This was a great, informative read. Well written and detailed as always. But as far as the privacy issue goes; I believe it’s a thing of the past for all of us, particularly after the unconscionable personal data grab by DOGE earlier this year. My opinion.
Fun story, and I shared the same lack of drama in my genetic info: I’m English and Irish, all the way back. As for the privacy side … the question I always ask is, how can this information about me be exploited and what would be the motivation to do so? I get pretty benign answers to those questions and just don’t worry about it.
For sure. When I was at Microsoft, it took us 2 full years to implement GDPR across all cloud workloads. GDPR has teeth; I took many a training. However, MSFT is atypical and GDPR covers EU only (California has baby ver). My SNP data file is 600,000ish rows of text data which is where I'm coming from when I say it hit's different than say the PII Amazon has on me. If my doctor had it as lab results, it'd be covered under HIPAA. It's covered under nothing with Ancestry and omg, so many breaches.
I was at the Google meeting where Ann Wojcicki pitched her "spit test" to us. I declined.
Since then, however, a relative who had cancer was approached by an academic project on cancer genomics, so: can't really say no to that.
Thus, I still get notices about relatives I didn't know I had. I don't really care. No long-lost siblings have turned up, and my dad did not have a second, secret family.
On the plus side, the police haven't pinned any crimes on me. Yet.
This was fun to read. I don't know if we are both paranoid or not, but I feel the same uneasiness and wonder how one's DNA profile might be weaponized in the age of cheap, superintelligent AI. I would say that it'll be pretty easy to get a DNA sample, so even if I never give it up willingly, someone could take it one day... but giving it up has always seemed a little sketchy.
That said, I'm pretty sure my folks have already done this, so I'm screwed either way.
Also, the older I get, the more interested in the tales of my ancestors I've become.
Yep deleting it. I had ChatGPT draft me a legal letter for another site to take down my data citing the California data privacy law and they snapped to it; before I sent the spit I checked Ancestry's policy and - no doubt related to the 23andMe breach - they make it easy to do but there's no way to confirm
Yeah. I mean, if you share your data (of any sort) with any company, anywhere, you're pretty much just trusting that company to keep it safe. It's totally up to them, nobody else.
This was a great, informative read. Well written and detailed as always. But as far as the privacy issue goes; I believe it’s a thing of the past for all of us, particularly after the unconscionable personal data grab by DOGE earlier this year. My opinion.
You are not alone in that opinion, although I hadn’t considered the DOGE disaster.
I'm definitely paranoid. Big brother watching. Skynet becoming self-aware. I need to delete my account, but I just haven't moved forward.
They don't make it easy ...
Fun story, and I shared the same lack of drama in my genetic info: I’m English and Irish, all the way back. As for the privacy side … the question I always ask is, how can this information about me be exploited and what would be the motivation to do so? I get pretty benign answers to those questions and just don’t worry about it.
Yeah, I'm with you but somehow this hits different
I’m very cynical about privacy: I think that at this point, after 20 years of data breaches and social media, etc., privacy is an illusion.
For sure. When I was at Microsoft, it took us 2 full years to implement GDPR across all cloud workloads. GDPR has teeth; I took many a training. However, MSFT is atypical and GDPR covers EU only (California has baby ver). My SNP data file is 600,000ish rows of text data which is where I'm coming from when I say it hit's different than say the PII Amazon has on me. If my doctor had it as lab results, it'd be covered under HIPAA. It's covered under nothing with Ancestry and omg, so many breaches.
I was at the Google meeting where Ann Wojcicki pitched her "spit test" to us. I declined.
Since then, however, a relative who had cancer was approached by an academic project on cancer genomics, so: can't really say no to that.
Thus, I still get notices about relatives I didn't know I had. I don't really care. No long-lost siblings have turned up, and my dad did not have a second, secret family.
On the plus side, the police haven't pinned any crimes on me. Yet.
That's cool you were there for Anne's pitch. Ancestry didn't give me any med/health results and I think that's 23andMe's differentiator
This was fun to read. I don't know if we are both paranoid or not, but I feel the same uneasiness and wonder how one's DNA profile might be weaponized in the age of cheap, superintelligent AI. I would say that it'll be pretty easy to get a DNA sample, so even if I never give it up willingly, someone could take it one day... but giving it up has always seemed a little sketchy.
That said, I'm pretty sure my folks have already done this, so I'm screwed either way.
Also, the older I get, the more interested in the tales of my ancestors I've become.
Yep deleting it. I had ChatGPT draft me a legal letter for another site to take down my data citing the California data privacy law and they snapped to it; before I sent the spit I checked Ancestry's policy and - no doubt related to the 23andMe breach - they make it easy to do but there's no way to confirm
Yeah. I mean, if you share your data (of any sort) with any company, anywhere, you're pretty much just trusting that company to keep it safe. It's totally up to them, nobody else.