Ancestry reports that a ProTools subscription is available to all US users now – and with it, access to additional DNA match information. Oh, happy day!!
ProTools is Ancestry’s new offering that provides DNA testers with:
- How you and any selected DNA match are BOTH related to your mutually shared matches
- How much DNA a selected match and any shared match share with each other
Please note that ProTools does NOT include a chromosome browser, and the location of your matching DNA is NOT revealed. Shared matches and shared DNA does NOT equate to triangulation because the matches may be on different segments or due to different ancestors altogether.
Shared matching means that you match person 1 and person 2, and that person 1 and person 2 also match each other. It does not mean that you match on the same segment or because of the same ancestor.
Even if you don’t have or want ProTools, you need to read this article so you understand what your matches who subscribe to ProTools can now see about you and your relatives, especially your close relatives.
How Do I Find ProTools?
To determine if ProTools is available to you, click on any match in your DNA match list. You’ll see normal match information, displayed below.
At the bottom, you’ll see a banner inviting you to upgrade to ProTools.
ProTools provides multiple features for $10 per month ($120 per year), in addition to your regular or AncestryDNA Plus subscription.
ProTools includes other features as well, which I’m not reviewing today in order to focus specifically on the new enhanced Shared Matches feature.
I subscribed to ProTools and immediately had access to the new features.
Now, I see the “Pro” label beside Shared Matches.
Click on Shared Matches.
ProToolsShared Matches
By clicking on Shared Matches, I can now see how my match, ER, and I are both related to people we match in common. Said another way, if ER and I both match someone, say Susan, a grid now displays how I’m related to Susan and how ER is related to Susan according to Ancestry’s DNA prediction calculations. I also see how much DNA our shared match, Susan, shares with each of us.
Ancestry has calculated my estimated relationship to my first match, Susan, as my First-cousin-1-time-removed (1C1R) or Half-first-cousin, which is genetically equivalent, on my paternal side.
Ancestry has estimated that ER is also the 1C1R of Susan and they share 395 cM of DNA. How ER is related to Susan, and how much DNA they share, is new information that I didn’t have access to before ProTools.
Ancestry had already calculated that ER and I are Half-1st-cousins-two-times-removed.
Viewing ThruLines shows me that ER is my Half-1st-cousin-once-removed, so either the relationship estimate (based on DNA only) or ThruLines (based on trees) is inaccurate, or maybe both. However, they are both close to each other.
Using the trees of both ER and Susan, if they have trees, helps immensely in working out relationships. If Susan is ER’s first cousin once removed, that means that she shares a common grandfather with ER and with me. They are both paternal side matches and some flavor of first cousin to me, so that means our common ancestor has to be William George Estes.
Now that I can see how my matches are related to each other, I can easily work out the possibilities of how the three of us are related – even without seeing anyone’s trees or ThruLines.
Of course, in more distant generations, it’s much more difficult to sort out relationships without trees. That also means that multiple shared relationships are important, and you’re likely to find links among several testers to common ancestors.
I finally solved one pesky relationship that has been bugging me for a very long time. My match’s mother was identified as such, which led to additional and closer shared matches that helped solve the mystery.
Caution – Children’s Names and Relationships Exposed
Given Ancestry’s previous privacy policies, I was surprised to see that the names of my matches’ living children (or parents) are identified as such. Of course, I’m presuming here that “child” means 18 or older per Ancestry’s Terms and Conditions.
Here are two examples of shared matches with their relationship to my match clearly identified as their child.
This isn’t an anomaly or a bug – it’s just how the feature works.
Under the circumstances, this makes me uncomfortable given that my cousin, the parent, may NOT have ProTools and has absolutely NO IDEA that his matches with ProTools can see the name of his daughter and son and that they are identified as his children.
I’m not upset about the enhanced ProTools shared match feature itself. Conversely, I love it. I’m concerned that people without ProTools don’t realize this information is revealed, because it wasn’t previously. Before ProTools, no one would ever have a reason to suspect that anyone could identify someone on Ancestry as their child.
This seems like a significant policy shift for Ancestry, who has traditionally been extremely careful about not providing identifying information about living relatives. I’m surprised this feature was implemented without informing customers who may be affected or without perhaps obtaining opt-in for that level of exposure.
Then, it occurred to me that maybe my cousin’s children are now deceased.
I checked my cousin’s tree to see if his children’s names were revealed there, indicating they had passed away. Neither his name nor those of his children are provided in his tree, so I’m presuming they are all alive and well. That’s a relief.
Given that Ancestry has steadfastly refused to provide a chromosome browser for years due to privacy concerns, I’m actually shocked to see a child’s name and identifying relationship revealed. A chromosome browser reveals much less.
Disparity
Placing this enhanced Shared Match feature of ProTools behind a paywall, meaning not providing it to everyone who took a DNA test, creates a significant disparity between the ProTool subscribers and those without.
- In some other countries, ProTools isn’t available yet.
- Many people don’t check results regularly and would have no idea that ProTools even exists.
- People who don’t subscribe to ProTools won’t know that people who do subscribe can view this information because it wasn’t previously available.
- People who have others manage their DNA kit are entirely unaware.
If you don’t subscribe to ProTools, how would you ever know that your matches with ProTools have access to this information?
People who don’t have access to ProTools shared matches, meaning those who don’t live in the US, don’t subscribe to ProTools, don’t sign in regularly, or have someone else manage their DNA kit, have absolutely no idea that all of their matches who subscribe to ProTools now have access to the names and confirmed relationships of their children and close relatives who have also taken DNA tests.
I was unable to find any way to opt out of having a parental or close relationship revealed to shared matches. Even if the relationship wasn’t noted as “son” or “daughter,” based on the amount of shared DNA, a parental relationship is obvious. This is relevant not just for your test but also for any tests you manage for others.
I hope that Ancestry informs its customers about this change. I really like the new enhanced shared match feature, and I certainly don’t want to jeopardize it. The community has waited a very long time for additional information that helps us identify common ancestors and figure out how and where our matches fit into our tree.
However, everyone who has taken a DNA test needs to be informed so that they understand the privacy changes and the additional information now provided to shared matches who subscribe to ProTools.
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More than anything (other than a chromosome browser) I wish Ancestry would tell me not only my side I match someone on, but in addition which of their sides they are matching me on.
Me too.
Now I’m wondering if I need to remove all living parties from my public Ancestry tree or make my tree private. It was never my intent to in any way put my family’s privacy at risk.
Your tree isn’t the issue. If you have tested your children and you don’t want people to be able to identify them as your children, that’s the issue. Your tree isn’t telling anyone anything. Your shared match DNA info with ProTools is. Changing your tree will have no effect on this.
So the privacy issue is only if you have tested other living relatives?
I agree this is more invasive than the chromosome browser!!! And most of the matches I had already figured how they are related to each other. So I still need the segment data!! And I’m paying for this 1 month and I will not be paying again! I have way too many both sides matches on both sides of my tree so I still can’t move forward.
I’m not clear on what the concern is with displaying the relationship of the shared match. Isn’t that the whole point of this enhancement, and the other platforms have been doing that for years. If it worked otherwise, all it would do is create even more confusion, IMHO. Particularly in the case of the many DNA matches that I have who have passed away and would have no way to opt-in or anything like that, I find this feature immensely useful and to be clear, this information is only being displayed to people who are actually related. If they started to somehow obfuscate parent-child relationships where would it end? Would they next decide that showing full and half siblings and aunt and uncle relationships is too much information? The who reason people endeavor to look at this information is to find the true genetic connections amongst people we are related to. If I am misunderstanding, please let me know what the proposed alternative approach is so I can better understand.
Maybe I didn’t explain my concern specifically enough. I have tens of thousands of matches – nearly 100,000. Yes, we are all ” related,” but I absolutely DO NOT WANT anyone being able to identify my children as my children and by name. Especially not 100,000 people that I don’t know. That’s the size of some entire counties. In particular, up until now, Ancestry has been the poster child of protecting relationship identity of living people. Now, with this new feature, that is no longer the case because all of my 10s of thousands of matches who purchase ProTools can see that my children are unquestionably by children, and their names. Are all of your relatives stable? Has anyone in your family ever been stalked? Raped? Targeted? Murdered? Mine have and I’d wager every family has something, someplace. Furthermore, we have no way of knowing which of those people that we match might decide to target people’s immediately family members. Have you seen the increase of threats to people’s safety in the past few years/months – to election workers, police, people who serve on juries, and more? It’s NOT up to Ancestry to identify my children (or my parents, if living) as my direct relatives. It’s up to me and my immediate family to decide if my genealogy research is worth that risk. Bottom line is that safety and personal agency to control who knows our living immediate family is our immediate family is ours and ours alone – and that’s not the case with this new tool. Ancestry changed and unless you have a ProTools subscription, you have no reason to expect that suddently, your matches can all see that your children are your children, by name. It’s especially difficult because many people who don’t have or have access to ProTools won’t even know it’s happening because you have no way to determine that without a subscription. Therefore, they and their family members may be at greater risk than previously and they don’t even know it. That’s why I suggested opt-in because, even though some people wouldn’t opt-in, it returns control to the customer and their immediate family to decide if they are willing to assume that risk. I love the new feature. But since it was not originally offered, people don’t expect this level of exposure. It’s new. If it has always been offered, it wouldn’t be a problem because everyone would understand. If it wasn’t exposing your immediate relatives as such, and by name, I would see no reason for an opt-in. Maybe there’s another solution to protect people. That’s why I suggested something like “close family.”
Well said. Thank you for pointing that out.
Not necessarily if you have tested them. They may have tested themselves. Some people don’t have an issue with this. I just want to make sure that people are aware because it’s so different.
I understand your concerns about the shift in privacy protection but I think your argument has missed the point to some extent.
We could already see our matches’ names so ancestry isn’t now suddenly revealing people’s names. What it is doing is revealing information about how third parties relate to each other, something they have not previously done. They have always been very protective of third party information – the main reason why a chromosome browser is not available.
I see no real difference between your first example of Susan and ER being 1C1R and your hypothetical examples of match and shared match being parent and child.
We are all busy using whatever tools are available to us to identify our matches and place them in our trees. Identifying one of our unknown matches as a 1C1R to a known match achieves exactly the same outcome as identifying them as a child of a known match.
The real privacy concern is when a parent/child relationship is not known, either to the testers themselves or to their family, friends or community. That’s the sort of information that in the wrong hands can cause people harm.
I feel that you should have also pointed out that these 3rd party relationships have always been available to users of MyHeritage (and 23&Me?) so Ancestry isn’t setting a new precedent with this feature, however you are right in saying that they should probably inform existing testers of the implications and add an opt out setting (though defaulted to ‘in’).
The reason I didn’t mention the other vendors is because they have always provided that, so it’s nothing new. It’s not unexpected and they have never deprived customers of a chromosome browser because of privacy concerns like Ancestry has. My point is the shift. Customers have come to expect one thing and now it’s dramatically different. No one could ever know who my children are at Ancestry, and now they can, and I may never realize it if I don’t subscribe to ProTools. That’s the issue.
I think one thing this feature may do — finally — is show Ancestry how many of their assumptions about their “beloved” (by them) algorithm Timber are very flawed.
Unfortunately, the only sharing amounts we’ll be shown is the Timberized ones, but still it’s better than nothing.
An example: I have a 3rd cousin “TC”. He is a fellow 2nd great grandson of my paternal grandfather’s paternal grandparents. After Timber, TC supposedly shares 42 cM in 5 segments with me. Only, the longest shared segment by itself is 49 cM, and that’s without even considering whatever happened to the 4 other segments. Here’s what happened:
unweighted sharing is 89 cM, so the 4 segments collectively must add up to 40 cM. But Timber has chopped off 47 cM from the total!
Meanwhile, Ancestry reports that my daughter — who is of course a 3rd cousin once removed to TC — shares 62 cM in 4 segments, with a longest shared segment of 48 cM. Unweighted sharing is 85 cM, so miraculously a *huge* amount of the excess sharing has ceased to be excess — if it ever was, which I doubt.
Now, this much I was able to tell even without the new feature. Now, however, I can see how TC shares without many other relatives. (Though only after Timber has done its dirty work, but it’s better than nothing.)
For example, here are the sharing totals for three of my paternal 1st cousins.
For example, three of my 1st cousins. They share 108 cM, 63 cM, and 126 cM. The two with “Timber-safe” sharing happen to be siblings to each other, but otherwise the four of us are related to TC in exactly the same way. I can practically guarantee that the cousin who only shares 63 cM — who is related to the other two in the same way I am — has a much higher unweighted number, but since it was below 90.0 cM Timber was able to knock itself out.
Then there’s GS, who is a 1st cousin to my father even though she’s about the same age as my youngest sister. GS’s father and my paternal grandfather were brothers. Her sharing with me is 467 cM in 18 segments, with a longest shared segment of 58 cM. Her sharing with TC is 135 cM, and their relationship is 2nd cousin once removed.
There’s also JS, who like TC is a 3rd cousin to me — related in exactly the same way as TC is. I share 93 cM in 4 segments with JS, with a longest shared segment of 49 cM. But it turns out that JS’s relationship to TC is very different than mine is; she’s his half sister. They share 1,716 cM with each other! And what do you want to bet that this 49 cM longest shared segment I have with JS is actually the same darned segment as my longest shared segment with TC? A chromosome browser would be needed to prove that, of course.
I could go on and on — I have many other relatives who descend from the same to 2nd great grandparents. I even have one, JD, who tested at 23andMe. Before they disabled their own chromosome browser, I made a record of the position and length info for our shared segments.
JD is my 3rd cousin once removed, but she has different shared ancestors from the rest of us. Instead of being descended from my 2nd great grandparents, she’s descended from the parents of my 2nd great grandfather. We share 121 cM in three segments, with a longest shared segment of 55 cM. JD also happens, of course, to be TC’s 3rd cousin once removed, but I have no idea how much they share.
The point is, I’m sure I can replicate this sort of exploration with many, many other relatives. I suspect that I will find it likely that even 4th cousins *can* more frequently share the same segment with other 4th cousins than Ancestry or various genealogists believe possible. It actually makes sense, when you consider that some ancestors have had a dozen or more children, each of whom also had several children, even down to the present.
In such cases, how likely is it that virtually *none* of their DNA has been lost, but is simply spread through their many descendants? I know I have one ThruLines ancestor with over 900 *tested* descendants. He’s a 4th great grandfather, so my cousins from the same generation are 5th cousins, not 4th; but there are a *lot* of us even so!
(Unfortunately, all I’m getting right now is “We’re sorry, this page is temporarily unavailable. You can try reloading the page, or come back later.”)
I am in Canada and can’t access this feature at present. In terms of DNA, Germany is my country of origin, parents and back. I wonder about those privacy laws in Europe. It is a bit creepy to know that any of my many American based matches can access information and I won’t know about it. (I don’t fully understand the implications… but if a “bad actor” gets extra information, they might be better able to pull off one of those family scams. Just some thoughts.
Hi Bobbi,
Thanks for this article and review. I was wondering about this feature—-and here’s my question about this. I have a number of cousins that have “invited me” to be able to view their shared matches as well. I’m wondering if I subscribe to “Pro Tools”, will I be able to use this same feature with their match list? Or would they need to subscribe to “Pro Tools” for that to be possible?
Thanks,
Tom Spradling
I believe it’s based on you but I will check later. For other tools, it’s based on you, not them.
Hi there,
I may have answered my own question—I enrolled or subscribed and can view the Pro Shared Matches as well for those I was invited to.
Tom
Thank you for your thorough explanation of pro-tools shared matches. Though I’m still a bit confused, I believe this is the best explanation I’ve read.
When I feel I have the time to concentrate on this tool, I will try it out. I think I will understand it even better if I see how it pertains to DNA.
If a DNA match has shared their DNA with me, will I be able to use this tool on these?
They don’t need to “share” their DNA with you. They just need to be on your match list. And you need ProTools.
Do you think this will result in members making their DNA private? I am sure there are quite a number of Ancestry members who have managed to get relatives to take DNA tests assuring them they are able to remain anonymous.
Ancestry gives and Ancestry takes away. I signed up for the pro tools last night. I am searching for my maternal great grandfather’s parents in Sweden. When I get a match from Sweden, I use the search mode on the DNA march list to see if the match comes from a certain area of Sweden which my other Swedish ancestors do not come from. When I tried to use the search mode last night, I could only search for ” Sweden”. I could not search for an area of Sweden as I did before. Hopefully, Ancestry will restore the detail search mode.
Ancestry really needs to stop using Timber. As I said in an earlier comment, the ProTool the current blog post is about is going to show this even more strongly — how often Timber works counter to its intended purpose, and makes matches closer matches seem *more* distant than they actually are.
Here’s another instance in which that has happened. I have a 1st cousin twice removed, BH. She’s the granddaughter of one of my 1st cousins. I’d already known that, and Ancestry now actually lists my 1st cousin as her grandmother or aunt. It also lists her mother’s sister as her grandaunt or half aunt.
Anyway, my sharing with BH is 237 cM in 12 segments, with a longest shared segment of 70 cM. My daughter, however, is predicted to be BH’s 3rd cousin once removed or half 3rd cousin, rather than the 2nd cousin once removed that she actually is. Why? Because Ancestry claims their sharing is only 46 cM. Only, the longest share segment by itself is 50 cM in 4 segments, and unweighted sharing is 81 cM. So Timber chopped off 35 cM as representing “excess sharing” — presumably the result of more distant shared ancestors, rather than recent ones.
The thing is, besides the fact that I share 237 cM with BH, BH’s grandmother — my 1st cousin — shares 489 cM with my daughter. BH’s mother apparently has not tested. Even so, there is absolutely no reason here to consider *any* of the sharing between my daughter and her 2nd cousin once removed as excess. Two of my nieces — related to BH in exactly the same way my daughter is — share 107 cM and 120 cM with BH, amounts safe from Timber’s chopping. A third niece, however, reportedly only shares 30 cM with BH. I can just about guarantee that her sharing with BH has been tampered with, just as my daughter’s was, but the difference is that I can’t do a direct comparison in this niece’s case.
I have a major bug come up. In my note field for a match it is erasing anything after an & symbol. Save looks good but when you look later all after the & symbol is gone. I have notified ancestry,com but I fear some is gone for good it they can not retrieve it. One note for me is 23&Me data which is no longer available.
I understand the concern for privacy. However, even before this enhancement I’ve been amazed at how easy (well not always – lol) it is to figure out how my matches relate to each other by using newspapers, facebook and google. If anyone is concerned they could use a fake user name instead of a real name, especially for their minor children.
I also have a question. Is there a way to sort the match’s relationships by highest to lowest cm’s instead of just scrolling down to pick out their closest relatives?
No way that I know of to sort.
I’ve only see two ways to sort: Relationship (close to distant) or Date (Newest to oldest). And these seem to be with respect to yourself, not your match. So, for example, I always see my daughter’s name first if she happens to be a shared match.
With my 3rd cousin PWB, for instance, I see my daughter’s name and how much my daughter shares with *me* — a generally useless thing, in the context.
Only when I switch to my daughter’s profile can I see how much she shares with PWB. It isn’t until I scroll down to the tenth person in the shared match list that I find RW, who happens to be PWB’s sister.
By far, RW is PWB’s largest match in the shared list, at 2,641 cM, but the placement in the list is based strictly on RW being *my* tenth-largest shared match with PWB.
Also, I can only see the post-Timber amounts, or the unweighted amounts only if over 90.0 cM. If sharing is less than that, Timber only *occasionally* fails to lop something off — no matter how much I might share with the match’s close relatives (such as RW’s sister).
I just re-watched the rootstech presentation on the pro tools dna shared matches enhancements and apparently the ability to sort the match’s relationships will be offered later. Hopefully not too much later!
So, matches may or may not triangulate but the pro tools method hints at triangulation? Which is maybe slightly better than what we had prior. I wish they would just indicate that we triangulate or not with shared matches. Show us a little symbol (like MyHeritage) even if they won’t show a chromosome browser.
Maybe I am behind in articles, but did the Protools take away the ability to see shared matches without paying?? That sort of forces you to pay.
I have one line in my tree that passes long a “large” segment on Chr 13. There are many matches along these lines as I have confirmed through other providers like Gedmatch, FTDNA, MyHeritage, etc.
My Question is – If I have a match whose tree shows that line and I share 1 segment, say 45 cM long. And I look at the shared matches and find others that share 1 segment 30 cM or longer. And they share 1 segment 30 cM or longer with each other. While, I don’t think this “proves” we share the same segment, isn’t it highly probable that they all 3 share the same segment?
I have not decided if I will spend the $10 one time. This seems to me to be more DNA ‘hints’ with little to no proof, unless the relationship is very very close.
It depends. Endogamy and pedigree collapse make a difference too.
If your tree is private, can people with protools see your information? And your living descendants?
This isn’t tree related. I checked trees and the trees are still obscured for living people. This is DNA only so yes, if your living descendants have tested, I would think so.
It is really a shame that Ancestry chooses to hamstring ProTools sharing by reporting only the Timber-adjusted amount — which is purely hypothetical — rather than the unweighted amount. The latter is purely empirical, the result of determining the actual amount of shared DNA without preconceptions about *why* it is the shared amount.
Recently I requested a new kit and only received the results today. I’ve noted that *most* of my “Timber-safe” matches (90.0 cM or greater) are still Timber-safe, but some of the amounts have changed up or down. This is not attributable to Timber since, as I said, these are amounts not adjusted by Timber.
However, there are a few matches that *did* drop below 90.0 cM. For example, my 2nd cousin once removed MS — is now showing matching of 55 cM, where previously it had been 95 cM. This is a huge drop — a full 40 cM! But in reality the change is a drop of 7 cm; the additional reduction is because Timber was free to adjusted the 88 cM unweighted sharing downward by another 33 cM.
Keep in mind that MS is someone who is a 2nd cousin to my father — so not some “distant” relative. The DNA Painter Tool at https://dnapainter.com/tools/sharedcmv4 suggests that at 88 cM, there is a 30% likelihood that we are indeed 2nd cousins once removed. At 55 cM this drops to just 10%. So how has Timber been beneficial here?
I could give dozens and dozens of other examples in which Timber actually made a match seem *more* distant that it actually is, rather than less. Apparently, though, that’s of no real concern to Ancestry.