I can’t recall this ever happening before, where a state warned the general public that a particular company is about to go under. Is that a normal thing in California? Some specific genetics industry thing?
Also, how sad. Guess that’s the end of an era. People had such hope for genetic testing and it was all for naught in the end… they didn’t even get any of therapeutics to market before they went bankrupt Too bad. At least the ancestry side of things is still interesting.
What annoyed me was how far they were stretching the truth in interpreting people’s genes. You are % this, % that, % other.
It’s remarkably detached from the actual data analysis process. Your genes are this % similar to an arbitrary profile we cooked up based on samples from peoples of various current regions of the globe, etc.
Of course, and the privacy issues… THE PRIVACY ISSUES! ay.
Thanks for the heads up. I have downloaded all my data and deleted my account. I didn’t find the information they gave me to be as useful as I had hoped it would be.
I’m curious, they do a very similar background genetic analysis on the TV show Finding Your Roots, I wonder if the TV show was any more rigorous than this? Surely Henry Louis Gates Jr. wouldn’t be a party to serious truth-stretching.
I’m trying to log in now, and the 2FA authorization code is not arriving in my email. It looks like I’m going to have to deal with “Customer Care” [[shudder]]
I think they’re getting flooded with cancellation requests. I was able to change my password and then log in, but I can’t get a verification code to delete my information, despite three tries. And now I can’t even log in.
If you have an Ancestry.com account, don’t think you’re in the clear. It sounds like 23andMe made mistakes, but a lot of this is market conditions. Might be a good time to cancel your Ancestry account before they get swamped.
I think this is a unique case, where people’s very personal information, connected to one’s health information, was not under the protection of HIPAA regulations, and is therefore very vulnerable to end up on the dark web. So, the California AG posted the warning.
Agree. I am not sure how this was much better than the DNA test you do for your dog for funzies.
My brother (adopted) did the 23andme DNA test via a promotion on Ancestry.com a few years ago, hoping to find his birth parents. It actually worked - he did find and connect with his birth mother and eventually his birth father, and the rest of the extended family.
I think it was pretty amazing that DNA testing emerged as a consumer service but the sensitivity of the data collected and lack of regulation or oversight meant for me a hard no. Not that I was interested in this stuff anyway.
Shortly after I bought a 23&me kit years ago, they switched to a two-tiered system, where you could either get basic ancestry information or pay more for additional health-related info (for example if you had genetic markers for certain kinds of diseases). For the last several years they’ve been trying to get me to upgrade my “basic” account. So I guess there are ways to squeeze a little more cash out of existing customers, but not much.
Another major problem with these services is that when you do get these data about your genetic markers, there is usually nothing you can do about them. All this does is lead to unnecessary worry. Say the results show that you’re five times as likely as the general population to develop some sort of cancer. What good does it do to know that unless there’s some sort of treatment or prevention (which, in most cases, there isn’t)?
Too bad. At least the ancestry side of things is still interesting.