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The company’s then-chief information security officer Omer Deutsch said that no other sensitive data, including family trees and DNA, was compromised since such data is stored on separate systems. Seeking out distant relatives also means you, or your data, may have to be exposed to some degree, so that you, in turn, can be found.Ī year ago, the MyHeritage testing service, acknowledged a breach of email addresses and “hashed,” or scrambled, passwords of more than 92 million users that turned up on a private server the previous October. Meanwhile, frequent reports of database ruptures in all areas of tech and business are likely to give pause to people wondering about genealogy data landing in the hands of identity thieves and scam artists.

On the health front, 23andMe asks customers to affirmatively “opt-in” before receiving sensitive reports that may show a genetic predisposition for BRCA variants, which may indicate an increased cancer risk, or late-onset Alzheimer’s Disease, says Adriana Beach, the company’s corporate counsel for privacy.Ĭould someone steal my identity from DNA details? Target teacher discount: It's coming back with more ways to save James Hazel, research fellow at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, raises another issue that may cut both ways: “The ability of people to readily identify anonymous sperm donors who wished to remain anonymous when they provided that sample.”Īmazon privacy: Amazon is watching, listening and tracking you. Petersburg, Florida, who knows of cases where individuals found out they had no biological connection to people they had believed were blood relatives. “Are there secrets in the family?” asks Whitney Ducaine, director of cancer genetics services at InformedDNA in St. The DNA risks to uncovering secretsīut experts counsel DNA newbies to consider what for some could turn into an unpleasant flip side.

MIT Technology Review estimates more than 26 million people have taken an in-home ancestry test. It also has some of the top DNA testing companies in the industry banding together to put privacy front and center. Yet rising concerns of data breaches or an overreach by law enforcement have made some people reticent about voluntarily spitting into a tube or taking a swab of the cheek, even as this popular pastime continues to grow.