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23andMe confirms hackers stole ancestry data on 6.9M users

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Re: 23andMe confirms hackers stole ancestry data on 6.9M users

#271

Post by dylan604 »

pfdietz wrote: post #266
dylan604 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At some point people have to realize that personal unease is not an argument. that's not how it works though. if you find enough other people that have the same uneasiness, then you can form groups that get people elected to make rules that forces everyone else to comply with your uneasiness.

It's not an argument that anyone else is obligated to treat at all seriously. You're uneasy? Boo frickin hoo.

Well, I'm in a state that passes legislation as fast as they can that tries to one up how ridiculously they can legislate away the rights of their population. So as flippant as you might try to be about it, doing nothing but making flippant comments on the internet is how we turn into a society that looks at each other wondering WTF happened. Because those with personal unease have mobilized, and now they're in charge.

Re: 23andMe confirms hackers stole ancestry data on 6.9M users

#272

Post by dragonwriter »

briandear wrote: post #230
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, the reason for privacy is because the profit motive of capitalism is not sufficiently restrained as to protect citizens from being abused by corporations?

Governements abuse people more than an economic system ever has. A corporation has never marched people to camps, nor have corporations ever imprisoned anyone for their politics. If I don’t want to deal with a corporation, I have the right not to — unless government forces me to.

> Governements abuse people more than an economic system ever has

This is true on one level, as economic systems are not actors, but abstractions for aggregates of actions; its false on a more concrete level because governments are also not real concrete actors but abstractions for aggregates of real actors.

Both governments and economic systems (and corporations, which you seem to drop in as ig they were the same as economic systems) are abstractions through which real actors act, including to oppress, and very often actions by thr same actors involves all thrre abstractions (even a single action might). Corporations, after all. are themselves creatures of gogernment through law, and economic systems exist only as ideals without being made manifest through legal systems.

> A corporation has never marched people to camps,

You probably don't want to think about most of the best known early joint-stock conpanies (any of the variously East India companies, but especially the British, the Royal African Company, etc.)

> If I don’t want to deal with a corporation, I have the right not to — unless government forces me to.

Corporations—like any individuals—can and do apply coercive force on their own with only after-the-fact review by governments (and, in many cases historically, with obvjecting governments having limited power to apply sanctions), so, no, this isn't correct.

Re: 23andMe confirms hackers stole ancestry data on 6.9M users

#273

Post by StopHammoTime »

gcanyon wrote: post #105

Does anyone think privacy of any real sort is maintainable going forward? Machine learning algorithms are learning to identify people just by their walk -- no face recognition required. Algorithms are moving toward being able to decipher text just by the audio of the keyboard being typed on. In short, given a gestalt of ALL public data and sufficiently advanced algorithms is there really a way for people to maintain…

I personally don’t. I used to lose my mind over the thought of my confidential documents being leaked. Then after seeing how poorly personal information is handled, I realised it’s almost a guarantee. A few things from Australia (which has good privacy laws) that made me recognise the futility of it all:

1) the large hack of Optus in which about half of the population had their credit card details stolen. 2) the large hack of Medibank in which the details of a large portion of private health insurance customer details were stolen. 3) I applied for a mortgage and found out every 2-bit mortgage broker is emailed 100s if not 1000s of sensitive ID documents every year and they definitely do not go through their email and delete them after the closure of deals. 4) Most companies in Australia only require a name, address, and, birth date to verify identity which is easily found with five minutes of searching most of the time. 5) I set up a pin with Telstra that should have blocked administrative changes on my account for years. One day I called in, got my password ready, and they didn’t ask for it. They just did it anyway. It was entirely futile.

IMO the only way that privacy will ever become respected is if we move the onus for fraud onto the actual victims of fraud: the companies. This is the whole ancient joke about someone’s identity being “stolen”. It wasn’t stolen, your verification procedures ultimately failed as a business and you are trying to divert responsibility to avoid having to suffer a loss. This is one of the reasons I use my credit card exclusively these days - if it used fraudulently I know that I can charge back, and that’s about the only mechanism I can use to truly prevent unauthorised access to my money.

Re: 23andMe confirms hackers stole ancestry data on 6.9M users

#274

Post by dang »

Recent and related:

23andMe hackers accessed a whole lot of personal data - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38519466 - Dec 2023 (36 comments)

Hacker leaks millions more 23andMe user records on cybercrime forum - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37931383 - Oct 2023 (394 comments)

23andMe Sued over Hack of Genetic Data Affecting Thousands - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37895586 - Oct 2023 (20 comments)

23andMe Accounts Hijacked and Data Put Up for Sale on Hacker Forum - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37810755 - Oct 2023 (2 comments)

23andMe says user data stolen in credential stuffing attack - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37794379 - Oct 2023 (298 comments)

Re: 23andMe confirms hackers stole ancestry data on 6.9M users

#276

Post by Buttons840 »

cj wrote: post #128
losvedir wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This disaster is the perfect counter-argument to those always saying "why do you care so much about privacy. It doesn't affect you when I share things. You can just choose not to do it" While I agree it's a perfect counter-argument to that, is that what people always say? I'm not sure I've heard that argument as much as "why do you care so much about privacy?" full stop. As in, they don't really understand why anyo…

I think the more common one I've heard is "Why do you care about privacy if you have nothing to hide?" In the case of 23andme, it's a perfect answer: We don't know what's hiding in our DNA and I don't know how people will use that against me in the future.

Imagine a correlation study between genes and worker productivity, it'd be an interesting study if done correctly, but it might not be done correctly (and to be clear, I don't think it should be done at all). Now imagine you have genes that have a negative correlation with productivity which makes it hard for you to find work.

Re: 23andMe confirms hackers stole ancestry data on 6.9M users

#277

Post by Pat_Murph »

briandear wrote: post #230
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, the reason for privacy is because the profit motive of capitalism is not sufficiently restrained as to protect citizens from being abused by corporations?

Governements abuse people more than an economic system ever has. A corporation has never marched people to camps, nor have corporations ever imprisoned anyone for their politics. If I don’t want to deal with a corporation, I have the right not to — unless government forces me to.

"Corporations have never imprisoned anyone for their politics"

Really?

Let me introduce you to Steven Donziger.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jul/26/lawyer-stev...

Ho and what about all those corporations that used Jewish slaves during world war 2?

Or just today, Coca Cola killing people protesting them taking their land away or Amazon imposing atrocious work conditions to their employees?

Before blindly defending corporations I'd try and take a look at reality...

It's not as simple as "government bad and corporations good"

Re: 23andMe confirms hackers stole ancestry data on 6.9M users

#278

Post by jstarfish »

fragmede wrote: post #214
jstarfish wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did anybody actually buy it though? This could be misdirection, or just misguided marketing based on historical instances of abuse. China isn't known for trying to repatriate descendants, and it's not exactly difficult to find Jews. Ancestry data would certainly be of interest to a particular demographic known to discriminate by caste. There's no escaping your low-class heritage when anyone can look up your stolen DN…

"not exactly difficult"... I'm not Jewish, but I feel like there's some sort of reason for them not wanting a list of who they and where they live to exist.

[flagged]

Re: 23andMe confirms hackers stole ancestry data on 6.9M users

#279

Post by mistrial9 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #139
dylan604 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not what the comment was driving at. At all. It’s about how data you think is innocent can be used in a manner you never thought about nor intended for dark purposes.

I actually had intended to point out the dangers of "scope creep". Everyone is happy with a lot of pretty invasive stuff - dragnet surveillance, targeted surveillance (i.e. bugs placed in a suspect's home/car/computer/phone), DNA and fingerprint mass tests, no-knock raids - in severe crime cases such as terrorism, murder, rape, child sexual exploitation or abduction. So far, so good, and almost all Western countries…

> Everyone is happy with a lot of pretty invasive stuff

could you stop repeating this simple fallacy? Because millions of people could not organize and opt-out of something being commercialized, that also benefits government, in the USA Does Not Equal "everyone is happy"

in fact, lots of people are deeply unhappy.. so the statement "everyone is happy" is not only not true, but actively provoking.

It is not in the power of an unhappy or protesting individual citizen, let along an elderly, impoverished or medically vulnerable person, to stop the rollout of Big Tech Thing.

Re: 23andMe confirms hackers stole ancestry data on 6.9M users

#280

Post by kzrdude »

zlg_codes wrote: post #264
kzrdude wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden has a registry of blood samples of every person born in sweden since 1975: https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/PKU-registret (Swedish only wiki page) Predictably?, amusingly? police never had access to this data, until a government minister was murdered in 2003, when a sample from the suspect was retrieved. From what we know it has not been used since. So we can be cynical, but under the circumstances, the police us…

Boy, that "yet" reaaaally makes me feel comfortable trusting government with information it can use to kill entire families.

It is interesting how that 'single exception in 2003' really erodes trust in the whole thing. It's very hard to come back from that.
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