23andMe: Trust the Tech?
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.”