A stranger's DNA test can identify you through your third cousin
Modern forensic investigators no longer need your DNA to find you. They only need a distant relative who once uploaded a saliva sample to a genealogy website.
In 2018, investigators finally caught the Golden State Killer not by finding his specific DNA in a government database, but by finding his third cousins. By uploading a crime scene profile to GEDmatch, a public genealogy site, they identified two people who shared just one percent of the killer's DNA. These segments, known as chunks of shared ancestry, allowed genealogists to build a massive family tree of over 1,000 people, eventually narrowing the search to a single man.
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