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Independent directors of 23andMe resign from board

investors.23andme.com

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Re: Independent directors of 23andMe resign from board

#281

Post by psychlops »

LatteLazy wrote: post #201
dvh wrote: post #175

There is absolutely no reason for these companies to collect your PII whatsoever. You should go to nearest pharmacy and buy sterile swab, swab yourself and write long random number on it and send it. Once a month company publishes one giant zip with all the monthly result where you find your file by that random number you wrote.

This fixes the issue with leaks. But it creates a much worse issue: anyone can now sequence anyone else's DNA with zero oversight or privacy controls. The film Gattaca covers how this could lead to a sort of night are society pretty well, I highly recommend it. It also makes it much much harder to use the data for clinical research.

Out of curiosity, how is this "much worse" than a breached honeypot of DNA information?

Re: Independent directors of 23andMe resign from board

#282

Post by gklitz »

dvh wrote: post #175

There is absolutely no reason for these companies to collect your PII whatsoever. You should go to nearest pharmacy and buy sterile swab, swab yourself and write long random number on it and send it. Once a month company publishes one giant zip with all the monthly result where you find your file by that random number you wrote.

Unless you are suggesting they publish the most PII there is, you should propably specify that the data they should publish should be aggregated non-identifying information next to the number, not the actual DNa strings.

Re: Independent directors of 23andMe resign from board

#283

Post by gklitz »

psychlops wrote: post #278
stavros wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just create an account with a username and password and get the results there, like every other company does.

How would that avoid PII? One assumes there would need to be an email address to recover that account, and that would likely link to every single detail about the owner.

If “the account” is just a random number, then what is there to recover?

Re: Independent directors of 23andMe resign from board

#284

Post by archi42 »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #276
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Others have shared some more heartwarming tales of using these services but I saw a story that in Australia a project is helping the children of sex tourists to look up their fathers via these services to get child support payments: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/am/dna-helps-children...

If you are sleeping with a prostitute isn’t there like an implied contract that you aren’t responsible for any resulting child? That is practically the entire purpose of prostitution.

A quick Google search suggests that in the US, you're on the hook.

Re: Independent directors of 23andMe resign from board

#285

Post by gklitz »

zahlman wrote: post #231
ben_w wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> write long random number on it Human brains when generating 'random' numbers: https://xkcd.com/221/ > Once a month company publishes one giant zip with all the monthly result where you find your file by that random number you wrote. Given how much of our appearance is due to genetics, that's basically all the harm with none of the convenience.

>Human brains when generating 'random' numbers Fortunately, contemporary humans have access to computers, which can generate random numbers for them free of charge. >Given how much of our appearance is due to genetics, that's basically all the harm I can't fathom your concept of "harm"; and neither, I think, would any prospective customer of this service.

What? “I’m worried my genetic sequence will be leaked and abused” turns into “why not just have the company leak the genetic sequences of everyone every month” and you can’t see the harm?

At this point we practically have a single search engine that’ll take you genetic sequence aa input and return your face, you entire family tree, your current job and address and what you do in your free time.

Re: Independent directors of 23andMe resign from board

#286

Post by chromatin »

LarsDu88 wrote: post #121
fragmede wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://stackoverflow.blog/2021/12/24/sequencing-your-dna-wi... ~$800 USB dongle (above article was published in 2021 and the price has gone down) plus consumables.

Nanopore sequencing fidelity was garbage back in 2021. Not sure what it is now.

slightly better, but still best for long read capability, not fidelity

Re: Independent directors of 23andMe resign from board

#287

Post by LarsDu88 »

zerocrates wrote: post #192
saghm wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused by this; isn't the board of directors who picks the CEO? Or are they locked in for some period of time and don't want to wait around?

The CEO owns 49% of the voting power so the board is pretty much toothless. Facing a direct conflict with her, loudly resigning is probably about the best they could do.

It's the ONLY thing they could do.

CEO Founder has a direct conflict of interest with shareholders...

Re: Independent directors of 23andMe resign from board

#288

Post by busterarm »

LarsDu88 wrote: post #37
breck wrote: post #15

For the record, 23andme is one of the few companies where the CEO never once responded to one of my emails (2017, 2019, 2022, 2024). You can make a lot of money just by betting on companies where the CEO (or the CEO's office) takes listening to customers'(who are rooting for them!) emails seriously, and shorting those that do not.

You cold e-mail CEOs and get a >70% hitrate? I gotta try this more often.

I dunno, man. Valve is one of the most profitable private companies ever and GabeN famously replies to cold emails.

Honestly CEOs (and/or their staff) paying attention to customers is a typical marker of successful companies.

Re: Independent directors of 23andMe resign from board

#289

Post by stcroixx »

starfezzy wrote: post #97
HideousKojima wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My oldest brother did so I'm already screwed

Can even one single person here articulate their specific fears of using 23andme, or is it all FUD?

Not having control of how my DNA is used. It can be taken by the state with a warrant, but otherwise I have control over it.

Re: Independent directors of 23andMe resign from board

#290

Post by greswen »

samtho wrote: post #277
Simon_ORourke wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> leader in the find long lost relative space/your "roots" space. Acknowledging Ancestry.com are well ahead of the market here, but I never got their appeal of finding some long-lost second cousins... basically strangers, and saying, "hey, isn't it fascinating that we share some arbitrary level of common genetic makeup". If some randomer reached out via email to me doing this big reveal I'd be "thanks, but into the s…

The rise of services like 23andMe and AncestryDNA have actually allowed people to discover information about their parentage that they would otherwise not have had access to, basically they find out that one or both of their parents are not biologically related to them. Individual situations range from extramarital affairs, closed adoption, in-familiy adoption (teen gets pregnant, her parents raise the child as a sib…

Yep, this happened to me. Got a random message from a half brother, dug deeper into my ancestry and realized that my dad isn’t actually my biological father. It was certainly an odd week for me when I found out.
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