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Since online genealogy services began operating, millions of people have sent them saliva samples in hopes of learning about their family roots and discovering far-flung relatives.

These services also appeal to law enforcement authorities, who have used them to solve cold case murders and to investigate such crimes as the 2022 killing of four University of Idaho students. Crime-scene DNA submitted to genealogy sites has helped investigators identify suspects and human remains by first identifying relatives.

The use of public records and family-tree building is crucial to this technique, and its main tool has been the genealogy site Ancestry, which has vast amounts of individual DNA profiles and public records.

More than 1,400 cases have been

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