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23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

reuters.com

121–130 of 426 posts

Re: 23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

#121

23andMe has been in a deadlock for a while. - The CEO is effectively the control owner of the company, having 49% of the voting right. She has been trying to take the company private for some time. - Last August, she proposed to buy all the outstanding shares at $8 per share. The board rejected. She installed a new board, and submitted her proposal again at $2.53 per share. The board rejected. She tried it a third ti…

So rather than $8 a share they get zero? Sounds like the board was the one that messed things up.

What does $8/share value the company at?

Re: 23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

#122
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

their own privacy team told me they are bound by regulatory obligations to retain data even after you request deletion. I've notified our attorney general's office to see if anything can be done but it might be too late. I'd love for someone who knows these "regulatory obligations" to chime in.....

Interesting, as that would be a violation of the CCPA/CPRA for customers who are California residents, at least. The "regulatory obligations" sounds like a fake excuse. Is 23andme even regulated beyond how your regular average business might be?

Federal regulations trump state codes.

Re: 23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

#123
post #84
post #8

Damn, on Friday, the California DoJ Attorney General issued a warning to consumers about their data: https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-bont... This should've been a giveaway that the company was imminently going to go under.

Given such a late warning, is there any staff left to do the data deletion requests before it heads off into bankruptcy courts

Just requested my data deletion. Seems like it worked.

Re: 23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

#124
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It possible with crypto shredding. You store everything encrypted with one key by customer. When you want to delete you erase the key. The data becomes unusable everywhere (backups included). Then a job periodically garbage collects data without a key, but that's more for cost saving. Big companies do this but it requires some technical maturity. If you operate in Europe you have to implement proper data deletion. I…

You still have to backup those keys somewhere... and if you don't do it the same way as for the data then your backups are effectively worthless.

Yea was going to say this. I would be surprised if any major company does this for normal uses.

Re: 23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

#125

I remember reading an article about how these companies were big bad conglomerates who had complete ownership over valuable personal data. Not really downplaying the potential harm that can come with these "assets" in the wrong hands, but nice to know corporate is so inefficient they couldn't even avoid bankruptcy... it will be a long time before they can even hope to orchestrate complex nefarious schemes.

...who do you think is gonna buy 23andMe when they go bankrupt?

I would expect bin Salman or emirati royal to buy it.

Re: 23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

#126

Even if you haven't personally used their service, if any close relatives have, they already have a sizable amount of information on your genome. They maintain the equivalent of "shadow profiles" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_profile ) as part of their data model for "ancestry" modeling purposes - for example inferring a paternal haplogroup based on data uploaded by genetic relatives. I can only hope at the…

What would even be the right hands in this case? Seems like almost any hands would be the wrong hands.

My ideal would be customers given the option to have it delete sold and profit split with between themselves and 23&me, or anonymised and donated to the human genome project.

Re: 23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

#127
post #37

For what it's worth, this is on their Data page: > What happens to my data if the company is sold or otherwise changes ownership? > If the company does change ownership in the future, your data will remain protected under the current 23andMe Privacy Policy unless and until you are presented with materially new terms, with appropriate advanced notice to review those material changes as required by law. https://you.23a…

Advanced notice to review the changes ... but can you reject them? I've yet to be presented with the option to reject a change to a privacy policy or ToS.

You can reject the change by deleting your data. But your district's data protection laws might be different than mine.

Re: 23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

#128

23andMe has been in a deadlock for a while. - The CEO is effectively the control owner of the company, having 49% of the voting right. She has been trying to take the company private for some time. - Last August, she proposed to buy all the outstanding shares at $8 per share. The board rejected. She installed a new board, and submitted her proposal again at $2.53 per share. The board rejected. She tried it a third ti…

So rather than $8 a share they get zero? Sounds like the board was the one that messed things up.

> So rather than $8 a share they get zero? Sounds like the board was the one that messed things up.

The share was trading at $8-$9 at the time.

The primary reason why the board has been rejecting the offer is that the CEO kept proposing discount prices to the market rate.

Re: 23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So rather than $8 a share they get zero? Sounds like the board was the one that messed things up.

> So rather than $8 a share they get zero? Sounds like the board was the one that messed things up. The share was trading at $8-$9 at the time. The primary reason why the board has been rejecting the offer is that the CEO kept proposing discount prices to the market rate.

By the sounds of it, the board is about to find out what the market rate really is.

Re: 23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

#130
post #123
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given such a late warning, is there any staff left to do the data deletion requests before it heads off into bankruptcy courts

Just requested my data deletion. Seems like it worked.

Does a deletion request delete your data, or unlink it from you? Because they use shadow profiles.
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