Myheritage Download Raw Data
Raffi Bramlett
The security breach underscores growing concerns about the privacy of data submitted to genealogy platforms. Last month, news that investigators tracked down their suspect in the case of the Golden State Killer sparked worry about the privacy of genetic data shared with commercial sites such as MyHeritage.
Researchers at the University of Washington encoded a strand of DNA to contain malware, which allowed them to take remote control of a computer that was being used to process genetic data. And while the researchers stressed the chances of that kind of attack are minimal, they found a host of vulnerabilities in the commercial programs that are used to analyze DNA.
The Israeli-based company's information security team reviewed the file and confirmed the data was from MyHeritage. It includes the email addresses and hashed passwords of the more than 92 million users who signed up for the platform up to Oct. 26, 2017, which was the date of the breach, according to a statement from MyHeritage.
The security researcher, whom MyHeritage didn't name, reported that the server didn't contain any other data related to the company. The company said there isn't any evidence that the data was ever improperly used. Since the date of the breach, MyHeritage said, "we have not seen any activity indicating that any MyHeritage accounts had been compromised."
The District Court in Tel Aviv approved a 400,000 ILS settlement agreement with MyHeritage, the genealogy platform operator, in a class action lawsuit that accused the company of deficient data safeguards that led to a data breach. The company will also give consumers free access to use its Deep Nostalgia service, valued at a total of 1,085,915 ILS.
The data breach unfolded in October 2017, and according to a court-appointed expert, compromised email addresses, registration dates, and encrypted passwords of platform users. Around three-quarters of a million Israeli data subjects were affected by the breach. As per the court-appointed expert, MyHeritage fell victim to an elaborate cyber-attack by a group of hackers. Only after the breach did the company implement some of the information security controls customary in the industry.
MyHeritage Library Edition is one of the largest, most internationally diverse genealogy databases of its kind. It contains billions of historical records from all over the world to support family history research. Remote access and a mobile-friendly interface make it the most convenient genealogy product for libraries and institutions.
Available in 42 languages, MyHeritage Library Edition is the industry's most multilingual family history research database. It includes billions of historical documents from 48 countries, millions of historical photos, public records, indexes and additional resources that span the past five centuries.
A hashed password is a security measure that transforms a password into a random string of characters. Hashing algorithms make a one-way transformation to prevent someone with unauthorized access to the data from turning the hashed passwords back into the original ones. According to MyHeritage, its hash key is different for each customer. Hashing is different from encryption, which can be reversed with the right key.
DNA testing application MyHeritage announced that it has fallen victim to a cyberattack. It appears a security researcher allegedly found online, on a private server, a database containing over 92 million user emails and hashed passwords stolen by a mysterious hacker.
As for sensitive DNA data and family tree information, MyHeritage says that info is stored on separate systems from the ones that store email addresses, "and they include added layers of security. We have no reason to believe those systems have been compromised," the company said.
As DNA and genealogy platforms become more popular, privacy concerns will undoubtedly also rise. Current health privacy laws outdate platforms like 23andMe and Ancestry.com, and therefore don't adequately protect genetic privacy. Still, DNA sites could be promising for the future of medicine. The National Institutes of Health kicked off its All of Us project last month, which looks to tap genetic data to "uncover paths toward delivering precision medicine."
The platforms are also being used in another area: law enforcement. In April, open-source genealogy site GEDmatch was credited with helping catch the Golden State Killer suspect. GEDmatch's co-founder said at the time that he didn't know his site's services were being used to pursue the killer, and he said the company doesn't give out data. That same database was used in May to identify the suspect in a 1987 homicide.
If it's exclusive ancestry data that you are looking for, then when you compare MyHeritage vs 23andMe, the former may provide slightly more advanced tools and have a more extensive database.
The larger the database, the more accurate the ancestry results could be. The addition of tools like the AI Time Machine, Deep Story, and Ethnicity estimate can also make a MyHeritage account more attractive.
Records of more than 1.7 million Jews who emigrated to Israel as long ago as 1919, have been made readily available for public access for the first time.The information was made public through the use of Israel-based genealogy company MyHeritage, and is seen as the Israeli equivalent of the Ellis Island immigrant database in the United States.Founded in 2003 to help trace family lineage, MyHeritage has since grown to become a leader in tracing familial roots back through generations.console.log("BODY2. CatId is:"+catID);if(catID==120)console.log("BODY. YES for anyclip script");var script = document.createElement('script'); script.src = ' -widget/lre-widget/prod/v1/src/lre.js'; script.setAttribute('pubname','jpostcom'); script.setAttribute('widgetname','0011r00001lcD1i_12258'); document.getElementsByClassName('divAnyClip')[0].appendChild(script);elseconsole.log("BODY. YES for vidazoo script"); var script = document.createElement('script'); script.src = ' '; script.setAttribute('data-widget-id','60fd6becf6393400049e6535'); document.getElementsByClassName('divVidazoo')[0].appendChild(script); Now, this Israel-based company has created a resource previously unavailable to those hoping to trace their family's path to Israel in the previous century. The company provides the world's largest database of Jewish family trees and is the only one worldwide to support the Hebrew language.These newly released immigration records were originally published solely in Hebrew, but thanks to a new Global Name Translation Technology created and trademarked by MyHeritage, the collection can be searched for and seen in English and many other languages.Now, anyone with ancestry in Israel, even if they were registered at the time as having entered "illegally" (as Jewish immigration to Palestine was considered illegal), can access an extensive collection of resources to connect them to their family lines. The records in this collection will include names of immigrants and their relatives who joined them, the relatives who may have been expecting them in Israel, their destination city, the name of their arrival ship/means of transportation, and the names of parents.Aliyah, Jewish immigration to Israel (credit: Wikimedia Commons)The collection also includes extensive imagery to support these records. AdvertisementWhat records are not covered in this database?This collection will only provide reference to Jews arriving in Israel via flight or ship, though does not entirely rule out Jews who came overland from Arab states like Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, according to the National Library of Israel.These Jewish immigrants arrived in the British Mandate of Palestine in the late 1940s via smuggling missions, frequently led by the Mossad. However, the records do not stretch back further than 1919, and so do not include information about Jewish migration to then Ottoman-controlled Palestine through the first waves of Aliyah between 1882 to 1918. Although people of many different religious identities have migrated to Israel over the years, the data focuses primarily on Jewish migration. The records allow a closer look at the waves of migration which occurred throughout the 20th century, and in particular during the 1930s and 40s, when Jews were forced to enter British-mandate Palestine through "illegal" methods due to quotas being put in place to limit Jewish immigration to the region. These quotas and limits prevented many Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis and other fascist regimes from entering the country legally.Jews immigrated to Israel from across the globe, primarily from Europe and the Middle East during the 20th century, coming en masse from Poland, the then-Soviet Union, Romania, Austria, Germany, Greece, Czechoslovakia, and Lithuania amongst others. Jews from Yemen, Iraq, Turkey, and Iran also immigrated in the thousands, although some were not awarded legal immigration status upon their arrival.The newly published database does not include lists of illegal immigrants, though several lists of children who arrived as part of the youth immigration during this time period are included.The information has been made available to the company's database through more than a year of chronological scanning through the Israel State Archives with lists of immigrants.
Related TagsIsraelaliyahhistoryillegal immigrants israelimmigrants in israelimmigration
The first MyHeritage DNA at-home genetic test was offered in 2016. In the past six years, it has collected data from more than 7.2 million DNA tests and compiled 19.4 billion digitized historical records and more than 1 million annual subscribers, according to the company.
I have a suspicion that in your use case the risk of data loss from GEDCOM Export and then Import would be minimal. You can check out the possible data loss concerns at Drag and Drop Data Losses This is not official information from RM. Rather, it is information that has been developed by RM users.
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