Important Update on Family Tree DNA Privacy, Project and Account Settings: Update January 2019:

The core component of any genealogical research and DNA testing is Collaborative Research. Collaborative research is the core principle of the Donnachaidh DNA Project.

In 2018 Family Tree DNA (FTDNA) changed their Group Project Administrator privacy settings for each participant. The new privacy settings are Minimum, Limited, and Advance.

The Minimum privacy setting is of little use to this DNA Project as an administrator we cannot access or see almost any information about your test. In most cases we cannot open your data file to analyzes and help you as a participant.

The new default privacy setting is Limited which is a little better for the project and administrators but stills falls short of allowing the project administrators to fully help you as a project participant.

The Advance privacy setting does allow the project administrator to see your data and analyzes it and other administrative functions without constantly emailing you to provide that data.

All work done in the project by the administrators is in correspondence with you the participant but in our opinion these new privacy’s setting add an undue burden to our task of managing the project and most importantly helping you and your matches.

Some participants have changed their privacy setting to Minimum and some defaulted to Minimum in the early days of this changes and have not been changed to at least the Limited setting.

We ask that if you chose to participate in this exciting DNA research that you set your privacy settings to Limited with the Advance setting preferred! This is done under “Account Setting” then ‘Project Preferences’ and selecting each project to assign the privacy setting.

Here are the setting that we ask that you set on your account:

1. Advance or Limited under Project Preference.
2. Group Project Profile, choose: “Opt in to Sharing”
3. Matching Preference under Privacy and Sharing set to “Opt in to Matching” All Levels

Other House Keeping items:

1. Please use your kit number on all correspondences with project administrators as this help us find you data much quicker.
2. Please keep your email up-to-date! The administrators cannot update your email address unless you give us your kit number and password.
3. Complete your “Earliest Known Ancestor” under the Genealogy tab with names, dates, location information. You will need to abbreviate as space is limited.
4. Complete your Earliest Known Ancestor known location in the mapping program.
5. Consider adding a Beneficiary under Account Information

Always feel free to ask questions at any time.

Thank you for your participation in this exciting research!

Donnachaidh DNA Project Administrators