A lot has been said about Genealogy and DNA tests, and while a lot has been positive there has also been a significant amount of negative commentary as well. The issues that have arisen regarding privacy, informed consent and law enforcement access have caused great concern and discouraged some people from testing. Over the past few years I have blogged several times about DNA, both my own results and the ongoing law enforcement access issue.
For myself, taking a DNA test has largely just confirmed what I had already discovered in my research over the years, and has produced no major surprises. For a few others I know, that has not been the case. For one friend (who has given me permission to speak generally about her discovery) a DNA test had major repercussions when it led to the discovery that she was adopted. Her adoptive parents had never told her about her birth, and she had no idea she was not biologically related to them until she received her test results. She found no relative matches to several family members she knew had done DNA tests, and matches to people she didn't know, including 2 sibling matches to complete strangers. It was a lot to deal with and the entire family have had to come to terms with the discovery.
In the couple of years since I did my own DNA test (taken with Ancestry.com) there has been a few updates in ethnicity estimates. As more people test, more ethnicity information becomes available and (presumably) more accurate estimates can be given. The current ethnicity estimate for Ancestry.com customers was calculated in August 2019 and has 40,000+ reference samples and 1,000+ possible regions. The latest update saw minor changes in my ethnicity, with the English component increasing and the Ireland/Scotland and Germanic Europe components decreasing.
DNA matches have also been interesting. Last year one of my first cousins finally did the test - until then my matches had been second cousin at best. Third and fourth cousins were much more numerous, and I have exchanged information, stories and photos with several of them. Although I come from quite a large family (my father was one of ten siblings) few of my first cousins are interested in genealogy and had not done DNA tests. This brings home the reality that you can only match to others who have tested - and no matches to a branch of your family doesn't necessarily mean you are not related, it could just mean no one from that branch of your family has done a DNA test yet. Something to keep in mind.
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