There are approximately 10 million people all over the world who had their DNA analyzed by 23 and me, Ancestry.com or My Heritage, which are direct-to-consumer genetics companies. A simple cheek swap allow these companies to scan a person’s genome for millions of spots and thus generate information on where that person’s ancestors might have come from and they can even be used to locate relatives believed to be long lost.
This is the idea that runs this trend: you can find other people. However, this means that you can be found as well. There are so many people that used such a service that a lot of us don’t even need to share our DNA to be identified. Perhaps a distant cousin, who you have to meet yet, might have uploaded their DNA, and this could lead to you.
The “Golden State Killer” cold case was finally solved earlier this year and this became possible after an old DNA sample from a crime scene matched with the DNA of the murderer’s relatives, which was in public databases, and with a little more work, the killer was finally found.
A recent report in Science counted the number of Americans of European descent who might have been tracked down in this manner. The paper put the question regarding the probability of finding someone’s relatives in a database after you test someone random. The conclusion of the study shows that about 60 percent of Americans of European descent showed matches with a third cousin or another closer relation.
The coming years will only grow this percentage as more people will share their genetic information with these companies. This conclusion came after looking back and realizing that the number of people who had already done this has increased greatly these past years.
Source: canadianhomesteading.ca
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