Ancestry (Ancestry.com / AncestryDNA)

Ancestry holds DNA from millions of customers and has been owned since December 2020 by private-equity firm Blackstone ($4.7 billion deal). Its 2017 incident came through RootsWeb, a free community site it ran: a file with 300,000 RootsWeb usernames, passwords and emails was exposed, 55,000 of which also worked as Ancestry logins. No DNA data was reported in that incident. Ancestry's terms force U.S. customers into individual JAMS arbitration with a class action waiver and a 60-day pre-filing notice, and no opt-out was found in the text reviewed.

• Severity
• Evidence tierUnassigned
• Claims confirmed
• Last verified2026-10-16

Case status. Private litigation; the legal tier of its sources has not been assigned yet.

Primary source. www.ancestry.com/c/legal/termsandconditions — Unverified - heuristic first draft.

Arbitration

Yes - binding individual arbitration before JAMS under the FAA (Secs. 10.1-10.1.3); class action waiver (Sec. 10.1.5); 60-day written pre-arbitration notice (Sec. 10.1.2); mass-claims bellwether process at 25+ similar claims (Sec. 10.1.4). Carve-outs: small claims, Utah court for patent/copyright, government referrals. Utah law for U.S. users; Ireland for non-U.S.

Data sharing

Says it does not sell personal information outside targeted advertising, but does share some personal information with ad partners for targeted ads (opt-out via 'Do Not Sell or Share' or Global Privacy Control) (Sec. 16.5-16.6.6). Genetic information: not shared with marketers, insurers or employers; no ad use without separate explicit consent (Secs. 6, 16.6.6). Research: de-identified genetic data shared only with Informed Consent to Research; cannot be withdrawn from active/completed projects (Secs. 7, 10). Biobanking of samples only with consent (Sec. 3). 2017 RootsWeb exposure of 300,000 credentials (55,000 also Ancestry logins).

Contacts

Privacy contact. Ancestry.com Operations, L.P., Attn: Privacy Office, 42 Future Way, Suite 400, Draper, UT 84020 (U.S.); Ancestry Ireland Unlimited Company, Dublin (non-U.S.)

Legal notice. Ancestry Legal Department, 42 Future Way, Suite 400, Draper, UT 84020 (Terms Secs. 10.1.2-10.1.3)

Mailing address. Not recorded.