23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/dna-testing-firm-23andme-files-chapter-11-bankruptcy-sell-itself-2025-03-24/

by healsdata • 1 year ago

519 398 1 year ago

reuters.com

Mengkudulangsat• 1 year ago

So how does this work in the US?

I thought companies in bankruptcy will be broken apart and its assets sold piecemeal. Can anyone who buy this out of auction get in one piece and debt-free?

nico• 1 year ago

There are two types of corporate bankruptcy, chapter 7 and 11. Chapter 7 is what you are probably thinking about. Chapter 11 allows for “rehabilitation”, ie. negotiating debt, discharging some, and setting up a plan to get out of bankruptcy

Most of the times when you see the news reporting about prominent/public US companies filing for bankruptcy, it’s chapter 11. Which is also the case here with 23andme

In chapter 7, there is no rehabilitation, the whole company is handed over to a trustee, who is in charge of selling the assets (or abandoning them), and paying back the stakeholders

friendzis3• 1 year ago

Yeah, rest of the world calls one bankruptcy and the other restructuring, adding to confusion.

Suppafly• 1 year ago

It really depends on how the people in charge of the bankruptcy, I'd assume preference is to sell the whole business unless it's not viable to do so, then it'd be broken into parts. Breaking into parts makes more sense when the company has several lines of unrelated business, in this case, it's basically one business so breaking it up wouldn't garner more money.

sitharus• 1 year ago

This is chapter 11 bankruptcy, which is basically a way to say "We can't afford to pay our debts, but perhaps we can all come to an arrangement". It puts the courts in a position of oversight so any unreasonable parties can be worked with.

In other countries this may be referred to as voluntary administration, though the exact details of what it all means varies from country to country and I'm not a bankruptcy lawyer.

alexfromapex• 1 year ago

Already downloaded and deleted my data. It’s so wild that some new buyer could just buy peoples’ genetic data at a fire sale.

transcriptase• 1 year ago

I do wonder whether the data is actually deleted or they just do like every other large tech company and set a “deleted = true” flag that hides it from the user, since actually deleting it and all of its replicates across data centres, backup images, and tape storage is from what I’ve been told, virtually impossible even if the will was there.

kshacker• 1 year ago

Our industry's dark secrets getting exposed like this ... yeah you are right, we don't even need a whistleblower for this :)

bbor• 1 year ago

It is the law in California, and it is certainly possible at scale, just not cheap or trivial. Presumably, given the intense focus of the state government on their company in particular, they have long since implemented a compliant deletion mechanism!

The question, of course, is whether that same functionality is applied to residents of other states wishing to delete their data…

someothherguyy• 1 year ago

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/soft_deletion

carimura2• 1 year ago

it very likely may not be per their own words. They are "bound by various legal and regulatory obligations that may necessitate retention of certain information". This came straight from their privacy team.

Unroasted61543• 1 year ago

It possible with crypto shredding. You store everything encrypted with one key by customer. When you want to delete you erase the key. The data becomes unusable everywhere (backups included). Then a job periodically garbage collects data without a key, but that's more for cost saving.

Big companies do this but it requires some technical maturity. If you operate in Europe you have to implement proper data deletion. I would be more worried about small companies that large ones tombe honest.

tdeck• 1 year ago

Soft deletion doesn't satisfy the company's obligation under the CCPA.

sofixa2• 1 year ago

It was wild to send your genetic data to a private company that could do whatever it wanted with it for a gimmick (3% Irish? who cares, if you're interested go look up archival records of your ancestors).

dplgk• 1 year ago

My half aunt who never knew who her father (my grandfather) was found my family through 23 and me relative matching. That's life changing, not gimmicky.

greggsy• 1 year ago

Interested to know whether the collection statements can persist, or if they can just send a generic ‘we’ve updated our privacy policy’ email.

1oooqooq4• 1 year ago

deleting your data just change "for alexfromapex, sibling of x, son of y and z" to "maybe belong to owner of email alexfromapex@gmail, sibling of x, son of y and z"... that's the beauty of soft deletion plus shadow/inferred profiles.

JoshTriplett• 1 year ago

This is unfortunate news for anyone whose data is now one of the assets to be sold to the highest bidder.

kibibu2• 1 year ago

Honestly it's always seemed completely insane to me that people signed up for these services.

Possible Pros: You find out you are 20% Norwegian! Fun!

Possible Cons: Grandma is going to prison for an unsolved crime. Assume a non-threatening position and comply with all orders of the new Department of Racial Purity. Also, that's not your real Dad.

Larrikin• 1 year ago

I should have access to the data about me, it shouldn't be for sale ever. It's gross that we have access to this technology but only if we give away all our rights to a company even for a paid service.

The murder one is a little more nuanced but ideally it should be a legal matter where it can only be used with a warrant or your explicit single time consent and not buried in a TOS. If you don't want to help the police convict your grandma it could not legally be used.

bhaney• 1 year ago

I discovered I had around 20 half-siblings I never knew about and got connected with most of them.

Also, that's not your real Dad

Yeah, that part was less fun

jart4• 1 year ago

A lot of us trusted and supported her because she was married to Sergey.

No one was expecting that once she had the data she'd divorce him and go full Marissa Mayer.

julianeon• 1 year ago

I guess I'm in the camp that considers your con a pro. If my Dad wasn't or isn't my biological dad, I would want to know. And I'd be grateful to any service that informed me.

dyauspitr4• 1 year ago

I signed up with a fake name and a prepaid debit card. They’re going to have to work hard to get mine.

whyenot• 1 year ago

Possible Pros: You find out you are 20% Norwegian! Fun!

It's kind of irritating the way you are minimizing the "pros" here (and you aren't the only one at HN who has done this recently). There are people who found their parents and siblings thanks to 23 and Me. I found my father and my half sister. Maybe it's not important to you, but there are people out there who are willing to "pay" a lot to find out who they are. I appreciate that to you it may not feel like a good trade, but please have the empathy to understand that for others, it is.

theshackleford2• 1 year ago

I didn’t fuse this service, but I used another after experiencing life changing health circumstances in an attempt to identify the half of the family I don’t know.

Fuck me right?

DonHopkins2• 1 year ago

Also, that's not your real Dad.

But meet your new Big Brother!

LarsDu883• 1 year ago

Damn, on Friday, the California DoJ Attorney General issued a warning to consumers about their data: https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-bont...

This should've been a giveaway that the company was imminently going to go under.

inetknght• 1 year ago

Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43447421

xyst3• 1 year ago

Given such a late warning, is there any staff left to do the data deletion requests before it heads off into bankruptcy courts

vesinisa• 1 year ago

Looks like the company expects to remain operational during the bankruptcy/restructuring, so I would say yes.

flockonus• 1 year ago

Either way, for the company customers under this circumstance I'd absolutely recommend sending all possible means of requesting data deletion, at least there should be a paper trail that such thing was requested.

dudus• 1 year ago

Just requested my data deletion. Seems like it worked.

hoc• 1 year ago

Gov sites issueing warnings about citizen data security seems a bit funny these days.

Elon: "Comedy!"

paulddraper4• 1 year ago

The SEC filings were a giveaway

The California-based company has publicly reported that it is in financial distress and stated in securities filings that there is substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.

theogravity• 1 year ago

Just deleted my data. Who knows who will own it after this?

nielsbot• 1 year ago

Still waiting for my "deletion confirmation e-mail". Hopefully it arrives.

sollewitt• 1 year ago

Well, purely going on who it is of value to, probably life insurance providers or pharmaceutical companies.

carimura2• 1 year ago

their own privacy team told me they are bound by regulatory obligations to retain data even after you request deletion. I've notified our attorney general's office to see if anything can be done but it might be too late. I'd love for someone who knows these "regulatory obligations" to chime in.....

kelnos2• 1 year ago

Interesting, as that would be a violation of the CCPA/CPRA for customers who are California residents, at least.

The "regulatory obligations" sounds like a fake excuse. Is 23andme even regulated beyond how your regular average business might be?

llm_nerd2• 1 year ago

their own privacy team told me they are bound by regulatory obligations to retain data even after you request deletion

They have to retain data about the person who requested the deletion which seems eminently reasonable. In the future if you sue them because you can't access your account that you paid for, they have a record that you requested said account's deletion.

Similarly they obviously can't withdraw your data from the anonymized research projects they pursued.

avs733• 1 year ago

The immediate reaction here is customer data but I think it’s worth a reminder that this data has significant implications for non customers as well.

I nearly cut contact with my mother over he wanting to use 23andme for genealogy purposes. The threat was ugly but as far as I know got her to not do it.

There are a lot of people who have now made major choices for others personal data who had little meaningful informed consent. Now it’s up for the highest bidder. I have some small hope the EFF will say something on behalf of consumers and a court will listen. I it pure hopium but it’s all I’ve got.

Scoundreller• 1 year ago

if enough of your relatives did, you're already toast

source: I'm already toast

comrade1234• 1 year ago

Plot twist: you’re adopted.

hardlyfun• 1 year ago

I remember reading an article about how these companies were big bad conglomerates who had complete ownership over valuable personal data. Not really downplaying the potential harm that can come with these "assets" in the wrong hands, but nice to know corporate is so inefficient they couldn't even avoid bankruptcy... it will be a long time before they can even hope to orchestrate complex nefarious schemes.

gkoberger• 1 year ago

...who do you think is gonna buy 23andMe when they go bankrupt?

cess11• 1 year ago

I would expect bin Salman or emirati royal to buy it.

cwbriscoe• 1 year ago

I have never participated in any of these DNA sites but I have an aunt that pretty much put in our full family tree. Is there anything I can do to remove myself without making an account?

tylersmith• 1 year ago

There's nothing you can do even with an account.

wodenokoto2• 1 year ago

I don't know if filing for bankruptcy has immediate effect of being bankrupt, but if they are still operating normally, you can apparently remove "your data", like this:

https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-bont...

However, that's 2 big if's: Are they still operating normally, and do they consider "your data" data you upload or genetic data pertaining to you.

sandos2• 1 year ago

How do you propose deleting you family tree? That info is obviously not very private.

bsza• 1 year ago

How many second cousins does Mark Zuckerberg have?

BrandoElFollito• 1 year ago

Well to us Europeans it is. This is PII so its handling is documented.

You can requires all your data to be deleted and tastiest none is added.

This deletes the "family tree" to be seen by everyone

VerminOctopus1• 1 year ago

uptownfunk• 1 year ago

They really shit the bed on what was probably one of the greatest things in a decade.

ks20482• 1 year ago

There are troubling privacy issues, but it was able to tell me: "Toe Length Ratio : Likely second toe longer". I didn't even have to look down!

Maybe it was a bad idea. But, I figured if we enter a dystopian future, evil health care companies or governments could easily get my DNA if they want to and/or simply require that information to get care. When you get blood drawn, do you see what they do with it?

Hopefully, what matters is the laws we all fight for and not whether I sent my spit to an internet company in 2022.

Anyways, will delete my data.

abracadaniel• 1 year ago

You can request your data from a section in the site first if you like. Some of the downloads say they can take a few days to generate, but all were available within a day of my requests.

raverbashing3• 1 year ago

This could actually be a plot point on a dystopian sci-fi movie (identifying people by weird metrics like toe size and such)

dehrmann2• 1 year ago

Like browser fingerprinting.

vihren• 1 year ago

You might like Gattaca if you haven't seen it.

fc417fc8024• 1 year ago

That sort of thing is already in widespread usage. For example palm geometry readers as a biometric factor to go along with a key card at a building entrance.

Although in the future I imagine it's more likely to be things like arm to torso ratio or gait recognition or similar, done via machine vision.

xbmcuser• 1 year ago

Looking at how the current administration is following laws and court orders I think you might have too much trust in laws

midtake• 1 year ago

But, I figured if we enter a dystopian future, evil health care companies or governments could easily get my DNA if they want to and/or simply require that information to get care.

Yes, because you gave it to them. Nihilism undermines any sort of resistance movement against evil.

brikym• 1 year ago

No he didn't but his overly curious aunt Janice gave it to them.

vintermann5• 1 year ago

I think it's a mistake to think that the tyrannical governments of the future will be sophisticated. The way the trend is going, they will be ever more banal. They're not going to target a virus for you, they're going to knock down your door, shout at you, lock you up or shoot you. They likely won't even bother with having chatgpt write up a pretext for it.

That doesn't mean we can do nothing, but it means withholding information won't matter as much as some people think.

johnnyanmac12• 1 year ago

There's not much resistance to someone wanting your DNA. It's so trivial to get that you'd basically need to become a hermit to try and prevent it. A hermit that shaves themselves and burns their trash, one that lives with gloves on dyrung every waking hour and disinfects their chair and bed daily.

It's not really something the mass population can physically prevent from a determined actor. Like data, you need to regulate it instead of take excessive preventative measures.

arduanika• 1 year ago

I didn't even have to look down!

Hilarious, I love it.

Next you're gonna say they told you that you'll probably die of something that you can forestall a bit with good diet and exercise.

ks20482• 1 year ago

Looking at my "Reports Summary", it's all mundane stuff like the toe thing I mentioned. It seems all the medically relevant stuff require premium subscription.

k__• 1 year ago

They told me I have an average to lower risk for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.

All I wanted to know, since my grandpa died of Parkinson's.

1oooqooq4• 1 year ago

you could have asked you primary care doctor for a test, instead of paying a company for the privilege of creating a dna map to sell to law enforcement.

LZ_Khan• 1 year ago

How does a company like that go bankrupt? They sell kits for freaking $200. How is that unprofitable?

Mistletoe2• 1 year ago

You buy a kit one time in your life. I'm more amazed that people thought it could be a profitable business once everyone that was going to had purchased their one kit per lifetime. And it wasn't even $200, it was more around $100 or even less if you didn't want ancestry + health. I wonder if I can still get the locked away health part haha?

dyauspitr4• 1 year ago

What do you need though? One lab and software they already have?

rendall2• 1 year ago

For what it's worth, this is on their Data page:

What happens to my data if the company is sold or otherwise changes ownership?
If the company does change ownership in the future, your data will remain protected under the current 23andMe Privacy Policy unless and until you are presented with materially new terms, with appropriate advanced notice to review those material changes as required by law.

https://you.23andme.com/user/edit/records/

fc417fc8024• 1 year ago

Advanced notice to review the changes ... but can you reject them? I've yet to be presented with the option to reject a change to a privacy policy or ToS.

rendall2• 1 year ago

You can reject the change by deleting your data. But your district's data protection laws might be different than mine.

arjie• 1 year ago

It’s a pity I didn’t upload my sequence here. I imagine in the end the most comprehensive databases win. But @dekhn mentioned PGP and I’m there. Here I am https://my.pgp-hms.org/profile/hu81A8CC

Let’s see if anything worthwhile comes of it. Feel free to ask me for more. I have the raw reads as well. Email in profile.

flobosg• 1 year ago

Just to clarify: In this case PGP stands for “Personal Genome Project”.

JohnTHaller• 1 year ago

Which is dumb as it already stands for Pretty Good Privacy

cloudbonsai2• 1 year ago

23andMe has been in a deadlock for a while.

- The CEO is effectively the control owner of the company, having 49% of the voting right. She has been trying to take the company private for some time.

- Last August, she proposed to buy all the outstanding shares at $8 per share. The board rejected. She installed a new board, and submitted her proposal again at $2.53 per share. The board rejected. She tried it a third time at $0.4 per share this month, and the board rejected.

- Meanwhile 23andMe was losing $50M every quarter.

So, unable to resolve the issue, the board choosed to enter into the bankruptcy process. I hope this relieves 23andMe from the corporate governance nightmare.

dehrmann2• 1 year ago

Wouldn't be surprised if Wojcicki faces a class action suit over fiduciary responsibility.

xyst3• 1 year ago

No point in doing this. Just enriches the lawyers. Then Wojicki just flees the country and skirts any responsibility.

linotype2• 1 year ago

So rather than $8 a share they get zero? Sounds like the board was the one that messed things up.

eightman2• 1 year ago

I assume the value of the remaining assets are worth more than $8/share and she was trying to get them for a discount.

pyrale• 1 year ago

Just because your batna is shit doesn’t mean you should sign everything.

nextts• 1 year ago

What does $8/share value the company at?

cloudbonsai2• 1 year ago

So rather than $8 a share they get zero? Sounds like the board was the one that messed things up.

The share was trading at $8-$9 at the time.

The primary reason why the board has been rejecting the offer is that the CEO kept proposing discount prices to the market rate.

phire• 1 year ago

Not zero; In all bankruptcies, the shareholders get whatever is left over after liquidating all company assets and paying back all creditors.

In most high-profile bankruptcies, there aren't enough assets to even finish paying creditors, yet alone creditors. However, this is a voluntary Bankruptcy, so there might actually be assets left over to pay out to shareholders.

shreyshnaccount2• 1 year ago

board probably thinks the assets remaining after the bankruptcy pays off the creditors is more than the $8/share?

danesparza• 1 year ago

If they declare bankruptcy, then the creditors get first pick over assets. Several board members might be creditors.

EGreg• 1 year ago

Wait, if they declare bankruptcy can’t they be bought at a fire sale by this CEO’s friends finally?

paulddraper4• 1 year ago

Yes. And that often happens.

blerb795• 1 year ago

No need for the friends to be involved -- she resigned prior the the bankruptcy filing so she can participate in the bidding process personally

rwmj• 1 year ago

Couldn't she just buy 2% of the company at the market price?

paulddraper4• 1 year ago

Yes but she will still have to abide by the covenants.

And those might include things preventing majority owner from buying everything at $0.01 per share.

robertlagrant• 1 year ago

It might not be possible if there are tagalong/dragalong agreements. And from the perspective of a shareholder, the shares might become a bit of a riskier proposition if you allow her to control the company, vs the current status quo.

knowitnone• 1 year ago

There's a conflict of interest for a CEO to take the company private. They have a incentive to lower the share price as much as possible so they can purchase shares. Looking at you, Dell.

LarsDu883• 1 year ago

This was a handpicked board too. She could've veered harder into picking cronies.

dhruvrrp• 1 year ago

I thought the CEO was trying to take the company private, for pennies to the dollar which caused the independent board to resign (see: https://investors.23andme.com/news-releases/news-release-det...)

1oooqooq4• 1 year ago

and the point of going private is likely to not have to publish all the revenue sources from the data.

aaronbrethorst2• 1 year ago

Some billionaire should be an absolute hero: buy this thing and just shut it down. Delete all the data. Salt the earth. Move on.

jmount• 1 year ago

Not how billionaires work.

MrMcCall5• 1 year ago

Precisely.

That's what we would do if we were billionaires.

And that's precisely why we're not billionaires.

I'm happy with my choices, though. They're merely confident and callous, but happiness will ever elude them.

seydor• 1 year ago

millionaire

kelnos2• 1 year ago

Given that 23andme's market cap is under $50M right now, it wouldn't even take a billionaire.

rvnx2• 1 year ago

The Googley husband of the CEO maybe ?

xeromal2• 1 year ago

I hope ancestry just buys them. They've floated a ton of bad markets and come out unscathed

xyst3• 1 year ago

Good. One awful company that was trying very hard to sell off our genetic data.

Wonder what happens to the treasure trove of data they have collected though. Hopefully the data is just 'sudo rm -rf —-no-preserve-root' and not included as part of bankruptcy proceedings.

dtquad• 1 year ago

Can some billionaire please buy 23andMe's corpse and delete all data and physical samples they have?

Even if you have never used 23andMe several people you are related to already have so they have a partial genetic profile of you.

leakyfilter• 1 year ago

Why should it matter? They can't link it to me since they don't have my genetic profile.

ascorbic• 1 year ago

If they have enough of your relatives then yes they absolutely can.

timeon3• 1 year ago

Can some billionaire please

Are we back to feudalism?

mrguyorama• 1 year ago

The kind of people who become billionaires don't become billionaires by doing the right thing with no kickbacks.

People who do the right thing are usually satisfied by the time they hit only 50 million.

sidcool• 1 year ago

All your chromosomes belong to us.

MrMcCall5• 1 year ago

All your base pairs?

shreezus• 1 year ago

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 end of the day their data doesn't end up in the wrong hands. It is their most valuable asset, and this is a way bigger deal than it seems.

tmalsburg2• 1 year ago

What would even be the right hands in this case? Seems like almost any hands would be the wrong hands.

smegger001• 1 year ago

My ideal would be customers given the option to have it delete sold and profit split with between themselves and 23&me, or anonymised and donated to the human genome project.

mrweasel3• 1 year ago

There basically aren't any. Almost any entity that would want to buy the company should by definition not be allowed to do so.

The ideal solution would be for all data to be deleted before a sale. If anyone would want to buy 23andMe without the collected data then that's perfectly fine.

yoaviram• 1 year ago

Sounds like it's time to send 23andMen a GDPR/CCPA/etc. data deletion request. Here's an easy way to do it: https://yourdigitalrights.org/d/23andme.com

michaelt• 1 year ago

I don't like 23andme, but don't the shadow profiles sorta implicitly exist whenever you're working with DNA data?

If their DNA test can recognise first cousins, then they've got a recognisable DNA profile for each user's parents, grandparents, children and so on.

nomdep2• 1 year ago

So does the government and probably ancestors.com … what’s the big problem here?

__alexs3• 1 year ago

Your genome can be scavenged from the air. It is not information we are capable of keeping private.

MrMcCall5• 1 year ago

But can it be isolated from the myriad of life floating around?

I doubt that specificity would be economically profitable.

The police did catch the Golden State Killer by scavenging a used coffee cup or somesuch, however.

bryanmgreen• 1 year ago

New adoption perk is ability to avoid DNA based shadow profiling (given no voluntary self sharing of DNA and current ID, of course)

citadel_melon2• 1 year ago

I am not as worried if this data gets out or not.

I think there are negative externalities if the data is sold to insurance firms — who can use the genomic information in litigation and policy rejections — or if the data is sold to some sort of powerful, pro-eugenics political organization. The insurance externalities likely can be mitigated with minimal legislation (protecting consumers in a similar manner to how we protect those with pre-existing conditions) and it is reasonable to assume pro-eugenics political groups wouldn’t be any less dangerous without this genomic data available.

Thus, I struggle to see how this data changing hands would be especially detrimental to society. One could contend a moral dilemma will arise from future developments in cloning, but would it? We already have clones in the form of identical twins, and their existence does not seem to create many, if any, especially problematic moral dilemmas. Maybe people are worried that society will start cloning celebrities and famous intellectuals instead of having babies more naturally — creating a world of designer babies where the diversity of thought and talent shrinks in a “tragedy of the commons”-esque dilemma — but I don’t think this is people’s issue because most people frame their qualms as more of a personal privacy issue. Moreover, designer babies issue I describe would likely become an issue with or without cloning.

There are issues that come to mind regarding genomics in commerce — such as the ethics and market incentives of patenting certain genomic patterns — but again I don’t see how this 23andMe data changing hands make this issue any more pressing than before.

On the other hand, my instinct (which I have learned to never blindly trust) is that making the data more widely available may make it cheaper and easier for researchers to make impactful discoveries. Therefore, my biggest worry with the change of ownership is that the new owners may keep the data behind a bigger wall.

mort96• 1 year ago

Look at the current political situation in the US. Do you think there's a lot of legislation protecting consumers from insurance firms any time soon?

Spacecosmonaut4• 1 year ago

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.

shreyshnaccount2• 1 year ago

i always thought that its valuable when you have enough data from an insurance pov? is that a myth?

amelius2• 1 year ago

Plus they only have a selective number of SNPs, not the full genome.

But if you were able to somehow combine the information with the medical history of people, then you could use the data for research, and come up with some DL model maybe.

kimos2• 1 year ago

Thank you for saying this.

I’ve done some of these saliva samples and I’ve seen the freak outs about what happens if “they” get my genome. But I cannot for the life of me figure out what they would do with it maliciously? It’s not like it can be used to sign up for a credit card or whatever.

antegamisou5• 1 year ago

You are not speaking from a position of a grifter though. I don't think it's a stretch that some YC funded startup could emerge and claim that they can map and predict everyone's entire actions/personalities/characteristics through their genome, heavily misinterpreting PGS/GWAS.

I don't think they would care much for scientific validity in this case. It won't matter to them if the methods used are reliable. All they'll get is appraisal from mainstream media for their revolutionary approach, further ingraining social darwinism.

CharlieDigital4• 1 year ago

The problem is you are not a malicious actor so you aren't coming up with good scams or truly malicious ideas.

How about scam emails that open by asking people about their family history of some disease with a genetic marker and promising some miracle treatment?

I can think of even worse outcomes depending on how policy on immigration and naturalization shifts

jvanderbot• 1 year ago

Faking DNA test results would be sci-fi nightmare come true. You could frame someone before they were arrested which would be ... Frightening. But even worse is invalidation of all DNA evidence because it is now easy to fake.

But that still seems like a minute possibility.

Akasazh• 1 year ago

Isn't there possibility of very in depth racial profiling?

I mean ancestry.com data van be used similarly, but genetical info is inobfuscable.

pfdietz• 1 year ago

The people with the most to lose from widespread access to genetic data are those involved in outright crimes, like rape and child sexual abuse. Did you in a younger day get some underage girl pregnant? You're at risk. Or paternity lawsuits without the age restriction.

I wonder if some of those freaking out about the issue have a reason to be concerned.

On the other hand, once the information is out there, any aggrieved party will have plausible access to it, so it could be argued any statute of limitations would kick in.

htek• 1 year ago

Once 23andMe gets sold, all of that data belongs to whoever owns it and they can sell it to whoever they want. Perhaps to the government where they can do a warrantless search to find a relative of someone who may have been at a crime scene. Or to other governments. Or to insurance companies who want to play deny, defend and depose. I get that a lot of genetic information isn't predictive, but not all of it is so questionable.

delichon2• 1 year ago

Exposing infidelity is honestly the best I can come up with.

I'm concerned with being put on a list of ashkenazi, and sold to people who work for my death on that basis.

https://www.wired.com/story/23andme-credential-stuffing-data...

amelius2• 1 year ago

Perhaps you can explain a bit more because on the one hand you say that genetic data is worthless, but on the other hand, it provides you with an income ...

mystraline• 1 year ago

1. "We found you are the product of infidelity. Pay to find out who." (Paternity tests are banned in France)

2. There is incest in your family. Pay to find out.

3. We have found 4 significant markers of X diseases. Pay to find out. (Against FDA in claims of illness)

4. A lost family member was found in $location. Do you want to identify them and send money? (Likely faked, scam)

5. Surrogate or adopted: we know your birth parents. Pay to find out.

There's just a few unethical and/or illegal business opportunities for malicious actors. And that was just 5 off the top of my head.

If you wanted to be really evil, you combine it with other hacked/leaked/ransomed data sources and turn the screws.

hyperbovine• 1 year ago

at best sway the predisposition for disease by a modest degree

If insurance companies use this information to inform coverage decisions, then it's a moot point right? Just because you and I (who am also in this field) understand the limitations of the models and the data, does not mean that powerful entities will not use it to do stupid things.

belorn• 1 year ago

The most malicious behavior I can directly think of is someone searching the data for a targeted purpose and not caring about false positives, like targeted advertisement for health treatments with non-zero risk of side effects. DNA has always had this air of being infallible proof.

nitwit005• 1 year ago

You don't even need real test results. You can just email customer's family members with fake claims and try to extort money, using names and test dates as evidence.

marsten• 1 year ago

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.

vintermann5• 1 year ago

If 23andMe makes "shadow profiles", it would necessarily be for common ancestors, probably long dead. They can't see "down" into the genetic tree at all - whether great-grandma had 1 child or 13 they'll never know until the descendants take tests. But also, if 23andMe does this, they are short-changing their genealogy customers. One of the main things a genealogy customer would like to know about a match is if they're on the maternal side, paternal, or both (more common than you'd think, and mostly not because your parents are related). 23andMe, from what I read, does not do this - and that suggests that they're not getting much out of those shadow profiles.

SecretDreams3• 1 year ago

I can only hope at the end of the day their data doesn't end up in the wrong hands.

Narrator: it ended up in the wrong hands

b800h• 1 year ago

Well I'd downloaded our family genomes a while back, and had been attempting to get 23andme to respond in what I consider to be a proper way to GDPR disclosure requests. I've now just used their internal tool to delete our data.

I suppose that I'm fortunate to live in an area covered by GDPR and fairly strong medical data regulations.

Traubenfuchs• 1 year ago

Is there any useful dna sequencing offering left on the european market?

Naru41• 1 year ago

Successful Math/CS people have a hard time applying it in biotechnology.

https://x.com/iskander/status/1903077361152610374 -- about a dozen of us with math/CS backgrounds ditched tech for biomedicine. And we got humbled hard: most of what we did flopped & techies

mschuster91• 1 year ago

Successful Math/CS people have a hard time applying it in biotechnology.

No surprise given that biotechnology has a lot more stakeholders. Ethics aren't just an afterthought because unlike VC/the stock market, academia has lots of ethics review gates in place. And for those that think they can sidestep ethics by going private (be it Theranos, 23andMe or various other such services), they'll all find out one day that it will catch up to them.

johnnyanmac12• 1 year ago

they are all very different worlds. math works purely in theory and simply explains phenomenon. Likewise, much of software is ephemeral and gets its ethic indirectly once people are involved.

to work with life is to work in factors that directly affect others, Unless you're doing something like pure biology where you simply observe. Even then, the art of observing sentient beings has its hundreds of quirks.

wodenokoto2• 1 year ago

My girlfriend really want to do one of these DNA analysis package from one of 23andMe's competitors, and she cannot for the life of her understand why I don't want to.

How do I explain that I don't want my DNA analysed and sold around to all sorts of companies?

Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe• 1 year ago

There is a consensus that there is still a tremendous amount of information in someone's dna to be extracted. She wants to know what we can learn from her dna today but the cost is giving to probably[0] anyone everything we'll be able to learn from her dna in the future. That includes dna about her family and potential children with you.

10-15 years ago she wouldn't have predicted trump, what can't she predict about 10-15 years or more from now?

[0]: data can't be erased but can be leaked.

mrweasel3• 1 year ago

How do I explain that I don't want my DNA analysed and sold

Honestly you can't. I've come to realise that unless someone personally is hurt from the lose of private information, then there's no way to convince to the risks.

People either comes down on the side of privacy and caution, or they completely fail to see if issue and believe that the risks are vastly overblown. Very rarely do you see anyone go from the latter to the first, unless they suffer personally.

andy_ppp2• 1 year ago

As an aside I actually regret signing up for 23andMe, not because this isn't a great idea but more because I find the idea that the future having copies of your DNA around we might end up in some weird sci-fi universe where people can be specifically targeted with viruses or profiled in some other way. Not that I'll ever be important enough for that to happen but it feels like an invasion of privacy having such personal data lying around in a small text file. To some degree it's a copy of who you are.

Who knows who will buy all this data after bankruptcy...

Does anyone at 23andMe know if when DNA data and account is deleted by them that it is really deleted/purged from all backups and systems? Anonymous accounts are available, thanks!

mentalgear3• 1 year ago

Not that I'll ever be important enough for that to happen

Once cheap enough, be sure DNA analysis is used for better ad-targeting at scale, just as users' web traffic is analysed.

All is done once economically feasible and grey-legal enough.

johnnyanmac12• 1 year ago

Sure hope GDRP would cover that since it's involving "general data"/

mathgeek• 1 year ago

Not that I'll ever be important enough for that to happen

Not that it keeps me up at night, but it’s fascinating to me that if we ever get to the point where a machine is in a position to care about your DNA, it probably will have enough resources to not need to rank anyone by importance.

napolux• 1 year ago

exact same reason why I never fell for their scam ads.

aucisson_masque• 1 year ago

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.

mentalgear3• 1 year ago

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.

KineticLensman• 1 year ago

Or health insurers looking for markers of disease / chronic illness

ndsipa_pomu• 1 year ago

As we constantly leave bits of our DNA around the environment, I wonder if it would be worthwhile for an unscrupulous company to just collect DNA for nefarious purposes. I'd guess that they'd need the DNA linked to a person for it to be worthwhile, so maybe an easy collection device would be to send out a return addresses envelope for entering a prize draw or something, and then collect the saliva used to seal the envelope (i.e. not a self-sealing one, but one that you have to wet/lick).

TechDebtDevin• 1 year ago

Download your raw data. You have to request it from them so people should do that asap

ornornor• 1 year ago

There was a US government entity (can’t remember which one) post on here a couple days ago warning that 23&me was about to file and showing how to delete your data and opt out of ever selling it to anyone. Look it up on hn.algolia.com there weren’t very many steps.

andy_ppp2• 1 year ago

I deleted my account and data (in theory) maybe several years ago.

dragonwriter2• 1 year ago

It was actually the California State Attorney General.

mentalgear3• 1 year ago

I recall when 23andMe was featured on the cover of a popular tech magazine. At the time, I had concerns about the risks of sharing DNA with a company.

However, the article highlighted that one of the co-founders was the wife of Google's co-founder Sergey Brin, and the company's association with (and investment of) Google provided a sense of data security and stability. .... now it might be sold for (data) parts to whoever.

asdffdasy• 1 year ago

anyone remember when one of those dna testing companies was offering free dna testings in some atlanta(?) neighborhood, but then someone found out it was being paid by the local PD to try to find dna that matched someone they were looking for?

I'm certain i read about it from HN but i can't find any reference to that new anymore.

Popeyes• 1 year ago

Guess we are about to find out how valuable your DNA is.

drakonka• 1 year ago

Does initiating deletion through your 23andme profile settings effectively invoke right to be forgotten/ensure data will be deleted in 30 days? Or is that effectively a soft delete that requires additional followup for a RTBF request?

c16• 1 year ago

Your DNA, now available to the highest bidder.

yapyap• 1 year ago

yikes, thats all your dna, sold

rchaud• 1 year ago

SPAC IPO = not long for this earth.

username135• 1 year ago

I take full responsibility, I deleted my data yesterday and now the company has filed for bankruptcy.

evanwpm• 1 year ago

Highly recommend that anyone interested in this company listens to the episode of the Freakonomics Radio podcast about 23andMe:

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-is-23andme-going-under-...

Seems like they struggled to turn a one-off purchase model into recurring revenue. At some point everyone in the world who cares enough about their DNA has already bought your product.

bananapub• 1 year ago

please go and delete your data, immediately.

it's not just for you, but for anyone related to you - this database is hugely dangerous thing to have exist, and always has been, but at least notionally was a semi-serious medical business, but is now going to be sold for scrap in an extremely poisonous environment in the US.

basisword• 1 year ago

I just don’t understand why anyone would ever have used this. I’m not a very private person but this always seemed like giving up so much in return for so little. Not to mention the people that found out negative things like great grandad had three families.

I imagine if you try to delete your data now it’s conveniently too late/no staff around.

webspinner• 1 year ago

Well... I'm an untested person! I never bought into the hype, because I don't ever do so. In fact, I told friends of mine in 2021 not to do so either. They said they had the test kit on their counter, and were debating on spitting.

ChrisArchitect• 1 year ago

Press release: https://investors.23andme.com/news-releases/news-release-det...

23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

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