Ancestry.com Sued for ‘Misleading’ Customers About DNA Data

Dick Eastman · April 26, 2019 · DNA, Legal Affairs · No Comments

Genealogy information provider Ancestry.com has a “longstanding practice” of failing to get sufficient informed consent agreements from customers who submit medical and DNA information, a new lawsuit alleges.
Lori Collett sued the Utah-based company’s subsidiaries—Ancestry.com DNA LLC and Ancestry.com Inc.—for allegedly “misleading and deceiving patients in California and across the country about what Ancestry was actually doing with their DNA.”
Bloomberg news has a brief radio report about the lawsuit at http://bit.ly/2VAn7Gt.

New Online Tool Will Help Families Track Down Scottish Ancestors

Dick Eastman · March 28, 2019 · Online Sites · 3 Comments

The Scottish Emigration Database lists details including the town or village of origin, address, destination and occupation, as well as information about specific vessels and shipping lines. The free online tool contains the records of 21,000 people.
The main search focuses on people – you can filter based on name, occupation, gender and address. You can even search by destination port. The database also allows people to search by ship name – so if you know which ship your ancestors sailed on, but don’t know a great detail about them, this might help.

The online database allows you to search thousands of entries using as much, or as little detail as you have – a detailed user guide is available here.

You can learn more at: http://bit.ly/2uuoffz.

Is DNA Evidence Reliable?

Dick Eastman · March 26, 2019 · DNA, Legal Affairs · 2 Comments

DNA has become a major tool for use by police in solving cold cases of murder and other violent crimes. In the past year, about 50 cold cases have been solved nationwide using public genealogy websites. But is this evidence alone reliable?
James H. Manahan, J.D., has written an article in the Lake County (Minnesota) News-Chronicle that tells why DNA evidence alone can be misleading. Manahan cautions that DNA is a great tool but also must always be used in conjunction with old-fashioned police work.

Manahan describes a case when a homeless man was accused of murder, based upon DNA evidence from a 7-year-old cold case. Luckily, the man’s public defender found a subtle problem with the evidence. In short, the DNA evidence obtained was “identified” as coming from the wrong man. Instead of spending the rest of his life in jail, the homeless man was quickly cleared of the crime. Had the public defender not been suspicious, the outcome could have been far different.
The article quotes DNA and genealogy expert CeCe Moore. It also quotes the homeless man, Lukis Anderson, when he got out of jail: “There’s more that’s gotta be looked at than just the DNA. You’ve got to dig deeper. Reanalyze. Do everything all over again before you say, ‘This is what it is.’ Because it may not necessarily be so.”
You can read this interesting story at: http://bit.ly/2TWn6wi.