[3] Erlich's team published a study in the journal Science that reported crowd-sourcing of tens of millions of genealogical records from the website Geni.com.
[4] The team was able to create a single family tree of 13 million people that are all connected and spans tens of generations and over 600 years of history.
The team also demonstrated that after recovering the surname, basic demographic identifiers such as age and state of residency can permit tracing back the identity of the individual.
In 2018, the Erlich team published a study in Science that reported that about 60% of US individuals of European descent have at least a 3rd cousin match in GEDmatch, which can theoretically permit their identification.
[11] The team suggested a cryptographic signature technique to reduce the chance of misusing direct to consumer websites by police searches.