Following more changes by Gedmatch's parent company, Verogen, I've deleted all my kits today.
Some details:
https://www.facebook.com/DNADoeProje...15513718707395
They just can't keep undermining their users' trust.
It particularly bothered me that suddenly everyone was opted back in to law enforcement matching specifically to identify unknown infants, with a view to finding and prosecuting mothers (but not fathers).
It's a detriment to my research but we have to stand up for high standards in this area.
Further detail here as well.
https://thednageek.com/trust/?fbclid...qBblajV46xHces
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| 12-01-2021, 17:17 | #3 | |
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| 12-01-2021, 17:25 | #4 | |
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Join Date: Jul 2002
Posts: 51,255
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| 14-01-2021, 02:14 | #6 | |
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| 15-01-2021, 21:50 | #7 |
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Back on the 19th July 2020, I saw these Doe kits when there was the security breach that changed the settings to allow law enforcement access.
My great aunt has two very high matches at 450.6 cM and 215.5 cM under an email belonging to the DNA Doe Project. There were a total of 5 kits on her match page belonging to this project with the other three at 86.1 cM, 28 cM and 17.7 cM. My mum also had matches under an email with a code for the kit name but I haven't found who the email is under since it was just a bunch of numbers. My mum had 4 John Doe matches with them all being matches of my paternal great aunt as well. The highest match is the same for my mum and paternal great aunt but 453.5 for my mum. My dad also had the same 4 matches with the highest at 536.1 cM for him. The fact that they matched both my mum and my relatives on my dad's side makes it seem like they're not real. The Doe kits all had coded names. There was definitely something off with those kits. I checked the first one's one-to-many and none of my family even appear on the page of matches. They have loads of high matches with the highest being anonymous kits from the same email addresses. Three prominent email addresses. It made me wonder if these kits were manipulated some way so that they'd match as much of the database as possible. Logging in today, I noticed that the kits that I previously deleted when some of these changes had occurred have returned. A match asked me to upload to GEDmatch so I did again. I now have duplicate kits for my family on GEDmatch. Weirdly the olds kits don't appear as matches for my new kits and vice versa. Yet if I do a one to many comparison of a random match, the duplicate kits do appear in their match list. Just makes you wonder if deleting your kit actually makes a difference. Last edited by srmf5; 15-01-2021 at 21:55. |
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| 16-01-2021, 12:29 | #9 | |
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Thanks for this info. I didn't know about this change. Do you have any more information about the part in bold? And why only mothers and not fathers? From the first link, I got the impression it was about unidentified adult remains. |
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| 16-01-2021, 12:33 | #10 |
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They're making a distinction between infants and adult remains.
I am presuming the reason they're chasing up mothers is that they are in some way responsible for the infant's death. Some countries have a different law regarding infanticide and murder, but in the USA they are considered the same thing, which doesn't recognise the circumstances in which a woman may have found herself in a crisis pregnancy (or her mental health). |
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| 18-01-2021, 10:06 | #11 |
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I'd also be concerned for the people that permanently deleted kits when they last changed their T&C, only to have them reappear in the past week. Seems they are holding onto peoples data behind the scenes.
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| 18-01-2021, 19:58 | #14 | |
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| 21-01-2021, 21:55 | #15 |
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This is the email that GEDmatch sent out:
Dear GEDmatch user, We are writing to inform you of a technical issue that occurred January 14th and temporarily affected one or more kits associated with your GEDmatch account. During this isolated incident, a very small number of kits that had previously been deleted briefly reappeared in the kit owner’s account. The occurrence lasted 48 hours or less before the kits were permanently deleted. This was not a data breach or “hack.” Please allow us to provide some detail on how this technical error occurred. As part of the transition when Verogen acquired GEDmatch last year, the company was required by General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to store certain information separately. On January 14th, we were able to merge the information that had been separate into our main database. This is when the error occurred. During the time the deleted information was stored on the separate server, no one had access to it. With the database merge complete, the information has now been permanently removed. Importantly, the opt-in permissions were not changed on these accounts, therefore the kit owner’s preferences related to law enforcement matching for violent crime were honored. Rest assured that the unique nature of this incident ensures that an error of this type will not happen in the future. If you wish to delete kits, they will be permanently deleted. Verogen or GEDmatch do not keep copies of the information, and the information is never sold to a third party. Your privacy is of the utmost important to us. If you have further questions about this isolated incident, please reach out to us at gedmatch@verogen.com. Sincerely, Brett Willams CEO Verogen |
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