If someone you know—or someone who might in some way be connected to you—submits their information to an open source website, it can be traced back to you.
Open source genealogy website GEDmatch allows users to voluntarily share their genetic profiles for free, as a way to find relatives and trace their genealogies.
Law enforcement used GEDmatch to track down Joseph James DeAngelo, the suspected Golden State Killer who over a period of years brutally raped 45 women and killed more than a dozen people. He himself never sent in a biological sample, but someone connected to him did.
If someone you know—or someone who might in some way be connected to you—submits their information to an open source website, it can be traced back to you.
This trend is part of our section on Privacy. Other trends in this section include:
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