Popular DNA research company 23andMe has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. If you sent in your saliva to learn about your ancestry or health, you may want to delete that data soon before it falls into someone else’s hands.
The San Francisco-based company could soon be sold and your personal information may be sold right along with it.
“If we are involved in a bankruptcy merger, acquisition reorganization or sale of assets, your personal information may be accessed, sold or transferred as part of that transaction,” the privacy statement of the company states.
France Bélanger is a distinguished professor at Virginia Tech specializing in cybersecurity governance and privacy. She told WTOP your DNA information could be used to market specific products to you, or used for genetic research for pharmaceutical companies.
“They could create maps of your family,” she said. “There’s a big debate right now in the insurance coverage decisions, knowing more about you from a very personal point of view. What diseases exist in your family could have some impacts long term.”
According to Bélanger, bad actors could legally access personal medical information based off information provided to the website. That could apply to family members that never even submitted their DNA to 23andMe.
Bélanger said it’s easy to scrub your genetic data from 23andMe’s data page by clicking “permanently delete.”
“You will get an email from 23andMe and then you need to confirm. So people shouldn’t assume that the first time they click it’s done. They need to get that confirmation and make sure that they follow up on that,” she said.
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