How to delete your DNA data from genetics companies like 23andMe and Ancestry
By Erin Brodwin,
Business Insider
| 05. 04. 2018
- Investigators say they cracked the cold case of the Golden State Killer with help from data on a genetics website.
- The investigators revealed that they uploaded a suspect's raw DNA signature — sourced from an old crime scene sample — to a site called GEDmatch.
- The case has raised privacy concerns among people who have submitted their DNA data to similar genetics sites.
- Here's how to delete your DNA and data from 23andMe, Ancestry, and Helix.
The recent arrest in one of California's most infamous serial-killer cases was based in large part on a DNA sample submitted to a genetics website by a distant relative of the suspect.
If that news has you concerned about the security of your own genetic material, you may be wondering how to delete it from genetic databases kept by popular genetics testing companies like 23andMe and Ancestry.
Those two databases were not used by investigators to track down Golden State Killer suspect Joseph James DeAngelo. Instead, investigators used a service called GEDmatch, which lets customers upload a raw DNA signature. Investigators...
Related Articles
By Charles Schmidt, Undark | 09.25.2026
In 2010, scientists at the University of Tokyo and other institutions reported a startling achievement: They had successfully grown a pancreas made almost entirely of rat cells within the bodies of mice. The research was directed by Hiromitsu Nakauchi, a...
By Rob Stein, NPR [cites CGS' Katie Hasson] | 09.29.2026
Cathy Tie slips on a white lab coat bearing her name and the logo of her startup: Origin Genomics. "Welcome!" she says as she leads an NPR reporter, photographer and videographer on an exclusive tour of Origin's labs located...
By Emily Baumgaertner Nunn, The New York Times | 09.08.2026
It is one of biology’s most ingenious rhythms: Every baby is born young. No matter how much wear and tear their parents’ DNA accumulated over their lifetimes, reproduction erases the molecular scars, handing a clean slate to the next generation...
What We Inherit by Sam Trejo and Daphne O. Martschenko; and Original Sin by Kathryn Paige Harden have a great deal in common, with substantial differences in style and emphasis. Both books attempt, in different ways, to show the reader just where current research into human genomics stands, where that might be going, and why the authors are interested. In short, the influence of genomic research on our societies is already large and seems likely to change them in ways...