Difficulty Obtaining Genographic Results

[MichSom]

Several years ago my father participated in the Genographic Project. I believe he registered his DNA kit. My sister had stored all of his information on her computer, which crashed, and thus we lost all of the kit information. My father has passed away. I have been trying to obtain help from the Genographic Project to obtain this important information which cannot be found anywhere else. I have no other first degree male relatives from whom this information can be obtained. I have been told by representatives that I have contacted at the Genographic Project that this information is forever lost to my family and me.

I have looked back at the Genographic Project website and it states that one of the advantages of registering the DNA kit is the following:

During the online log in process, we also will offer you an opportunity to register your Genographic Participant ID. If you choose to register, your personally identifiable information will be linked to your Genographic Participant ID, and your genetic information in our database will no longer be anonymous to National Geographic. . . Registration is not required for you to access your results. It is your option to more actively participate in enhanced activities offered in Geno 2.0. It will allow us to recover your Genographic Participant ID if you ever lose it, send you email alerts about the status of your results, and communicate to you any important new information.

Can anyone recommend a contact person who can help me recover this information? I recently tested my own DNA with FT DNA. Since FT DNA is the company that conducted the DNA testing for the Genographic Project I am hoping that at a minimum my DNA could be compared to the database in order to find my father’s DNA---we should come up as a parent-child relationship.

The express purpose of FT DNA is to find our family connections. I have a known family member who tested with this company. Certainly to ensure that we all retain confidence in the ability of FT DNA to find our unknown links they should be able to find my known parental DNA match.

Thank you

[lgmayka]

Several years ago my father participated in the Genographic Project. I believe he registered his DNA kit. My sister had stored all of his information on her computer, which crashed, and thus we lost all of the kit information. My father has passed away.

The Genographic Project bases kit identity on an alphanumeric assigned to, and included with, the kit. If you still have the kit somewhere, you (or National Geographic) should be able to use the alphanumeric to recover the account.

If you lost the kit and its alphanumeric, and you also lost the username and password of registration, then unfortunately your father's DNA sample is now totally anonymous and therefore inaccessible to anyone. If your father tested with Geno 2.0, and you have also tested with Geno 2.0, then theoretically National Geographic could look for a parent-child relationship if its database were set up for such a search--but of course, it is not.

FTDNA would not have any of your father's data unless he specifically transferred it into an FTDNA account. From what you have told us, he did not do that.

[MerryB]

If you still have your sister's crashed computer, you might take it to someone who specializes in retrieving information from such machines. Was it the hard drive that crashed, or the operating system?