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 Ryan Cross, Endpoints News | 03.24.2026
Cathy Tie has an audacity more typical of a tech startup founder than a biotech executive. She dropped out of college to start a genetic screening company and later founded a telemedicine startup. The 29-year-old has been on two Forbes...
By Rowan Walrath and Laurel Oldach, Chemical & Engineering News | 03.04.2026
Washington, DC—At a press conference held at the US Department of Health and Human Services headquarters on Feb. 23, two doctors from the University of Pennsylvania and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia spoke about their hope for the future of...
By Jason Liebowitz, The New Yorker | 03.06.2026
When Talaya Reid was in high school, in a quiet suburb of Philadelphia, she developed fatigue so severe that she spent afternoons napping instead of going out with friends. She was lethargic at school and her grades suffered, but after...
By Scott Solomon, The MIT Press Reader | 02.12.2026
Chris Mason is a man in a hurry.
“Sometimes walking from the subway to the lab takes too long, so I’ll start running,” he told me over breakfast at a bistro near his home in Brooklyn on a crisp...