Remember that time you spit in a tube and mailed it? For science, people. I don’t want to know about any other purposes for which you may have done that. You have your reasons…
But that spit tube, the one that perhaps came in a 23andMe kit that you got under the Christmas tree one year, just for curiosity’s sake to see whether you really were 1/64th Cherokee or if Grandma Sue was full of shit, or to get a heads-up as to any genetic markers of heightened risk to certain diseases was written in your cards.
23andMe has been circling the drain for a while now, so it’s no surprise to hear that today it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and its CEO, Anne Wojcicki, has resigned. For its next moves, it’ll look to sell “substantially all of its assets” through a court-approved reorganization plan. If you ever used a 23andMe kit, the correct thing to think right now is uh oh.
dna test kits are risky to your privacy
To delete your data from 23andMe, log into your account and go to your profile.
- Navigate to Settings
- Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on 23andMe Data
- Click View
- Optionally, you can download the data if you want it before you delete it
- Scroll to Delete Data
- Click Permanently Delete Data
- Relax
DNA test kits can tell you fun things like that. They’re also massively invasive because your DNA is unique to you, and companies love having that sort of data. Years ago I wrote a piece about how companies buy that shit up like it was penny candy.
Wojcicki doesn’t seem to be done with 23andMe, though. “I have resigned as CEO of the company so I can be in the best position to pursue the company as an independent bidder,” she posted on X just after midnight Eastern time this morning.
Forget the data breaches (such as the one that hit 23andMe in 2023) these companies are vulnerable to, like any company. The fact that a company can go under and sell your private data is reason enough to treat these companies with a degree of caution.
We always warned that sooner or later one of these DNA test kit companies would go under, and then all that valuable health data people had voluntarily sent in would be scattered off into the ether, and what then? We’re about to find out.
The post 23andMe Just Went Bankrupt. Delete Your Data Before They Sell It. appeared first on VICE.
