With genetic testing company 23andMe filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and courting bidders, the DNA data of millions of users is up for sale.
A Silicon Valley stalwart since 2006, 23andMe has steadily amassed a database of people’s fundamental genetic information under the promise of helping them understand their disposition to diseases and potentially connecting with relatives.
But the company’s bankruptcy filing Sunday means information is set to be sold, causing massive worry among privacy experts and advocates.
“Folks have absolutely no say in where their data is going to go,” said Tazin Khan, CEO of the nonprofit Cyber Collective, which advocates for privacy rights and cybersecurity for marginalized people.
“How can we be so sure that the downstream impact of whoever purchases this data will not be catastrophic?” she said.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta warned people in a statement Friday that their data could be sold. In the statement, Bonta offered users instructions on how to delete genetic data from 23andMe, how to instruct the company to delete their test samples and how to revoke access from their data’s being used in third-party research studies.
DNA data is extraordinarily sensitive.
Its primary use at 23andMe — mapping out a person’s potential predisposed genetic conditions — is data that many people would prefer to keep private. In some criminal cases, genetic testing data has been subpoenaed by police and used to help criminal investigations against people’s relatives.
Security experts caution that if a bad actor can gain access to a person’s biometric data like DNA information, there’s no real remedy: Unlike passwords or even addresses or Social Security numbers, people cannot change their DNA.
A spokesperson for 23andMe said in an emailed statement that there will be no change to how the company stores customers’ data and that it plans to follow all relevant U.S. laws.
But Andrew Crawford, an attorney at…
Read the full article here
