Ancestry DNA Alert

Judy Russell, The Legal Genealogist

Meet Judy if you don't already know her.  The Legal Genealogist is a very popular blogger among people who enjoy Genealogy and learning.  She is an expert on many things and one of them is DNA.  She posted a good alert today.

I am going to quote a part of her post and redirect you to the full message.  Ancestry deleted some DNA test results, including DNA samples that had a lot of people up in arms a few years back.  I remember reading a lot of commentary on the "whys" but bottom line for many people was that they now had no way of reclaiming the information and things were lost.  For many their their DNA donor was then deceased.  Hmm.  So when I saw this alert I wanted to share if you are an Ancestry customer for DNA.

"AncestryDNA alert Posted: 19 Apr 2016 07:00 AM PDT Act now to preserve data There are changes coming soon — possibly very very soon — to the matching system at AncestryDNA that may make some of the folks who’ve tested there lose some bits and pieces of information they have now. This isn’t going to be altogether a bad thing, since the theory is that most of the things that will drop out of sight will be bits and pieces that are unlikely ever to lead to a common ancestor. In short, the hope is all of our matches will be better, stronger and more accurate. But there are some aspects that will be problematic, and folks need to act now to minimize any collateral damage from the change. Here’s what’s happening: AncestryDNA is revising its system for evaluating matches in two ways. First, it’s revising its phasing data to more accurately identify bits and pieces of DNA that are genealogically significant. Second, it’s changing its matching system to use actual segments from start to end rather than artificially designated windows. What does that mean? In plain English, some of the people who are showing up as matches at AncestryDNA right now will stop showing up as matches. Not huge numbers (not like the last time AncestryDNA revised its system and some folks lost as many as 90% of their matches) — but some. At the same time, some people who now don’t show up as matches may appear in the match list. So in terms of sheer numbers of matches, there isn’t going to be any big change. AncestryDNA says no-one who now appears as a second cousin or closer will drop off anyone’s match list. And it’s promised that we will be able to download data on anyone in the current match list where we’ve either added a note to that match’s record or added a star to the record for our own research. But — and here’s a big but — " Discover the rest of her post here:  http://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog/2016/04/19/ancestrydna-alert/ Judy has some fascinating posts on the law, her family and other things of interest.  Check it out! If you ever see her speaking in the area by all means go.  She is an amazing presenter as well as writer.