Welcome to the Ahrens surname project. AHRENS surname project PRIVACY GUIDELINES With the roll out of major changes by FTDNA, this section now needs to be added for project members to understand the trade offs between accessibility and privacy. Unfortunately, FTDNA has chosen to implement European Union GDPR rules for all customers worldwide and FTDNA has required all admins to sign a legally binding contract that makes admins subject to damages for any lawsuit that is brought against FTDNA. These are very harsh terms for their non-paid volunteer administrators. There are two very clear rules that admins must enforce: 1) If you elect to leave the project after 25 May 2018, all of your information must be removed from any external web sites regardless of your 'YDNA opt in to sharing' setting. This means that your data will be removed spreadsheets, charts, Big Y analysis and Y500 summaries. Once you leave the AHRENS surname project, it will be like you have never tested. 2) If you elect to change your current YDNA opt in to sharing from enabled to disabled, all information will be removed from any analysis as well. Additionally, to reduce the liability to AHRENS Project admins for accidental inclusion of your data, you will also be removed from the Ahrens Surname project as well. However, if you are a member of the AHRENS project or have joined the AHRENS Project after 25 May 2018, you are allowing the AHRENS project admins to publish your genetic information - regardless of your 'YDNA opt in to sharing' setting. This includes YSTR data, YSNP testing, BigY YSNP data and Y500 data. By being a member of this project or joining this project, you must accept this term when joining the AHRENS project. It is clear that FTDNA will continue to increase privacy over accessibility and it is likely in the future that FTDNA will require the removal of genetic information for those who have either defaulted to 'YDNA opt in to sharing', disabled or have selected this setting prior to 25 May 2018. Unfortunately, when this increase of privacy rolls out, we highly recommend that you enable your 'YDNA opt in to sharing' setting. Any new changes requiring removal from external sites would also require removal from the project as well (to protect from accidental publication and since we can not share our analysis by any means other than external sites (spreadsheets, charts in PDF form, presentations in PDF form, etc.) The AHRENS Surname project admin team recommends that project members change five key settings to allow maximum functionality to admins (these changes are strictly voluntary and the admin team will not update these settings): 1) Under Account Settings, in the PRIVACY & SHARING tab - Change the "Project Preferences" to "Limited" for all AHRENS Project admins. 1a) In the event that you do not have beneficiary information filled out, have no beneficiary to grant access to your kit or are of ailing health, please consider changing account preferences to advanced so that administrators may continue research on your behalf. 2) Under Account Settings, in the PROJECT PREFERENCES tab - That you enable "Opt in to Sharing" under the Group Project Profile. 3) Under Account Settings, in the PRIVACY & SHARING tab - That you enable 'YDNA Match' level to "All levels" (to allow admins to recruit your matches into the AHRENS Project and help you build your genetic cluster). This now includes yet another new setting that FTDNA rolled out on 8/1/2018 - the default value for new project members should also be set to "Limited." 4) Under Account Settings, in the NOTIFICATION PREFERENCES tab - That you enable "Subscribe" to "Projects" so that you may receive emails sent by Group Project Administrators. 5) Under Account Settings, in the GENEALOGY tab - Please updated your Paternal Ancestor information in the following format - First Name - Last Name - Birth Year - Death year - Location (City/Town/Region/County/State) of Birth if possible. Please update the Country as well. For those who have not updated these five settings, the AHRENS Project admin's ability to analyze your genetic data and your settings are dramatically reduced resulting a lower quality of service that we can provide. This reduced functionality is the trade off of privacy vs. accessibility.