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A Sale of 23andMe’s Data Would Be Bad for Privacy. Here’s What Customers Can Do.

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The CEO of 23andMe has recently said she’d consider selling the genetic genealogy testing company–and with it, the sensitive DNA data that it’s collected, and stored, from many of its 15 million customers. Customers and their relatives are rightly concerned. Research has shown that a majority of white Americans can already be identified from just 1.3 million users of a similar service, GEDMatch, due to genetic likenesses, even though GEDMatch has a much smaller database of genetic profiles. 23andMe has about ten times as many customers.

Selling a giant trove of our most sensitive data is a bad idea that the company should avoid at all costs. And for now, the company appears to have backed off its consideration of a third-party buyer. Before 23andMe reconsiders, it should at the very least make a series of privacy commitments to all its users. Those should include: 

  • Do not consider a sale to any company with ties to law enforcement or a history of security failures. 
  • Prior to any acquisition, affirmatively ask all users if they would like to delete their information, with an option to download it beforehand.
  • Prior to any acquisition, seek affirmative consent from all users before transferring user data. The consent should give people a real choice to say “no.” It should be separate from the privacy policy, contain the name of the acquiring company, and be free of dark patterns.
  • Prior to any a

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