Data Policy

This policy was created to balance the rights and privacy of individuals, with the benefit to the whole community of gathering information for their research projects. We have tried to ensure the safety and privacy of any personal data, including data likely to have significant medical relevance, or which can identify a specific person. At the same time, we have tried to retain enough information that test results are useful for research, meaningful for close matches and can be cross-referenced against information on other sites.

  1. The following is the Policy agreed to on upload of data, between Submitters of that data (genetic testers or their designated proxies) and the Project. The Project is defined as those persons with administrative access to the data archive, or successors thereof.
  2. Submitters give the Project free license to analyse the genetic and ancestral data they submit, and publicly release semi-anonymized and filtered analyses of that data. Records may be combined with data from public domain sources, including any associable Y-STR and genealogical records. Released genetic data is to be limited to calls assigned to the Y-chromosome.
  3. Raw DNA sequencing data (e.g. BAM or FASTQ datasets) will only be shared with a member's explicit written consent. However, reduced sets of Y-chromosome data (including calls in VCF/gVCF format, test coverage information in BED format, and submitted meta-data) may be shared with co-operating projects.
  4. Tests are publicly identified by the meta-data supplied on submission, i.e. kit numbers and most-distant known paternal ancestor information. Project members may request that public reports anonymize all or part of this information to an internal project identifier instead. Such requests should be made by e-mail before submission to prevent public release of information.
  5. Submitters or legal data owners have the right to request that their raw data is removed from the data analysis at any time. However, since we release a reduced set of data into the public domain, we cannot guarantee these data are removed from external sites once the kit has been analyzed.
  6. The Project may contact Submitters about specific queries regarding their data, using the e-mail address supplied on submission. Sharing of e-mail addresses with any third parties will only be done with Submitters' consent.
  7. Minor updates to this agreement may be necessary, e.g. to modify or make explicit the names of people and parties; to include new data formats; to clarify specific points of ambiguity; or to ensure compliance with national and international law, existing privacy agreements with testing companies, or community guidelines. Such changes may me made by the Project without notification, provided they don't constitute material infringements of the rights and/or privacy granted to Submitters, as described in the version of the Policy they initially accept.
  8. YDNA-Warehouse uses Cookies for the purposes of allowing users to manage their testing data. Related data may be use for functionality provided by third-parties such as necessary for operation of the site. There is no direct commercial use of your meta-data.