Variations on a theme and in case you missed it, 23andMe filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Privacy, “leaving the fate of millions of people’s genetic information up in the air as the company deals with the legal and financial fallout of not properly protecting that genetic information in the first place. The filing shows how dangerous it is to provide your DNA directly to a large, for-profit commercial genetic database; 23andMe is now looking for a buyer to pull it out of bankruptcy,” as 404 Media et al reported.

“Once valued at $6 billion, executives have yet to find a bidder for the $50 million gene testing company that has never turned a profit,” Reddit noted, but that’s a whole other story.

“This strategic shift coincides with the resignation of its co-founder and CEO, Anne Wojcicki, who stepped down to spearhead an independent bid to acquire the company after facing repeated rejections from its board,” said Reclaim the Net. “For the millions who entrusted their DNA to 23andMe, the assumption might have been that such intimate data enjoys the ironclad protections of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), a law designed to shield sensitive health information from unauthorized disclosure. Yet, 23andMe operates outside HIPAA’s reach, leaving it tethered only to its own privacy policies — rules it can rewrite at will.”

Which brings to mind Whatsapp’s 2014 sale to then Facebook. “…at the time, Jan Koum and co-founder Brian Acton were assured that WhatsApp wouldn’t have to run ads or merge its data with Facebook’s. So were regulators in Europe, where WhatsApp is most popular,” TechCrunch reported (WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum quit Facebook due to privacy intrusions).

“A year and a half later, though, Facebook pressured WhatsApp to change its terms of service and give users’ phone numbers to its parent company. That let Facebook target those users with more precise advertising, such as by letting businesses upload lists of phone numbers to hit those people with promotions. Facebook was eventually fined $122 million by the European Union in 2017 — a paltry sum for a company earning more than $4 billion in profit per quarter.

Hey, when money talks, Terms of Service, well, the bottom line is the bottom line.

For the record, Ancestry.com was acquired by Black Rock and Pokemon Go by basically, the Saudis. You never know in whose hands your data might land, what, eh?

What drove 23andMe into bankruptcy were the thousands of lawsuits they faced after the data breach of some seven million accounts in late 2023.

“An array of 23andMe customers rushed to its website Monday, seeking to delete their genetic data from the DNA-testing company,” said The Wall Street Journal. “They faced long wait times or error messages and had to make repeated attempts to receive confirmation that their request had been received. Some sought unsuccessfully to delete the data of a deceased family member, and many expressed uncertainty about whether or how they would receive confirmation that the data had been deleted.”

So, is you is or is you ain’t still in the company’s database is anyone’s guess and what good is purchasing a company if the assets don’t come with it, or to paraphrase Tom Lehrer, what goes up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department!” says Wernher von Braun.

California Attorney General Bonta Urgently Issued Consumer Alert for 23andMe Customers. “California has robust privacy laws that allow consumers to take control and request that a company delete their genetic data,” said Attorney General Bonta. “Given 23andMe’s reported financial distress, I remind Californians to consider invoking their rights and directing 23andMe to delete their data and destroy any samples of genetic material held by the company.”

The article also has step-by-step instructions on how to delete your information and other very useful information 23andMe users might have overlooked.

How often have we warned about sharing too much personal information, what to speak of the most potentially sensitive information, as is the case here, whether you’re a paying customer or not. This is a cautionary tale and what better company to teach this lesson then one named 23andMe as at the end of the day, where does that leave you? Onward and forward.