Our whole family had submitted DNA kits to 23andme including our kids and even my mother, who has since passed away. Our earliest kits used 23andme's v3 chip, the more recent ones used v5. However in the latter half of 2024 there came concerning news about 23andme's financial cicumstances. Last September we decided to export all of our data and ask that 23andme delete it. We didn't want it all to be handed over to a new buyer whose motivations we would not know.
We requested export and had to wait a bit for an email saying the exported data was ready. It generally arrived within a day of asking. Altogether each person's downloaded data is about 400 Megabytes, 375 Megabytes of which is in a single file: "imputed_genotype_data_r6." One of the requested exports seemed to get lost, but was processed on the second request. It took a few days altogether to request and download everything, then ask for deletion.
Nonetheless despite being concerned about what might happen at 23and me, we actually do want to continue to look for DNA matches to discover cousins and relatives. Each year at roughly the time of the RootsTech conference, MyHeritage offers free upload and processing of DNA data exported from other companies like Ancestry or 23andme. We uploaded the exported 23andme DNA data, omitting the kids for now.
We have decided to trust MyHeritage with our data because of a clear commitment in their privacy policy: MYHERITAGE HAS NEVER SOLD OR LICENSED GENETIC DATA OR HEALTH DATA, AND WILL NEVER DO SO IN THE FUTURE.
We'll watch for news if that ever changes, but such an unambiguous statement gives us enough confidence to proceed.