MyHeritage: Uploads made from December 11th to 18th get FREE, permanent access to "Advanced DNA Features"! [closed]

Question

Just posted on the MyHeritage Blog: 

https://blog.myheritage.com/2019/12/this-week-only-dna-uploads-are-completely-free-forever-including-all-advanced-dna-features/

Upload page:

https://www.myheritage.com/dna/upload

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Excerpt From the MyHeritage Blog:

Users who upload DNA data this week (December 11-18 2019) will be granted access to all advanced DNA features for free, for this DNA data, saving the need for the usual $29 unlock fee per kit, now and in the future!

Why upload to MyHeritage

• Huge global user base of more than 3.5 million people
• The best service worldwide for European DNA matches
• Advanced and innovative DNA tools Including Chromosome Browser, AutoClusters, Theory of Family Relativity™ and much more
• DNA data uploaded to MyHeritage is completely private and secure. Only you can see the DNA data you upload.
• MyHeritage will never sell data to insurance companies, and we have a strict policy prohibiting the use of our DNA services by law enforcement agencies.

What the limited-time offer includes

If you take advantage of this offer and upload your raw DNA data this week, in addition to the basic DNA features such as receiving, exporting, and contacting DNA Matches and viewing shared ancestral surnames, you’ll be able to access the following features absolutely free, not just this week but also in the future:

• Ethnicity Estimate
• Chromosome Browser
• View family trees and pedigree charts of your DNA Matches
• Shared DNA Matches
• Shared ethnicities
• Shared ancestral places
• AutoClusters
• Theory of Family Relativity™

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Comments

This looks like anyone who uploads will essentially join those who were grandfathered in in the early days of MyHeritage before it changed to require paid access for advanced features. 

This also indicates that MyHeritage:

• Has added 1 million more DNA kits since they last reported (previously reported as 2.5 million on the ISOGG wiki).
• Remains committed to keeping law enforcement from using service ("a safe, free, and law-enforcement-free service where they can upload their DNA data and receive DNA matches.")

This offer appears to be, at least in part, in response to the news of the purchase of GEDmatch by Verogen (a "sequencing company solely dedicated to forensic science"). As many people deleted their data in response to that news, this offers them alternative access to some of the features, e.g. cross-platform comparisons and a chromosome browser. 

I would encourage those not familiar with MyHeritage to read up on their features:

• AutoClusters: https://blog.myheritage.com/2019/02/introducing-autoclusters-for-dna-matches/
• Theory of Family Relativity™ :  https://blog.myheritage.com/2019/02/introducing-the-theory-of-family-relativity-a-genealogy-game-changer/
• Chromosome Browser : https://blog.myheritage.com/2018/01/major-updates-and-improvements-to-myheritage-dna-matching/

According to MyHeritage's FAQ, here are the upload files accepted:

• Family Tree DNA, 
• Living DNA, 
• 23andMe personal genome service kit, and 
• AncestryDNA kit

Time to email some DNA matches!!

Comments

Well, drat: I uploaded everyone just yesterday.

What do they do if two different accounts upload the same kit?

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J Palotay, some people I know of who have already uploaded have reuploaded to get the free option, so it's worth a try.

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Emma, thanks for the suggestion: I went ahead and deleted and re-uploaded each kit. (It wouldn't let me re-upload without first deleting. Dunno what it would've done if my sister created an account, for example.) Now we'll see what happens.

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Awesome J. I hope that works out for you!

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It's probably worth re-uploading. I'm not 100% sure, but this FAQ entry seemed to suggest it might not be an issue: https://faq.myheritage.com/en/article/if-i-have-more-than-one-member-profile-should-i-upload-my-raw-dna-test-results-to-each-of-them

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Cool!  Now I have to hope that my aunt's results at Ancestry come through in the next week so I can get her kit uploaded asap.

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I tested at FTDNA and I'm interested in uploading my raw DNA to MyHeritage. Following the instructions at MyHeritage, I've downloaded my raw DNA from FTDNA (selecting Build 37 Raw Data Concatenated) in GZIP CSV file (~7.7MB file with csv.gz extension). I tried to upload the resulting file to MyHeritage, but get error message: "This file does not appear to be a valid autosomal export. Please follow the steps and try again." I retraced my steps and received the same error message. So I unzipped the compressed file resulting in a ~24MB csv file and tried to upload that file and received the same message. What am I missing?

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Rick, why did you choose the concatenated version? Did My Heritage tell you specifically to use this one? If it's not working, I would try one of the other two. I would think the first one "Build 37 Autosomal" would be the right one.

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Hi Emma,

Thanks for your response/suggestion. Yes, the MyHeritage instructions for FTDNA download/upload specify to download the "concatenated" version. My understanding is that version includes the X-CHR info, which I'd like to upload as well, in case MyHeritage has X-CHR tools. But I did try downloading the first file option, as you suggested, and encountered the same error message when trying to upload that file (trying to upload the decompressed CSV version within that GZIP archive also failed similarly). I've successfully downloaded/uploaded my DNA results from FTDNA to GEDMatch in the past.

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Emma,

It appears that I wasn't successfully logged in when originally attempting to upload my raw FTDNA file to MyHeritage, which for some reason was resulting in the error message "This file does not appear to be a valid autosomal export." When I closed out the MyHeritage browser tab, started from scratch with a new tab, and successfully logged in, the upload worked. Thanks again for your response.

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Yay, so glad you got it figured out, Rick!

Answer 1

Ohh great :-) Smart move, and I hope some people from across the Atlantic will join in on the only dna site advertising here in mainland europe :)

Answer 2

Anyone who is searching for biological family needs to have their DNA at every possible DNA company they can. This is an amazing opportunity to get this upload for free with all these DNA tools to go with it.

Thanks for the announcement JN.

My Heritage used to be my least favorite DNA company because of their lack of reliability, but they have quickly climbed up the ranks. Either way, it's more DNA matches for free. What's better than that?

Editing this post to mention that the price after this week will be $29 to unlock the DNA features even though the upload is free. Without the features, the upload is worthless.

Comments

The free upload does give you your DNA matches, whom you can contact via their internal messaging system, and you can compare a short list of ancestral surnames, but everything else is behind the paywall. Other than not having the admixture, it's very similar to what Ancestry gives you without a subscription. The one major difference is that on MyHeritage, you *didn't* fork over good money for the privilege.

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Agreed: An amazing opportunity!

Thus far, MyHeritage has had some really impressive innovation on the tool side, despite being a bit "late to the game". Some of it really has added to the accessibility, in particular the clustering tool. The ethnicity estimate could use some work, but that's always a function of the reference populations: So with more users, it will likely become more accurate. 

It's also been surprisingly good for finding European DNA matches in my experience. That can be very helpful for situations where only one branch of a family moved to North America.

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J, the most important thing the free upload doesn't give you is shared DNA matches. It will show you the list of matches, yes, but without the shared matches, it's worthless. At least for someone like me who finds birth family for adoptees.

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The re-upload worked: I now have MyHeritage's version of our "ethnicity".

It's ridiculously wrong. As in, one-quarter English for my spouse, who has no ancestors from anyplace further west than eastern France, or one-quarter Balkan for my mother, who has no ancestors from anyplace further south than Szarvas, Hungary (and those ancestors were Slovak settlers). And one-tenth or more Scandinavian for all of us, who have nothing further north than Germany, and that only if you go back more than three centuries.

So note to adoptees using MyHeritage: don't even look at their admixture report. You'd need to take it with so many grains of salt you'd keel over from sodium poisoning.

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J, this is true for all the DNA companies. And your ethnicity will change over time as they get new testers to use for their ethnicity pool. I never use the ethnicity when searching for birth parents unless there is an obvious divide like one parent is english and the other is 100% Italian. Then it can be helpful.

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Yes, but MyHeritage gets it particularly wrong. As in, Ancestry's and 23andMe's ethnicity breakdowns are "for entertainment value only", but MyHeritage isn't even good for that, unless your idea of entertainment includes "infuriatingly wrong".