To People That Have Had DNA Tests. For?

Being white and British I was pleased at the results that I was sent as they confirmed things that my family had never acknowledge (perhaps they did not know) but which I felt were fact i.e that we had and Black ancestry and links with Europe (France, Germany, Sweden).  I found the results incredibly accurate with just a few small surprised.

My father's father had told me, as a teenage, that he's been told that we had some French relatives - way back.  No-one else had been told this. For a very long time I suspected that we also had some black ancestry - because of my dads features - nose shape and a few others things.

Once I received my results I was amazed that West Indies and France were in the results.

My son then did a test and found out something that I long suspected  (that my husband had some Jewish ancestry) - I thought this because of his facial features.  My son's test showed that he had some Jewish heritage but no-one on my husbands side of the family knew from where that could have come.  My husband and all of his side of the family have very distinctive Jewish-looking noses but none of them can see that for themselves.

I'm sure that some people will be very happy with their results whilst others will not be because they don't wish to acknowledge what has shows up on the tests.  We should not deny these tests results as they show that we ARE what we ARE and no-one should ever be upset or ashamed of their results.  Anyone who is likely to be offended if they find results that they don't like should not have the test done in the first place.

Most people have no way of comparing companies.

What kind of test are you referring to? Health? Paternity? ancestry?

So-called ancestry-tests don't test ancestry. They just find people with bundles of DNA (almost) identical to yours, like your 5th cousin twice removed.

As far as I understand, some companies will help you contact any relatives of yours (as far as those relatives allow it), the others won't.

What do you mean by "useful"?

@update: as I said, the one that allows you to contact relatives, but only if they happen to have the right persons in their database.

Feel free to post a better formulated question. It only costs 5 points

Be careful of that. Keep in mind that the results of that test are theirs and not yours. If you're a privacy freak, you might want to back away from that one. All of them are very, very broad.