There have often been discussions here about the pros and cons of the three big autosomal dna testing companies. One of the big three, 23&me, implemented some big changes Thursday to the integration of family tree data that are likely to be problematic for many users.

First, the tree functionality at 23&me has always been weak and last fall they indicating that they were going to implement integration with another genealogy company, MyHeritage. The implementation occurred sometime on Thursday. Here are some highlights.

As of Thursday, you can no longer see trees of your dna matches on 23&me (or anyone who had posted a public tree on the site) that have been posted via the old links. You will still have access to your own tree until May 31, but no one else can see it unless you transfer it to MyHeritage.

This “required” transfer (“required” if you want to see others and/or have a tree at 23&me) raises multiple issues. You can transfer a tree of any size which will be free for six months, but after that date, you will have to pay a monthly fee to MyHeritage if your tree has more than 250 people. The monthly fee after the first year will be around $8 for a tree of 2500 and around $13.00 for unlimited (first year has discounts). If you fail to pay a subscription, it appears that something happens…unclear exactly but there are some suggestions that you won’t be able to access it any more unless you find a way to reduce it below 250. (The Help page on MyHeritage doesn’t answer the question of how you can go back to a free (under 250) plan if you had previously upgraded to the paid plan.) [EDITED for UPDATE: a post on another site said that if you have a tree with more than 250 and you don't agree after six months to start paying, you will be able to access your tree but not edit or add to it. Whether this applies only to the 23&me customers or all users is unclear.] For people who are already using and paying MyHeritage, no big deal, but for the rest of us it is an additional payment to use 23&me for on-site genealogical research (as always, you can contact people, share information, send links to trees on ancestry or elsewhere). Also, various forums make it clear that you need to have a paid subscription at MyHeritage to use virtually all of the useful services there. Ancestry.com has recently instituted a new $49 annual subscription for dna users who want to see full trees but don’t have a regular membership. That’s probably half what it will cost to do so at 23&me (beyond the free 250 size tree). Lots of questions to figure out how this will actually work over time.

Second, there are apparently some major privacy issues on the transfer of your 23&me tree to MyHeritage. In the fine print, it warns you that a lot of your information now at 23&me is going to this new company if you execute the transfer. One user already posted on another forum that he was taken aback to have a “pop-up” on MyHeritage asking if he wanted to send a happy birthday greeting to one of the profiles on his account…only this was a profile of someone who was not actually in the tree he had transferred; it was a profile for someone unrelated whose account he was managing. It was pretty clear that MyHeritage pulled all the data from all the profiles on your 23&me account including birthdays, home addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses etc. Another user just posted a warning that he had looked at someone’s new MyHeritage tree and saw that their living spouse had his birthdate and current address now posted on MyHeritage tree (he explained how to make it private, but the point was MyHeritage pulled that data off 23&me and filled it into the tree…obviously, people can eventually figure out how to adjust the privacy settings etc, but it can be disconcerting to see this stuff happen (particularly if you are managing someone else’s profile and they didn’t particularly consent to having it posted on yet another on-line place!) (23&me has a place on each profile to that asks if you want to share your current address with others on the site; that is probably where they pulled the information, rather than your account payment/credit card settings…at least I hope that is where it came from.)

So…if you aren’t willing to become a My Heritage paid subscriber, it will become even more problematic to pursue genealogy on 23&me. Coupled with the requirement for one-on-one sharing, now limited ability to post tree data unless you are willing to pay another monthly fee, plus a data base full of people testing for health, not genealogy, 23&me is less and less useful.