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23andMe changed its terms of service to prevent hacked customers from suing

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Re: 23andMe changed its terms of service to prevent hacked customers from suing

#101

Post by barbazoo »

Dma54rhs wrote: post #94
d2049 wrote: post #21

I would have presumed that security-minded people, which includes those who work in tech, would not so easily give away their genome, and that most of 23andMe's customers are a slice of the general population. But then I read about things like WorldCoin and that people who go to startup parties jump at the chance to give away scans of their retinas and I'm befuddled. Why would anyone willingly do that?

Poor and desperate people don't have the luxury thinking of these first world privacy issues. There a reasin Altman and launched it where they did.

That explains the WorldCoin but not 23andme, people voluntarily paid for that so they couldn't have been that poor.

Re: 23andMe changed its terms of service to prevent hacked customers from suing

#102

Post by searine »

mrweasel wrote: post #82
searine wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but what if I want like 200.000 people so I can find one that has a DNA profile similar to mine There are already literally entire databases of millions of peoples DNA freely available for scientific research.

Not with names and contact information I assume?

If you were smart enough to hack 23andMe to get genetic data to find a specific person, you'd be smart enough to reconstruct identities from publicly available data. You'd just have to cross-reference public anonymous databases with public non-anonymous ones. Both of which exist, and are free.

So far, the only real use-case for doing this is people trying to identify criminals from just DNA.

Re: 23andMe changed its terms of service to prevent hacked customers from suing

#103

Post by dr-detroit »

lp0_on_fire wrote: post #59
throwaway092323 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably know that it doesn't hold water legally. The hope is to victim blame as much as possible so that fewer people sue them in the first place. The next step will be to "remind" people about the TOS that they totally agreed to.

Exactly. Same reason construction vehicles have "Stay back 200 feet: not responsible for broken windshields" written on the back.

[dead]

Re: 23andMe changed its terms of service to prevent hacked customers from suing

#104

Post by tfehring »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #77
mrweasel wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, yours specifically, but what if I want like 200.000 people so I can find one that has a DNA profile similar to mine, who could serve as a escape-goat or victim? Maybe I want to steal a kidney, or a child that could reasonably pass as my own?

In the US, the bad actor here is much more likely to be insurance companies who can tune their secret algorithms to make sure no one with a gene tied to an illness which blooms later in life can get affordable heath care.

In the US, health insurers can only price based on age, location, and tobacco use. Setting health insurance premiums or denying coverage based on any health-related factors has been illegal for over a decade, and changing that would be totally unviable politically.

However, it's a significant risk for other types of insurance including life, disability, and long term care.

Re: 23andMe changed its terms of service to prevent hacked customers from suing

#106

Post by tamimio »

Gladly I never used any of these services, not just knowing my ancestors origins will add zero value to my life, but also I don’t trust any cloud services to store my passwords or notes, let alone a biometric I will never be able to change, alive or not.

Re: 23andMe changed its terms of service to prevent hacked customers from suing

#107

Post by andrei_says_ »

arwhatever wrote: post #99
lp0_on_fire wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Same reason construction vehicles have "Stay back 200 feet: not responsible for broken windshields" written on the back.

“Not responsible for black eye if something falls from your vehicle and damages my vehicle.”

Except that the truck driver has zero fault for the gravel on the road and the spacing between the tires and the mud guard of the truck his employer maintains.

Or did you mean you’d seek out the ceo of the truck company and give them a black eye?

Re: 23andMe changed its terms of service to prevent hacked customers from suing

#108

Post by tamimio »

brianwawok wrote: post #4
adocomplete wrote: post #2

Thanks for sharing. Will def opt out and roll into the class action suits already filed. Take security seriously people. Especially when dealing with super sensitive data.

Why did you send them your DNA? It was pretty obvious from day 1 that sending some random startup on the internet my DNA was a bad move.

Spot on!

Re: 23andMe changed its terms of service to prevent hacked customers from suing

#110

Post by everforward »

kelthan wrote: post #12

Automatically opting-in customers to a more restrictive TOS is pretty suspect, especially given the timing. IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that a court would not allow that, given that the TOS was changed AFTER the breach and it's pretty clear that the company is trying to avoid legal issues after-the-fact. I would expect the court would evaluate any breach under the TOS that was in effect at the time of the breach, rath…

They ought to be evaluated as if no TOS exists. Given the clear intent to defraud customers by misrepresenting the contract they were bound by, the claims should be evaluated under the TOS most favorable to the plaintiffs. The most favorable TOS is the one that's invalid because 23andMe didn't get anyone to actually agree, ergo the claims are evaluated as if no TOS exists.

This is an attempt to undermine consumer protection laws, and the government should treat it as a direct attack. Other companies are watching. The government needs to send a clear message that this won't be tolerated before it spreads, becomes the status quo, and leaves many consumers believing that they don't have any rights or protections.

The head of legal should also be disbarred under American Bar Association rule 1.2(d):

> (d) A lawyer shall not counsel a client to engage, or assist a client, in conduct that the lawyer knows is criminal or fraudulent, but a lawyer may discuss the legal consequences of any proposed course of conduct with a client and may counsel or assist a client to make a good faith effort to determine the validity, scope, meaning or application of the law.

This reads as clear contract fraud in the factum [1]. Customers are told that they're bound by new contract terms, despite that 23andMe never got agreement, nor tried to get agreement, nor even know whether customers have read the new contract. I can't fathom any other reasonable interpretation of the situation. They created a fraudulent contract hoping to confuse other entrants to prior versions of the contract, and intend to benefit from that confusion. It seems clear to me. They are attempting to undermine the legal system, and the ABA needs to deal out swift punishment as one of the protectors of that system.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraud_in_the_factum

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