Has anyone used a genealogy software or website?

I used Ancestry and they found me lots of cousins, including a few Caucasians. But I haven't kept up with it so It wasn't particularly useful. One issue I had is that when they connected me to someone, if that person made their "tree" private, it did me no good because I couldn't explore any further. I've been thinking about getting back on the site because they emailed me that they have enhanced the regional ethnicity feature and I have new census record hints. I have a friend who has found cousins all over the world and has met some of them. She found Asian cousins. I know I have half Japanese and half Chinese cousins. It would be interesting to see if any of those show up. It did connect me to my niece but my membership had expired so I didn't see it, but she told me about it.
 
I have been researching my genealogy for years, recently had my DNA done. I use Family Search, the Mormon site, since they changed their format I find it isnot so easy to use as it once was. also Ancestry.com. I take out a subscription now and then when they have a special price offer. There are individual sites that are worth using, depending on where you want to search in the world.
 
I found some free information about my family by going to immigration records via
ship manifest websites. I found the actual manifest of the Norwegian ship that listed
my father (age 4) and his siblings and parents when they immigrated from Norway to
the US (Brooklyn) in 1919.
 
Ha, remember the uproar when the govt. wanted to create a DNA data base? Folks screamed about the intrusion. Now, in the name of genealogy, people willing give up their DNA. Any chance these sites are govt connected? Just wondering.
Oh yeah, I also suspect the nose swab used for covid is also a way to gather DNA.
For what it's worth, we too used the Mormon church and was able to trace family back to first arriving in America and even a bit further back.
 
I found a lot of information that was valuable to me, because my mother grew up in foster homes and didn't know who her father was. It was nice to have the missing links about my ancestry. Also valuable, was finding that I have Ashkenazi Jewish genes, which unfortunately are responsible for one of my health conditions. I hope to locate local family members that I have never met.
 
My sister is into it. She does family research, locates the final resting places of distant relatives, and had the DNA tests done twice. I'm not into it, although I find it somewhat interesting, and my sister shares all she discovers with me. My father's side of the family is straight forward, Swedish, and had a lot of relatives that would get together at Thanksgiving. My mother's side was a mystery, as she and her sisters and brother were abandoned and grew up in some crappy orphanage. My mother called herself German, but said there was probably some "other stuff in there" too. My sleuth sister figured much of that out, and that was most interesting to me, because I always wondered about my mother's side of the family. It's not important to me that I know, but it satisfied my curiosity.
 
Since I made the discovery that my bio dad was a different person than I thought for 63 years I would say it was useful and well worth the investment. I have a first cousin and others that were able to tell me some about him.
 
I used CRI Genetics to send my mouth swabs to. They have several sections; I didn't do any of the health programs. I'm 76, so whatever genetic type disease would have showed up by now. From the results, my ancestors had sex with anybody that walked by. And I kind of knew most of my ancestors would come from England/France, as I have French Canadian ancestry. I'm not sure it was worth the money to find that out.
 

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