How to analyze raw DNA data without uploading your genome

What can go wrong with an uploaded genome

• Breaches and account takeovers: genetic databases are high-value targets, and a leaked genome cannot be rotated like a password.
• Policy drift: data uploaded under one privacy policy can be retained, shared or sold under a later one — including in a sale or bankruptcy of the company holding it.
• Retention you cannot verify: 'delete' on a server usually means 'flagged in a database', with copies in backups you cannot audit.
• Compelled disclosure and secondary uses: data that exists can be requested — by litigants, insurers' partners or law enforcement — in ways you never consented to.
• Family exposure: your genome is roughly half of each of your children's; sharing it shares information about people who never agreed.

Private by architecture, not by policy

DNA Is Mine parses, matches and explains your file entirely on your iPhone, iPad or Mac. There is no DNA server in the system at all — the strongest privacy property is not a promise but an absence. The original file is never copied or kept: after analysis, the app saves only summary statistics (such as marker counts and the genome build) and the genotypes of the knowledge-base markers your report actually uses.

Reports live only on your device, protected by the device's own encryption, and are excluded from iCloud and device backups. Deleting a report — or all local data — in Settings is immediate and permanent. There is no account, no advertising, no cross-app tracking, no crash-reporting service and no third-party SDK in the app, and DNA is never written to logs.

The honest fine print: anonymous statistics

The app sends a small number of anonymous usage events to its own first-party statistics service — for example that the app opened, an import completed or a plan was chosen, plus fixed values like app version, platform and language. Events never contain DNA, genotypes, findings, file contents, questions or AI answers, and they carry no account, device or advertising identifier. They are used only in aggregate to improve the app, and cannot be linked back to a person or genome.

This website does the same in miniature: first-party counts of page views and App Store clicks, tagged only by page, section and language, with no cookies, IP addresses or identifiers stored — and it respects Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control signals. We state this plainly rather than claiming the product is 'fully offline': your DNA never leaves your device, and the only data that does is counted, anonymous and described here.

Ask My DNA, without a cloud

Ask My DNA answers questions about your findings using Apple Intelligence — Apple's on-device foundation model. Your questions, genotypes, findings and the answers are processed only on your device: they are not sent to us, to any cloud, or to Private Cloud Compute, and conversations are not saved. It requires iOS / iPadOS 26 or macOS 26, an eligible device and Apple Intelligence enabled in a supported language and region, and it is unavailable in mainland China. The core reports work on iOS / iPadOS 18 and later without it.

Questions to ask any DNA service

• Do I upload my raw file, or does the analysis run on my own device?
• Exactly what do you store — the whole genome, or only what my report needs — and where?
• Which third-party SDKs, trackers or analytics are in the app?
• Can I delete everything, and is that deletion verifiable or just promised?
• Is my data ever sold, shared or used for research — and can that change under new terms?

DNA Is Mine's answers are the ones on this page, and the privacy policy states them in full. If a service cannot answer these questions as plainly, that is your answer.

Questions

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