The front page of the San Jose Mercury News yesterday, and today at the Washington Post–alright, it was time. 23&Me has filed for bankruptcy. Your genetics, the questionnaires you’ve answered, your lineage, your relatives, all your personal data and by some extension theirs through you could be put up for sale to anyone with any agenda.
The Merc buried the lede, which should have come first instead of as a postscript:
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“On the website, customers can also direct the company to destroy stored saliva samples and DNA, as well as revoke permission for their genetic data to be used for research.”
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I imagine it probably helps a whole lot to do that before you go in there and delete your account first like I did. For which the instructions from the Merc are:
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“To delete their 23andMe account and personal information, customers can follow these steps:
— Log in to their 23andMe account on the company’s website.
— Navigate to the “settings” section of their profile.
— Scroll down to the “23andMe data” section at the bottom of the page.
— Click “view” next to “23andMe data.”
— Download their data.
— Scroll to the “delete data” section.
— Click “permanently delete data.”
— Confirm their request — an email from 23andMe will follow, containing a link to finalize the deletion.”
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That it did.
Would you want the people currently raiding Medicare and Social Security data to get ahold of this? This was the only such company that cared about privacy and data protection and now they’re not going to be able to.