The amount of damage and criminality this exposes people to is insane

One of my family members moved to the US and did it. Really pissed me off that they'd do that but I guess it's the thing to do there?? They've since moved back to AU but got to leave a little bit of themselves (and by genetics, me) behind to be sold to the highest bidder

Thanks heaps for that.

Did any family members though? Particularly close members since that ends up giving a ton of yours as well

The sale is the entire company and assets to Regeneron Pharmaceuticals.

NPR reported in this issue:

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals said last month it aimed to buy the company for $256 million. Regeneron said it would comply with 23andMe's privacy policies and applicable law. It said it would process all customer personal data in accordance with the consents, privacy policies and statements, terms of service, and notices currently in effect and have security controls in place designed to protect such data.

I don't know much about Regeneron Pharmaceuticals but previously I read from others here that they represent the best case scenario.

Yeah; I think it’s the best case scenario that at least the data will be used to develop new drugs.

They gonna be like "oops we got hacked and now those guys have the data anyway"

It's ... not "the thing to do" here.

I know a first cousin of mine did. Over 15million people used it.

The only silver lining is that they've been bought by a research company instead of an insurance company. I don't know if theres a legal leg to stand on per the data. They almost 100% agreed to give up ownership to the company, that's the only way it could do any of the genetic relationship analysis that it did.

They have previously been hacked.

27andDC vs 23andMe

Ancestry stuff has been pretty popular in the US for decades, DNA testing for it is relatively new but just the next easy step.

If its not, then why is it so popular there?

Everyone's so keen to be 12% Irish so they can claim they enjoy beer because of their proud Irish heritage, or have 0.5% native american so they can claim a tribe and get tattoos that are deeply spiritual (now), or that 8% Italian which explains why they love pizza. For a country that's so publicly proud - what with the flags and all - everyone's certainly keen to find any excuse to pretend to be from somewhere else.

I know literally one Australian who's done it, and they only did it after living in the US for a couple of years.

I tried explaining this to my family. The legal documents you have to agree to should be a huge red flag when all you get is "you are caucasian".

Yeah but I might be .05% native american and then I can get a cool eagle tattoo

25or6toFour

"My name is no longer Brayden, it's Tanec Iak, meaning 'he who mines redstone'"

“Aww shit that means my great great great grandpappy raped some native girl. Better tell every native person I know about it!”

Idk if it was just a conspiracy theory, but I thought a lot of these DNA testing websites were funded by the Mormon church.

I feel like they have bags of cash.

then why is it so popular there

Because like many countries whose inhabitants come from a variety of places, you've got lots of people interested in their "heritage"

Since most people in the US can't say their family has been here longer than a couple hundred years, and depending on the area no more than 100 or so, a lot of people wish to know "where they came from" so to speak. DNA testing is just easier than tracing a family tree.

I happen to be lucky enough to have a family member obsessed with genealogy, who traced down the last 1,000 or so years depending on which parts of the family and what areas they're from, so I don't need genetic testing to know 99% of my family is white as fuck with a couple POC from different continents and a native back in the 1700s. I don't feel any particular draw to any culture, nor do I feel like donning traditional garb or participating in holidays, ceremonies, rituals, or customs. Some people do.

I totally get it if it's not your thing, especially since that kind of mentality of "ooh let's find out where our families came from" isn't present in most other places in the world, and definitely not to the same degree even in other colonial areas. Personally I think it's part of that whole "melting pot" ideology, but I'm just some rando on the internet.

Honestly even without my relative tracing the family tree, I would never have paid to give my DNA to a company for results with questionable accuracy. Shits weird, yo.

I was familiar with how their single-nucleotide polymorphism fingerprinting worked in principle when I submitted my sample. So, I was not surprised when my report indicated majority Native American (both my parents were born in the Navajo Nation).

As for preventing misuse of the genetic profile 23andMe built, the primary legal protection is the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (GINA) which prohibits insurance providers and employers from discriminating against patients and employees based upon disorders that are correlated with their genetic information. I believe it is prudent for people to examine their own genetic information in detail. I believe the legal protection GINA offers is sufficient for SNP profiling. I also believe as genetic profiling technology improves, the principles of non-discrimination set by GINA should be peotected with additional legislation.