I didn't get the choice when my easily fooled parents decided it was a good idea.

We tried the 'delete your 23 and me data' but who the fuck knows if that works.

Now some corpos own my DNA probably.

Thanks mom.

You're probably affected by this even if you didn't participate.

The thing about genetics is you can make reasonable predictions about individuals if you have data on their relatives. Heck, you can reasonably make regional predictions with genetic data that will be fairly accurate.

If any of your parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings, etc took this test, then you are now at least a little exposed.

23andme was named "invention of the year" by Time in 2008

perfect, I am now openly pro Trump, Zuckerberg and also Putin, all of whom have been named Time Person of the year from 2007 onwards. This is because I don't even bother to understand what Time nominates, but also entirely willing to base very important political or life decisions around this. If you call this out as being incredibly fucking stupid you are victim blaming me. Just because I do not have ever read the magazines nominations of awards that I base my being around does not mean you can attack me for this.

Orphans, people with absent parents, decedents of slaves, the list goes on for folks who would understandably go for an affordable way to access their genetic history.

This is slightly more sympathetic but also 23andme would help you zilch in this scenario because this is not what they do. But I do understand how coming from a vulnerable emotionial position might lead you there.

I'm saddened to see more victim blaming here than anger at the ToS/privacy policy fuckery and a complete lack of consumer protection.

Having said beforementioned, there is 0 consumer protection that would prevent this scenario. This bullshit has to rank among the largest DNA Databse in the world, and, as such, would be the target and has probably been leaked to every major and minor intelligence service in the world since years, even before they just openly sold it off to god knows who. The crux of data security is that while it is a society wide issue, it is also a personal issue. You can't outregulate some idiot just handing over all their data for funsies or SECURITY to whatever entity, to point out the big ones. This holds true regardless of socioeconomic system in place, because the entire point is that it is your data, not anybody elses.

Also, and I do agree I am malding over this, I want to point out that people have been warning about 23andme for a decade for obvious reasons and largely got ignored as being doomer nerds

I only want to disagree about Facebook not monetizing private data in 2008.

My wife was in politics/campaign management. They were already selling fairly sophisticated targeted ads by then.

I was shocked/terrified by how well they were targeting and it wasn't even close to what they have today.

FUCK CORPORATIONS.

By 2008 we were well into the "you should know better than give up personal data" era. That is no excuse. People are just stupid and don't care.

There were all sorts of publications telling people to protect their personal information, online and in the meat world by 2001, let alone 2008.

I don't want to victim blame, but going right into this with all the warnings seems pretty stupid to me.

Now what does suck, and horribly so, is that there should be nothing of value gained from that data: there should be laws against nearly everything they could use for corporate advantage, exploitation, identity, etc. With severe consequences.

That is the failure.

Yeah it’s weird seeing so many people dump on 23andMe users. My grandmother got to meet her biological daughter that she was forced to give up for adoption. 23andMe as a service is amazing and has been life changing for some people. And all things considered Regeneron buying them is a good thing. They’re already set up to protect sensitive patient data.

It's not about blaming the victims, but correctly identifying what caused the situation and give society at large a better chance of avoiding it from happening again. From not trusting magazines about how secure the new wondertech is, all the way to not reading and understanding the legal paper and agreements they've agreed to.

I don't believe people should be robbed of their agency - You even bring up many good reasons for using 23AM despite being aware of the potential privacy issues. Rather, people should have the information to make a concious choice.

The blame for the situation is with the company. The crucial choice was always in the hand of the users.

i feel saddened that people focus entirely on hindsight but take the current situation as inevitable result of the past, and regard it as unchangeable.

no, this does not have to be treated like any other capitalist asset. if there's a shred of belief that the privacy and dignity of us humans matters to us now in 2025, just get together and disown 23andme, nuke the data, and turn the page.

unfortunately we have to stick harder to the principle of capitalism than any crusader in the middle ages had to stick to the Bible... helpless powerful species

Siblings and first cousins.

Most likely the data 23andme already gathered is enough to narrow down just about anybody in the US.

I wonder if there was anything in the T&Cs that mentioned extrapolation of data leading to identifying genetic relatives and whether their consent was void on this basis. Or whether this could be grounds for interesting lawsuits from nonconsensual relatives being identifiable from the participants' data.

My aunt did this along with posting a bunch of family photos and falling for those quizzes that ask your pet's name or your childhood address. If you have one person like that the privacy of your entire family is compromised.

We told her back around 2010 not to do this kind of stuff, but she's somewhere between "If I have nothing to hide" and "what's the harm?". I hope she gets it now, but we don't talk to her often

I literally had an econ professor years ago who directly told us "do not take a genetics test". This was before the ACA

The reason was simple. It's information that once a private company gets a hold of it, they will use it to hurt you. Whether it's a drug company that learns you're predisposed to addiction, so better to give you it people around you nice temporary discounts on addictive meds, or an insurance company that learns you're predisposed to cancer, so better to look for ways to deny or drop coverage.

Once these companies know a little bit about your nature, they'll exploit any aspect possible to increase profits.

This was not a progressive/socialist econ professor. Just someone who knows how capitalism works.

Exactly, and you cannot hope to see any meaningful regulation out of the current government.

The company will just buy The Secret Service/Trump's Presidential Library a fleet of Rolls Royce and he'll intimidate congress into silence.

In 30 years they're going to squirt genetically modified copies of you into corporate artificial uteruses and that's how they will meet their worker needs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_James_DeAngelo#Investigation

Yeah, I would advice against becoming a serial killer for starters.

You don’t spend a quarter Bil without knowing what you’re doing. The company is involved in drug discovery.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regeneron_Pharmaceuticals

The VC and founders should be painlessly deboned.

The worst part is there is cool, if very boomer dad coded, ancestry research. It however involves reading a lot and lot of bureaucratic documents from hundreds of years ago and attaining quite some fields of knowledge to figure out how names shaped over time, how the bureaucratic institution in $time and $place work and such.

A friend of mine does it and he can trace one root of his family back to the 15th century within like a 30km radius circle. It's really cool to see where, when, and therefore likely why, his family moved about for 500 years to end up where they are now instead of getting "you are probably from europe and 2% neanderthal"