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23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

reuters.com

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Re: 23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

#171

Post by EGreg »

cloudbonsai wrote: post #48

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…

Wait, if they declare bankruptcy can’t they be bought at a fire sale by this CEO’s friends finally?

Re: 23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

#172

Post by aucisson_masque »

andy_ppp wrote: post #159

As an aside I actually regret signing up for 23andMe, not because this isn't a great idea but more because I find the idea that the future having copies of your DNA around we might end up in some weird sci-fi universe where people can be specifically targeted with viruses or profiled in some other way. Not that I'll ever be important enough for that to happen but it feels like an invasion of privacy having such perso…

> Who knows who will buy all this data after bankruptcy...

People who think having millions of people dna is worth something. I could think of company working with private investigators or even governments.

Your dna sample is part of 23andMe valuation right now, I wouldn’t have hope even if it says your data is removed on their website, there are still backup.

Re: 23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

#173

Post by timeon »

dtquad wrote: post #90

Can some billionaire please buy 23andMe's corpse and delete all data and physical samples they have? Even if you have never used 23andMe several people you are related to already have so they have a partial genetic profile of you.

> Can some billionaire please

Are we back to feudalism?

Re: 23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

#174

Post by mrweasel »

wodenokoto wrote: post #151

My girlfriend really want to do one of these DNA analysis package from one of 23andMe's competitors, and she cannot for the life of her understand why I don't want to. How do I explain that I don't want my DNA analysed and sold around to all sorts of companies?

> How do I explain that I don't want my DNA analysed and sold

Honestly you can't. I've come to realise that unless someone personally is hurt from the lose of private information, then there's no way to convince to the risks.

People either comes down on the side of privacy and caution, or they completely fail to see if issue and believe that the risks are vastly overblown. Very rarely do you see anyone go from the latter to the first, unless they suffer personally.

Re: 23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

#175

Post by MrMcCall »

friendzis wrote: post #62
silisili wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's absurd to me how soft deletion took over the entire industry and 'DELETE FROM' became taboo.

To `DELETE FROM` you have to have at least a relatively vague idea what you are doing. Go and find an organization that has their data and component dependency maps ready and up to date :) One hard delete can expose months worth of bugs.

Can't delete from backups, though.

Re: 23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

#176

Post by bryanmgreen »

shreezus wrote: post #113

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…

New adoption perk is ability to avoid DNA based shadow profiling (given no voluntary self sharing of DNA and current ID, of course)

Re: 23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

#177

Post by mentalgear »

I recall when 23andMe was featured on the cover of a popular tech magazine. At the time, I had concerns about the risks of sharing DNA with a company.

However, the article highlighted that one of the co-founders was the wife of Google's co-founder Sergey Brin, and the company's association with (and investment of) Google provided a sense of data security and stability. .... now it might be sold for (data) parts to whoever.

Re: 23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

#178

Post by mentalgear »

aucisson_masque wrote: post #172
andy_ppp wrote: post #159

As an aside I actually regret signing up for 23andMe, not because this isn't a great idea but more because I find the idea that the future having copies of your DNA around we might end up in some weird sci-fi universe where people can be specifically targeted with viruses or profiled in some other way. Not that I'll ever be important enough for that to happen but it feels like an invasion of privacy having such perso…

> Who knows who will buy all this data after bankruptcy... People who think having millions of people dna is worth something. I could think of company working with private investigators or even governments. Your dna sample is part of 23andMe valuation right now, I wouldn’t have hope even if it says your data is removed on their website, there are still backup.

The famous US data delete that is just a "soft delete". Maybe different in California. In the EU with GDPR, companies are required by law to have all your data deleted after a month from user deletion request.

Re: 23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

#180

Post by phire »

linotype wrote: post #96
cloudbonsai wrote: post #48

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.

Not zero; In all bankruptcies, the shareholders get whatever is left over after liquidating all company assets and paying back all creditors.

In most high-profile bankruptcies, there aren't enough assets to even finish paying creditors, yet alone creditors. However, this is a voluntary Bankruptcy, so there might actually be assets left over to pay out to shareholders.

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