I looked at this service last year and was told that it was not available to Maryland residents due to a specific Maryland law. How did you get around this? Or has the law changed?
This intrigues me only because we know nothing of my paternal grandfather; however, I read this on the 23 and Me site, "Paternal lineage is only scientifically possible for male members." Does that mean that I won't be able to garner any information about paternal lineage? I have a feeling I won't be able to get my brother to do this; he's not fond of anyone having his fingerprints so there's no way in hell he'd fess up his DNA.
So, now that MD has released its hold on the DNA testing I sent my sample to 23andMe as well as Ancestry. Both heritage results were pretty much the same except 23andMe denoted I have a small portion of Japanese ancestry which came as a really cool and unexpected surprise. This Japanese relative is traced back to the 1700s, but as I understand it Japan was a closed nation in the 1700s so now I'm even more curious about my ancestry than before I sent the sample!
I haven't had much time of late to delve into the relatives with similar DNA but look forward to doing so. I'm trying to talk my brother into doing it so I can get some paternal-side information. My father and uncles have passed so he's my only hope being the only male sibling.
I'm not a carrier of any of the inherited diseases that were tested, so that was good to know.
Has anyone else done this and had some pleasant (or not so pleasant) surprises?
Legitimate concern. That's why I immediately deleted my DNA from their database and jumped through the hoops to have them destroy the samples at MyHeritage after I got my results. I'm not sure any of the other big test groups even offer the latter.23andMe admits it didn’t detect cyberattacks for months
In other words, for around five months, 23andMe did not detect a series of cyberattacks where hackers were trying — and often succeeding — in brute-forcing access to customers’ accounts, according to a legally required filing 23andMe sent to California’s attorney general.
Months after the hackers started targeting 23andMe customers, the company revealed that hackers had stolen the ancestry and genetic data of 6.9 million users, or about half of its customers.
According to the company, 23andMe became aware of the breach in October when hackers advertised the stolen data in posts published on the unofficial 23andMe subreddit and separately on a notorious hacking forum. 23andMe also did not notice that the hackers advertised the stolen data on another hacking forum months earlier in August, as TechCrunch reported.