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23andMe User Data Stolen in Targeted Attack on Ashkenazi Jews
(www.wired.com)
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this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
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I can't believe people voluntarily sent them their DNA.
The worst part is it you have enough family members who used these services your details are likely on there too.
Though if neither a father nor his sons have submitted their DNA, the service will lack all that Y-DNA though, right? I'm glad I made the right decision to not send in my DNA to those sites, despite my sisters hounding me to do it after our dad refused, lol.
It's a shame though, because family genetic networking is interesting, but it just goes to show you can't trust these companies. (Even though the company didn't really do anything truly wrong in this case, as it's simply users reusing passwords, they still should have been better/more proactive especially with such sensitive information)
There's nothing special or new or unique or unforseen about the security requirements of 23andMe.
They absolutely failed to implement an appropriate level of security measures for their service.
Mandatory 2FA could've prevented this.
Part of the issue is the average person using a service like this, and people comfortable with MFA don’t really overlap.
I mean, too bad. You're accessing the results of your genetic data that contain sensitive personal information on relatives as well as yourself. Banks require 2FA, and people figure out how to use that.
Hence the key word: mandatory.
Oh I didn’t miss that. Would it be a good business decision for nascar to force people wanting to buy live tickets to eat a vegan meal?
"We sent you an SMS with a 4 digit number, please type it in this box" is a pretty low bar.
Y chromosomes have very little information on them, and the DNA there is pretty highly conserved. You're not really keeping any secrets by hiding your Y chromosome away.
It's not really like they are storing DNA sequences anyways. They use a genotyping array which just reads ~650k single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs).
An analogy would be 23andme has a 6.4mil page book of DNA for a single customer but they only know the position and letter of single character on every tenth page. Sure it's enough to identify someone (You can confidently use 50 SNPs to identify these days) but it's not like 23andme was ever storing a whole genome
They also sent your DNA involuntarily. You can be IDed of someone in your genetic vicinity has sent theirs. They don't even need to be super close.
I sent mine in because 75% of my DNA comes from sources unknown to me. It's been interesting seeing what pops up.
Someone help my dumb brain: what does that situation look like?
You only know your mother or father and one of their parents and have no idea of the three other grandparents?
Top notch victim blaming you got there...
ETA because I don't engage with bigots:
Imagine that, the descendants of one of the biggest genocides in history want to try and piece their history together, and use the available tools to do it with, fucking shocker..
Then, when they continue getting targeted just for existing, privileged ignorant bigots who couldn't even imagine what having over 90% of their community gassed is like, and have never been oppressed for who they are a day in their lives, simply can't help themselves but jump to justify them being attacked again:
tHe bAstArDs dEseRve eVerYthInG tHey GeT!!11
And somehow not a word about the attackers, nor the company that failed its customers.
Sure, antisemitic Jan..🙄🙄🙄
"I can't believe this incredibly obvious thing happened!" Isn't really victim blaming, is it? They're not saying they did it to themselves or they deserved it, they're saying that this was bound to happen and people volunteered their DNA to a private company
... Therefore blaming them for using the service.
Why even have a capitalist economy if private businesses can just abuse people like that and the customer is routinely blamed for participating in the economy the only way they're allowed to?
Thanks!
As if victim blaming is always wrong.
It is
E. g. if somebody loses money in a multilevel marketing scheme, is it wrong to blame the victim? Or is not every victim a victim?
Regarding your edit, that's assuming a bit too much to defend your point.
But that's what I asked for, your reason why there is no responsibility on the side of the victims.
To engage with that line of thinking: if you leave agency at people, you can ask why one would trust a company with that data when every conspiracy theorist doesn't use that service specifically because of the risk of genocide.
But you are right, there are valid reasons to take the risk.
It's always wrong to blame the victim, yes. You just genuinely don't believe they actually are victims, and if you want to have that debate, be honest and have it. But you don't get to recognize their victimhood and then invalidate it by implying their suffering is partly their fault.
Is this a choice of words issue? Saying that somebody could have prevented something and with that knowledge should prevent it next time doesn't change victimhood for me. The suffering of the victim remains.
What is lost if the victim had some agency? Is there some metaphysical aspect to it? Are victims prechosen by fate and it's a sacrilege to question their fate?
I can agree that a zebra being killed by lions shouldn't be blamed. But a person who ignores advice from friends and joines a multilevel marketing scheme is not entirely innocent.
Because attributing any blame to a victim is always a sleazy attempt to shift all responsibility for a situation away from the aggressor and onto the victim. It's a common abuse tactic.
Plus, most people really aren't capable of doing what they need to do in life-threatening or abusive situations. Adults really don't have as much agency as they like to pretend they do, and I personally am tired of being dishonest about it.
I say that as one of the people who has been abused partly through their own failings and iniquities. I don't call myself a victim. I'm also not an average representative of people in abusive situations -- I have always been and always was capable of doing far more than most other people, and so I am telling you from that experience that you cannot attribute any responsibility for a situation on a victim like that. Most people are just NPCs and you need to respect that.
I agree with your intentions. The integrity of a victim mustn't be questioned. The issue to me is that it is not logical that attributing any blame does shift all responsibility. If that is the case then the victim is still in an abusive situation and priorities shouldn't lie on the usage of language.
Thank you for sharing your experience. I hope that you are in a safe environment. I am overextending my position a bit and claim that despite your experience we shouldn't accept limited agency in humans. For one, I have just been arguing that democracy relies on it. Apart from that, the aggressors can also claim limited agency. To me, that is not acceptable. Agency is a lie that we accept for the law to work. There are no aliens who take care of us. We have to make do with what we have.
That said, I am of course open to concepts about how to structure society with limited agency.
I don't really disagree with you, I'm just informing you of the reality of the situation. I just read on the World News reel here that 54% of American adults read below a 6th grade level -- that alone shows us that Americans at least really don't have any agency and I assert this is part of the reason why abuse and exploitation from all sides is so goddamn rampant here.
Stopping abuse is a fight that will have to be done through multiple methods, but the only way to do that is to restore our agency as a people, and the only way we can do that is by first recognizing that most of us really don't have it.
It's up to us who are educated and who therefore do have agency to lift the others up. We need to make government force people to be educated -- offer free remedial classes at community colleges, enforce a high-school level reading standard and if you can't meet that, you legally can't be gainfully employed. Anonymize testing and tie results to social security numbers. It can be done.
I was all with you until the forced education. Nothing kills curiosity faster. We can do better. There are enough humans that not everybody has to read, especially in a world of phones and videos.
The important part is respect. Children need an environment that nurtures it so that they are respectful as adults. A bit like 'do not abuse a child and it won't become an abusive adult.'
But yes, we don't have full agency. That's where development is needed.
Nah dude, literally everyone does have to be able to read. You can't do anything in life unless you can read, especially using the internet, and abusers specifically use the inability to read to exploit victims financially -- if you can't read, you can't sign contracts or consent to anything, you can't learn anything (and no, videos are not enough; most of the things they teach you require reading) and you can't effectively communicate with anybody who isn't directly in front of you.
I agree with you about the respect part. Respect is BADLY needed and the lack of it is part of the root cause of the collapse of the education system. People just don't think education or learning is needed, and I think deep down inside you suspect as much, which is why you were talking about victim agency.
I am convinced that reading will be replaced with computers generating videos. Apart from that, I agree.
You say that like it's a negative thing.
Some people actually want to know things and are curious about where they came from, what they're made of, who their family is.
Submitting your DNA can increase your knowledge. It sounds like you can't believe people would seek knowledge.
I’d love to know all of that. I just don’t ever trust a private corporation to safeguard my highly personal and unique DNA information from:
It’s too easy for a company to skimp on staff and digital security and then say “we’re soooo sowwwy, have 3 months of identity fraud protection on us” if they find a breach.
The point I think you could be missing is that the organizations which do this have been at best irresponsible, at worst negligent, in protecting customers personal information. There are obviously benefits to ~~this~~ a genetic record. Preserving a comprehensive genetic record for future generations to study is one. A database for law enforcement to use to solve very serious crimes like murder and rape. All that would be wonderful, but that information is already being misused and abused. Most people, myself included, don't think these organizations will ever be responsible to their customers cause who the hell would believe that these days?
There are a lot of dumb people that wanted to know they were a pure breed European or something to brag about like an IQ test
But they trusted [youtuber]!!!