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If you’re putting together a family tree, curious about your ethnic roots or uncovering potential inherited diseases, submitting DNA samples can help you discover more about yourself.
By 2020, more than 30 million people globally had “started a DNA journey,” Ancestry’s then-chief executive, Margo Georgiadis, revealed in a blog post. Yet for all the possible rewards, is the journey safe?
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For starters, make sure you’re ready for what you may learn. Families have discovered surprises that may be unpleasant, such as a living or deceased sibling Mom or Dad never mentioned.
Moreover, spitting saliva into a tube or even volunteering ancestral details to fill in gaps about your family’s past and present without surrendering any DNA carries inherent risks, some privacy advocates say.
Con artists look for vulnerabilities in websites
The point was driven home in October when a hacker leaked user data stolen from genetic testing company 23andMe onto an online forum. At that time, 23andMe said the criminal had been able to access just 0.1 percent of accounts — fewer than 14,000 — where usernames and passwords were the same as those on other compromised websites.
But two months later, the company disclosed that the hacker had accessed the profile data of 6.9 million users, roughly half the 23andMe customer base.
Leaked profile data appeared to target Ashkenazi Jews and people of Chinese descent. It contained display names, how recently the users had logged in to their accounts, predicted relationships and the percentage of DNA shared with close matches.
In some instances, it also included birth year, location, links to family trees, profile pictures and other photos. Data apparently was culled from an optional DNA Relatives feature that may help users identify genetic relatives by comparing autosomal chromosomes, the name for humans’ 22 pairs of chromosomes other than the one that determines a person’s biological sex.
As part of its investigation, 23andMe — Israeli internet analytics company Similarweb says that as of Nov. 1 it was the fifth-most-visited ancestry and genealogy site worldwide — disabled and subsequently brought back some DNA Relatives features. Customers were instructed to reset their passwords, and 23andMe now requires all users to employ two-factor authentication to prove they are who they say they are.
Other companies’ data is exposed
23andMe is not the only security rupture to muddy in-home DNA testing.
In 2018. MyHeritage, the third-most-visited ancestry site in the U.S., revealed that email addresses and one-way “hashed” passwords of more than 92 million people who used the DNA and genealogy service had been breached. As part of a site’s security features, you often see your own passwords being displayed as a string of six or eight hash marks # or asterisks * when you type your information, no matter how long, on a login screen.
MyHeritage claimed no accounts were compromised, since the hackers didn’t have the actual user passwords. The crooks also would need to have access to each customer’s unique hash key to unscramble the data.
In 2023. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reached a settlement with 1Health.io, formerly Vitagene, a San Francisco company that sold DNA health test kits to consumers. The agency had charged Vitagene with changing its privacy policy retroactively without notifying or obtaining consent from customers whose data the company had already collected.
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