[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] GEDMATCH AND FTDNA ALERT

[Caroline Brymora]

And I've just seen this:
Not sure where it has been put up or if it was emailed.

Just posted from FTDNA ... Family Tree DNA
1 min ·

We are reaching out to our customers to make some important clarifications
to what is being published regarding GEDMatch stopping the upload of Family
Tree DNA results.

1. Let it be clear: the DNA test results, including any raw data available
to the customers through their personal page, belongs to the owner of the
DNA record, and not to Family Tree DNA.

2. The owner of the DNA record, consequently, can voluntarily submit
his/her results to any other outfit, so long as by doing so, the customer
does not compromise the privacy of any of his/her matches, or any records
in the Family Tree DNA database.

3. More than one customer that has uploaded their FamilyTreeDNA data to
GEDMatch has contacted us about a way for people to breach the privacy of a
person's Family Tree DNA record, when uploading their information to
GEDMatch.

4. At the time of the publication of this note, GEDMatch does not have
Privacy Terms, nor General Terms & Conditions published on their home page,
or on their registration page prior to registering, and thus, customers are
not aware of the privacy risks associated with uploading their data to
GEDMatch

5. FamilyTreeDNA has tried to reach out to GEDMatch to discuss this subject
to find ways to eliminate the risk of potential data breach. We were
surprised by their unilateral note on GEDmatch about the discontinuation of
the uploads in lieu of a fix, and the new note about supposed threats of
lawsuits from us.

6. It is regretful that GEDMatch, who has been a long time business
associate and whose owners tested with FamilyTreeDNA, misrepresented our
concerns and precipitated a chain of events that could have easily being
solved through dialogue.

7. Nevertheless, and always thinking about what is best for customers, we
are open to discuss with GEDMatch ways to avoid the risks to privacy that
they recognize to exist in their system and we encourage those that would
like the upload to be reestablished and privacy issues being taken care of
to reach out to GEDMach.

As always, we thank you for your continued support.




On Friday, 18 March 2016, Caroline Brymora <carolinebrymora at gmail.com>
wrote:

> There's a lot of talk about this going on!
>
> FTDNA wrote something on their Facebook page to say they have reached out
> to Gedmatch. I can no longer see it, and they seem to have changed the
> privacy settings of the Facebook group (interestingly, 12 hours ago the
> page had over 6000 likes, now it has about 1000)
>
>
>
> On Friday, 18 March 2016, Irene Sinkovits <cdnirene at gmail.com
> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','cdnirene at gmail.com');>> wrote:
>
>> Privacy issues? LOL - For a special price a couple of years ago FTDNA
>> analyzed my DNA raw data that I had obtained from 23andMe. Perhaps 23andMe
>> should sue FTDNA.
>>
>> > ---------------------------------------------
>> > Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2016 09:58:24 -0400
>> > From: "MIKE MCHENRY" <maurmike1 at verizon.net>
>> >
>> > A message on the GEDMATCH website says:
>> >
>> > We regret we had to make the decision to stop accepting FTDNA DNA
>> uploads.
>> > FTDNA has threatened to sue GEDmatch over claimed privacy issues. We
>> have
>> > been asked not to discuss the details, because it would be to FTDNA's
>> > disadvantage. Suffice it to say that FTDNA's own site seems to currently
>> > violate these same issues.
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>>
>
>
> --
> Caroline
>
>
>

-- 
Caroline