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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

#401

Post by zeroonetwothree »

mentalgear wrote: post #178
aucisson_masque wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I'm sure the fact that it's "required by law" has them quaking in their boots.

Re: 23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

#402

Post by goosejuice »

johnisgood wrote: post #341
goosejuice wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely. I'm specifically talking about cases where such a warning was present. Customers will claim they never saw it or any other excuse.

Cannot you point them to the warning and be done with it after a complaint, or is the amount of the complaints and its handling is the issue?

When I say warning, I'm talking about a prompt after attempting to delete that asks if they are sure and clearly states that the action is permanent. This would display on every attempt to delete a record.

Re: 23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

#403

Post by jaggs »

ZeroTalent wrote: post #331
danso wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

haven’t had my coffee yet but I assume you meant “big” rather than “bit”

yup, i haven't had my coffee yet when I was writing it either :)

LOL, serious question. Is coffee to writing really a thing? It sounds a bit weird to me, but maybe it's shorthand? :)

Re: 23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

#404

Post by johnisgood »

goosejuice wrote: post #402
johnisgood wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cannot you point them to the warning and be done with it after a complaint, or is the amount of the complaints and its handling is the issue?

When I say warning, I'm talking about a prompt after attempting to delete that asks if they are sure and clearly states that the action is permanent. This would display on every attempt to delete a record.

Yeah, but why care if they did not see the warning and they actively clicked on it? It is their fault.

Re: 23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

#405

Post by marsten »

Spacecosmonaut wrote: post #202
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…

I'm a genetic engineer at a large pharma company. Genetic engineering of human model systems is my specialty. If I were a malicious actor, I could not do anything useful with the genome of any one person. Most peoples genomes are boring and at best sway the predisposition for disease by a modest degree. Exposing infidelity is honestly the best I can come up with.

My shocking 23andMe story:

I reached out to a guy on 23andMe that was a DNA relative (2nd cousin) and said hi. Curious how we were related, I gave him some family names going several generations back, and asked if any of them rang a bell in his family history.

He responded quickly and said no, they did not.

Then a few weeks later I get another response. He said that one of the names had faintly rung a bell, and when he dug into it, it turned out that was the name of his mother's boss for much of her career as a secretary. His heart sank when he realized it. He and his siblings did genetic tests and confirmed that he, the youngest, was only a half-sibling. Both of the parents were deceased so there's no way to know what really happened.

After dropping that bomb in the poor guy's lap I stopped using the DNA Relatives feature.

Re: 23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

#406

Post by JKCalhoun »

dwedge wrote: post #273
JKCalhoun wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're living in a time when it might well be worth the cost to stand up to a bully.

[flagged]

Took me 24 hours of cogitating on this — when someone says "bully" you think "Trump"?

And here I am thinking that we are in a period of Capitalism frought with fraud, monopolies, cronyism, vulture capitalism....

(Maybe "dickish" is the word I should have used. But, I suppose we're back to politics again — hmmm... maybe there's just something in the air as we round the first quarter of the 21st Century.)

Re: 23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

#407

Post by 1dom »

Spacecosmonaut wrote: post #245
1dom wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For the vast majority of people lifestyle is much more deterministic than genetics. How much of lifestyle do you think is determined by genetics, if any, and how much of that link do we currently understand? I feel the concern around genetic data privacy has normally been the risk of unknown future stuff, rather than any current known vectors. I'm not saying it's a legitimate fear, but I don't know if it's one that…

The impact of lifestyle is undeniable and large. Good genes will not protect your body from alcoholism. And if I were a betting man, I would bet against determinism emerging from a better understanding of combinatorial genetics. I do think over time we will get a clearer picture of risk predisposition based on your entire genetic profile. However, I believe that genetic predisposion will remain a relatively small con…

That's fair, thanks for the response, appreciated.

I agree that genetic predisposition will remain a small contributor for most disease states. However, I (an idiot who has no authority or experience with anything relating to genetics) feel we're going to learn a lot about how our genetics indirectly influence our behaviour and decision making though.

I think it'll be a boring dystopia: the biggest problem will be that the more complex, distant relationships between genetics and life outcomes are discovered, the more opportunities the bodies responsible for health will have to say "well we have to protect ourselves from the uncertainty, and that's going to cost you/be profitable for us".

Re: 23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

#408

Post by ceejayoz »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #400
ceejayoz wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is well within "easily". One party controls Congress, the White House, and SCOTUS right now, and they're quite notably not showing much restraint right now.

And how many laws have they passed? Apparently it's not so easy, is it... Congress hasn't really been functional in decades

They’re busy dismantling entire departments by executive fiat. When they’re done with that, we’ll see.

Re: 23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

#409

Post by dragonwriter »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #400
ceejayoz wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is well within "easily". One party controls Congress, the White House, and SCOTUS right now, and they're quite notably not showing much restraint right now.

And how many laws have they passed? Apparently it's not so easy, is it... Congress hasn't really been functional in decades

> And how many laws have they passed?

Few, intentionally: a strategic decision has been made to use control of Congress as a shield for executive dictatorship, rather than using it to pass laws, with the attendant public debate and recorded votes.

Re: 23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

#410

Post by arolihas »

SecretDreams wrote: post #280
dwedge wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

How is the prior comment political? In this case, the CEO/49% owner is being referred to as the bully?

I wonder what would make the mention of a bully feel political these days...I really can't figure it out. As far as I can tell no such person could possibly fit this description so well that it would provoke such a defensive response.
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