Removal guide · Ancestry
Ancestry's removal is a three-track flow, not a single button. The DNA track deletes your AncestryDNA test results and revokes consent in DNA settings, which clears the genetic data but keeps your account and family tree. The account track submits full account deletion at ancestry.com/secure/account/delete, which purges everything on your own account (account, tree, records, DNA) on a 30-day timeline. The sample track asks Member Services to destroy the physical saliva sample, and it's only for people keeping their account, because deleting the whole account destroys the sample too while deleting just the DNA results doesn't. So the account track alone clears out everything on your account, DNA test or not; if you took the test but want to keep your account, do the DNA track and the sample track. No track reaches family-tree data that relatives copied into their own trees, which can persist because Ancestry can only remove what's on your account.
Before you remove your data: See the Ancestry data broker profile for ownership, contact details, litigation history, and related sites.
Quick facts
DNA settings + account delete + sample destroy
~10-15 minutes
Easy
Yes
Up to 30 days for full purge
Within 30 days, per the privacy statement
With account deletion, or on request if you keep the account
Privacy statement's state-rights section
Deleting only your DNA results does NOT destroy the physical sample. That's the most-missed detail in Ancestry opt-outs. Ancestry's privacy statement says the saliva sample is destroyed when you delete your whole account (the delete page has you tick a box confirming exactly that) or when you ask Member Services to destroy it. Delete just the digital results in DNA settings and the sample stays in the lab, so readers keeping their account need step 3 below.
Pick your scope before you start.
Family-tree data exposes relatives. Even after you delete, the family-tree connections you built may persist in cousins' / relatives' trees if they copied your data into theirs. Ancestry can't reach into those - it can only remove what's on your account.
Prereqs
Your Ancestry account credentials. All three tracks require you to sign in. If you've forgotten the password, use Ancestry's password-reset flow first - don't try the opt-out without account access. (If you literally can't recover the account, see Troubleshooting below for the state-privacy-law fallback.)
Decide your scope. Re-read the "pick your scope" callout in the Removal Overview above. The three tracks are independent and you can pick a subset. A thorough clean-up is the account track, which takes the DNA results and the sample with it; the sample track is only for people keeping their account.
The 5 steps
Head to ancestry.com and sign in with your email + password. All subsequent steps require an authenticated session. If you have multiple Ancestry accounts (separate from a partner's, etc.), sign in to whichever one you're removing - they're independent.
If you took an AncestryDNA test, navigate to ancestry.com/dna/settings (or DNA menu → Your DNA Results Summary → Settings). Scroll to Delete Test Results and Revoke Consent to Processing, click Delete, and follow the confirmation prompts. This removes your ethnicity estimates, DNA matches, and genetic data from the platform. Ancestry's privacy statement says the genetic information is deleted from its production, development, analytics and research systems within 30 days, so the results may drop out of view before the deletion is actually complete.
Only for readers who did step 2 and are keeping their account: deleting the digital results doesn't touch the saliva sample in Ancestry's lab, and Ancestry's privacy statement says the two ways to have it destroyed are a request to Member Services or deleting the account. Contact Member Services via the Contact Us page (chat or phone callback) and explicitly request destruction of your physical DNA sample. Reference your account and your kit number if you still have it. If you're going on to delete the whole account in step 4, skip this; the deletion destroys the sample.
Navigate to ancestry.com/secure/account/delete while signed in, and check that the email address shown is yours. Per Ancestry's deletion walkthrough, the page then has you tick three boxes: that the memberships listed will be cancelled, that your trees will be deleted, and that your DNA results will be deleted and the saliva sample destroyed. Choose a reason, click Continue, then Next step; Ancestry emails a verification code that expires in two hours. Keep the tab open, paste the code into the Confirm Account Delete box in it, and click Delete account. Access ends immediately and the data purge completes within 30 days. If you skipped step 2, the DNA data goes in this step too.
An All Access membership's Fold3 and Newspapers.com subscriptions are cancelled with it, but a separate account on Archives.com, Fold3, Forces War Records or Newspapers.com survives and has to be cancelled on that site.
Ancestry sends a single email confirming the deletion has started. There's no completion email, because your address is deleted along with everything else, so that first email is your evidence if you need to escalate. Screenshot the on-screen success message from step 4 too, in case the email gets caught in spam.
State-law privacy
If you live in a state with an enforceable privacy law (CA, VA, CO, CT, UT, and a growing list), you have legal rights beyond the standard account-deletion flow - including the right to know what data Ancestry holds about you, the right to delete, and (for some states) the right to limit use of sensitive personal information including genetic data. Ancestry's privacy statement sets out how to make those requests in its state-rights section, and a separate page handles the sale and targeted-advertising opt-out.
Which path should you use? The standard steps 1-5 above are faster and easier for most consumers. The state-privacy-law path is the right call if you want a documented legal record (with statutory deadlines and right-to-appeal) or if you live in a state where the law gives you broader rights than Ancestry's standard account-delete flow grants.
Confirm it worked
Troubleshooting
I can't sign in - forgot password / lost account access. Try Ancestry's password-reset flow first. If the account email is also lost, contact customer support via the Contact Us page with whatever identifying info you can provide. As a last resort, the state-privacy-law route below can be used to request deletion even without account access, since it relies on independent identity verification.
The DNA delete option isn't visible in settings. Make sure you're signed in to the account that owns the test - if a family member managed your kit on their account, the delete option lives in their settings, not yours. Ancestry's kit-management transfer can move ownership if needed.
Member Services didn't acknowledge my sample-destruction request (account kept). Re-submit through a different channel (chat vs phone callback) and explicitly reference Ancestry's privacy statement language about sample destruction. If still unacknowledged, escalate via the state-privacy-law portal which creates a documented record.
Account is "stuck" past the 30-day window. Reply to the confirmation email with your reference number, or contact support, citing the deadline the flow committed to.
I'm getting billing charges after deletion. Account deletion should cancel auto-renewal but BBB complaints document occasional billing disputes post-delete. Dispute the charge with your card issuer and reference the deletion confirmation email as evidence.
I want to do this for a deceased relative's account. Ancestry has a separate process for managed-deceased accounts that requires proof of death certificate + authority to act. Contact support to initiate.
Stay off
Don't create a new account on a forgotten email. Most re-listing happens because someone signs up for a free trial on a new email, then forgets. Use a forwarding address you can audit if you do experiment with the service.
Decline DNA-match opt-ins in the future. If you (or someone in your household) takes another DNA test, opt OUT of the DNA-matching feature during account setup. That keeps your genetic data from being visible to other AncestryDNA users.
Watch out for sister-site sign-ups. Newspapers.com, Fold3, Archives.com and Find a Grave can pull you back into the Ancestry ecosystem if you sign up for them separately, and a separate account on any of them survives an Ancestry deletion until you cancel it on that site.
Be careful what relatives put in their trees. A cousin who builds a family tree linking your name, birth date, and parents creates an Ancestry exposure for you even if you've never had an account. The only real mitigation is asking the family member to remove living- person details from their tree.
For broader privacy hygiene across the data-broker landscape (the people-search brokers in this directory, marketing-data brokers like Acxiom, etc.) use Redact. Ancestry isn't normally in Redact's scope (it's a paid product, not a public-search broker) but the adjacent brokers worth cleaning up are.
Genealogy framing comparison. FamilyTreeNow uses the same "genealogy" framing but is functionally a free people-search aggregator with public profiles. If you're opting out of Ancestry, opting out of FamilyTreeNow is the more urgent companion task, since the FamilyTreeNow exposure is publicly indexed where Ancestry's is not.
Redact scans 120+ data broker sites from your device, finds where your details are listed, and submits the removal requests for you. If a broker relists you, it files again.
May 22, 2026 · Drafted from Ancestry's help documentation and Consumer Reports' walkthrough, and deliberately left unwalked: the flow only exists inside a paid account with a DNA kit attached, and Ancestry holds nothing a user didn't volunteer. No step screenshots for that reason. Litigation, source links, the sample-destruction rule (Ancestry's privacy statement) and the deletion flow (Ancestry's own deletion walkthrough) rechecked September 10, 2026.