Genetic testing company 23andMe said Monday that hackers were able to access the data of about 6.9 million people, far more than the company previously acknowledged.
The finding is the result of an investigation 23andMe launched in October, after at least one list of people whom the site identified as having Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry was posted online.
It’s truly a shame that in this advanced age of technology, encryption remains a distant, unattainable dream! In this archaic age of ours, safeguarding customer data is just not possible yet because nobody has ever invented the concept of public private key pairs yet, and hackers are having a field day with our data. Clearly, we’re still stuck in the digital dark ages where safeguarding sensitive information is just a pipe dream. 🙄
Seriously, how is it possible that they’re still not using key pairs for encrypting this data? It would be so simple, you just include a flash drive, or a qr code, in the box with the key and accessing the website to view the data would require that key, how is that still not something they’re doing?
#EncryptionPlease
They accesed the data through compromised accounts. What do you think encryption would have done?
that has nothing to do with it, you just give each user a private key, and in order to view the data you need the key, simple as that, in fact it’s even simpler for a user, no passwords to remember
because I’m pretty sure they need some of that data to be unencryped;
records of related customers can improve accuracy drastically
and they’re probably also probably selling italso this “hack” was done by just abusing built-in features (“dna relatives” system), not actually breaking any security.
I really wish I lived in a world society where this would not be a big deal and would actually be less likely to happen because there was no financial incentive to it.
If I needed anymore convincing that you shouldn’t just give your genomic data away forever to shady companies for “FuN tRiViA” about your ancestry, this is certainly it
No one could ever explain to me what the point of these are, except that they can say now that they are 11% Italian. It’s like a online iq test with spit.
i dunno a lot of history is about human diaspora for different reasons. people are allowed to be interested in their history and shouldn’t have to worry about this kind of bullshit
I think 23nMe looks into genome related predisposal to health issues. Like “this sequence here is related to high probability of pancreatic cancer” or some bullshit like that.
In the hands of hackers, I guess it could be used to target individuals for highly specific scams or something like that. That’s only what I can think of though. Who knows what they’ll use it for and if it even has identifiable personal info past just ancestry.
The tinfoil hat theory is that this info could be used to charge extra for insurance premiums/denial of coverage…
In Canada it’s more like 11% First Nations, Inuit or Metis … so white people can play pretendian.
Captain Obvious was hiding for a while. Now, he runs with your most personal data. Even your kids will thank you in coming years for whatever behavior, diseases, IQ or political preferences will be found to be rooted in genomic data. The world will know theirs.
Edit: Oh, and you‘ll help your family members to be jailed, if somehow involved in criminal acts.
Oh, and you‘ll help your family members to be jailed, if somehow involved in criminal acts.
The police have been using that data to solve crimes for years. That’s how they found the golden state killer and others.
Public genealogy databases, which contain information from people who have obtained their DNA profiles from companies like 23andMe and Ancestry.com, have become a powerful police tool…
In a just world they would be fined out of existence. The owners/CEO etc should spend time in prison.
