Show HN: How badly is your genomic privacy affected by your aunt’s 23AndMe test? | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: How badly is your genomic privacy affected by your aunt’s 23AndMe test?

santeperso.unil.ch

14 pointsdddpt4 comments

Perhaps at the beginning the "target" must be selected at "you", because I guess it is the common case. It's nice that if you forget to select the target there are suggestions at the top.

It's not very clear than when you add a person, you later must click another button to indicate s/he has been tested. I also didn't initially understand how to add my grandparents without adding my parents.

If I have a partner, I can't add a children that one of them had with a previous partner. (For example if two divorced persons with children get married, and then they have another children. I think this is a very common. Perhaps someone can make a sitcom about this.)

Gender has a very specific meaning, and I think you are asking for XX/XY instead. Also, there are no options for LGBT marriage (It doesn't affect the outcome here, and makes the UI more difficult. But it's important for people, so you will get complains.)

I hate surveys. Is it opened automatically after some time or did I accidentally click the survey button?

@gus_massa, thanks for your feedback.

we do not pre-select the target because we want to know what people are interested the most in (their privacy or the privacy implications of their acts for others); we ask that in the survey

you cannot add your grandparents without adding your parents.

the case of divorced persons is very relevant indeed. our evaluation tool can handle it but not the UI (yet). we mention it in the FAQ.

we understand that the lack of option for LGBT marriage can be frustrating. yet, since the tool focuses on kinship and not on filiation, we let users specify birth parents only.

the survey is automatic (it triggers after some criteria are met including time and tests of the tool). we understand the inconvenience but it is very important for us to collect feedback to help people protect their privacy in an optimal way and reach out to an audience as broad as possible.

thanks again for taking the time to try the tool and give feedback!

A feature request: Can you show the privacy number in all the persons in the family tree?

...And how badly would your nephew’s genomic privacy be affected by your own 23AndMe test?

Authors here:

Your genome can be largely deduced from those of your relatives. Conversely, the genomes of your relatives can be, to some extent, deduced from yours. We built a tool for estimating this loss of privacy. Check it out! ;-)

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