives going into a side box and getting added from there. I did not see any cases of that.

My Norwegian Dad’s tree is completely accurate. The right side has just relatives on his mother’s tree and left his father’s. I have figured out or been in touch with all his listed matches. The only one I cannot vouch for is a woman who, based on her other family matches, has a different great grandfather from the one on record (it seems to have really been one of my grandfather’s brothers, a widower preacher in that neck of the great plains). No, I have not pursued this after no response from her to several delicately phrased emails a few years ago.

The only inconsistency is that there are several matches from Dad’s Halling great grandparents that do not show on his tree but show on mine.

My Jewish husband Steve’s tree was most interesting as it showed all his DNA relatives as being from one side which was incorrect. Possibly because Jewish people from the same geographic area, Galicia in his case, will always have some shared DNA from past cousin marriages. The key with Jewish matches is to look at segment sizes.

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23andme Now Connects to the FamilySearch World Tree

Aug4

UPDATE 10 Mar 2020: This Beta feature has been removed. Complain to 23andme if you miss it.

You can connect your family tree at FamilySearch to your 23andme profile as part of a Beta test of this exciting new feature. Then your DNA relatives can see the names of your grandparents (if deceased), great grandparents, and so on, via a nice compact list where every generation is clickable to see the full names, dates, and locations. Plus they can even click on a specific ancestor to go to that profile at FamilySearch! Only a preview is shown until they log in there.

Click on any down arrow in the compact ancestor list to see the names for that generation.

Clicking on my Grandparents displays them, all clickable to their profile at FamilySearch

Click on any person of interest from that list to go to their profile at FamilySearch. Then maybe the View My Relationship tool, at the top right of a profile, will find the relationship. This is somewhat limited at the moment. Although it shows the pathway, it does not name the relationship.

This can make it easy to find your common ancestor although I have to wonder why 23andme does not do that for you. It would be incredibly simple to program that, since there is only one copy of each person on the one world tree at FamilySearch. In other words, it is nowhere near as difficult to do as ThruLines from Ancestry or the Theory of Family Relativity from MyHeritage.

If you opt in to Beta testing at 23andme, your DNA relatives list will show a special little green icon of the FamilySearch logo on the far right next to anyone who has connected their tree. Clicking on that person to go the detailed match page will now include the FamilySearch tree information there as shown above.

The Beta test also includes an family search label and icon at the bottom of the left column on the DNA Relatives list which indicates how many of your matches have connected to FamilySearch. Dear cousins, get to work, five is not very many yet!

So how do you make this connection?
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23andme Basics and an Update

Jun25

My favorite capabilities at 23andme are: finding new relatives with DNA and comparing them in the chromosome browser, looking at my ancestry composition in depth, and having the ability to look up specific genes. Most of the recent changes at 23andme are to the ancestry composition tools, specifically there is more granularity in the areas it shows for your ancestors’ origins.

With three generations of Munsons on 23andme, thanks to my niece’s recent test, I can finally evaluate the GrandTree. This tool, found on the Family & Friends menu, lets you look at what you inherited from each grandparent. Not surprisingly my niece LM got way more from my mother, whose mother she strongly resembles, than from my Dad. There is no guarantee that you will get exactly 25% from each grandparent. In my case, I got more from my maternal grandfather which I deduce from my 28% jewish ethnicity.

This tool will look at the traits and health items tracked through the generations even if you did not buy the health reports. This will be discussed in more detail later in this article. Meanwhile, I will do a quick review of the current 23andme basics as a guide for my niece and any other new testers reading this.

Finding DNA relatives and comparing them in the chromosome browser

Click on DNA relatives on either the Ancestry menu or the Family & Friends menu to look at your cousin list. Here are my previous posts on this topic, still fairly accurate:

Looking up a specific gene

You can look up a specific gene or marker in the Browse Raw Data function which is found on the menu under your name. Click here for my blog post about the AIDS resistant gene which details how to  do that type of look up.

Ancestry Composition

The great thing about the ancestry composition display at 23andme is that it shows you the details by chromosome. None of the other testing companies do that. What’s more if you put your cursor on a specific ethnicity, it will highlight just those segments on the diagram. Click on Ancestry Composition on the Ancestry menu to get to the page with the most details, including the chromosome by chromosome display.
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