Can someone remind me why we trust tech startups with our personal data, again?
23andMe confirms hackers stole ancestry data on 6.9M users
291–300 of 321 posts
Re: 23andMe confirms hackers stole ancestry data on 6.9M users
#292Earlier 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?
Be careful you don't break something with those gymnastics. The immediate concern I had with this story is nefarious groups or individuals purchasing this data to target people with violence based on their ethnicities. Imagine if the genome of millions of Europeans was available on the black market in 1930s Europe.
I'll take this one step further.
What if you're able to pinpoint unique loci for an individual or group which can serve as a target of a highly specific bio-weapon? Do you think genomic bio-weapons aren't being explored as future weapons?
Re: 23andMe confirms hackers stole ancestry data on 6.9M users
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
Boy, that "yet" reaaaally makes me feel comfortable trusting government with information it can use to kill entire families.
If the government wanted you gone there wouldn’t be this song and dance about getting dna data from a blood bank. They’d just kill you and that would be that.
They can barely agree on a budget. They wouldn't be able to unify against the public, they're too dysfunctional. You'd need a President willing to defy his oath and two other branches on board with him.
Not happening.
Re: 23andMe confirms hackers stole ancestry data on 6.9M users
#294I bet a lot of insurance risk adjusters will make an order for the data, optimize their models a bit, raise a few rates, and make a few new millionaires in the process. I’m being snarky but isn’t it really scary that 2% of Americans could be impacted by something like that?
If you raise insurance rates then your customers can go elsewhere. You want a data edge over your competitors to lower rates.
Re: 23andMe confirms hackers stole ancestry data on 6.9M users
#295This 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", except no, I can't choose when we're relatives and you chose to share our genome. It is so obvious that your relatives sharing their genomic data with 23andMe reveals a lot of information about you. We can only hope people will reali…
To clarify, genomic data was not reported stolen. It sounds like the breach was about genealogical data. The stolen data included the person’s name, birth year, relationship labels, the percentage of DNA shared with relatives, ancestry reports and self-reported location.
ah, good point, I misread the bit “percentage of DNS shared with relatives”, I really thought one could share only Chromosome 3 with relatives for example (which does not make sense, granted), and that it was the bit which was stolen. Thanks for pointing this out.
Re: 23andMe confirms hackers stole ancestry data on 6.9M users
#296Re: 23andMe confirms hackers stole ancestry data on 6.9M users
#297This 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", except no, I can't choose when we're relatives and you chose to share our genome. It is so obvious that your relatives sharing their genomic data with 23andMe reveals a lot of information about you. We can only hope people will reali…
I'm in favor of privacy, and I'm willing to go more out of my way to not share than the vast majority of people, but I'm also in favor of individual choice, and I can't think of a privacy model that would disallow other people from sharing their information just because you have some matching information.
That can be achieved through anonimity. I don't understand why companies have to know who I am in such detail. Every little website requires my phone number, SSN, retina patterns and the name of my childhood pet. If I could use 23andme under the pen name "Ivar the Boneless" and pay for it with a bit of cash in an envelope (or crypto), the current problem wouldn't exist.
Tools like Telegram or Signal do not allow creating accounts without having a valid phone number. Of course, it is possible to use a web service to receive the registration SMS, but that shouldn't be the case in the first place.
Re: 23andMe confirms hackers stole ancestry data on 6.9M users
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
Considering one of the hacker's first actions was to offer for sale data identifying people of Jewish or Chinese descent I think that's a very valid concern.
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…
> it's not exactly difficult to find Jews.
Really? As a 25% jew whos genetic data was probably just stolen, I'd like to disagree with that statement. I don't harbour any stereotypical jewish phenotypes, and don't self-identify as a jew, but who knows if someone else decides to do that for me.
Re: 23andMe confirms hackers stole ancestry data on 6.9M users
#299Re: 23andMe confirms hackers stole ancestry data on 6.9M users
#300"What do you have to fear if you have nothing to hide?"
I fear stupid people in places of power. DNA-matching as a crime solving technique always was problematic.
>> DNA Evidence is Not as Reliable as Many Believe it to Be https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=2800ffc0-c286...
>>The False Promise of DNA Testing https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/a-reaso...
>>How Forensic DNA Evidence Can Lead to Wrongful Convictions https://daily.jstor.org/forensic-dna-evidence-can-lead-wrong...