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Comment by jobigoud | Hacker News Reader

People at 23AndMe could run an anonymized query on their dataset to extract networks of lineages and see highly connected individuals. It would be fascinating to see some people with hundreds of offsprings because they are sperm donors.

What if their own children become sperm donors, etc. If two persons are born from sperm donors I imagine they have to check in case they are siblings or closely related.

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> run an anonymized query ... see highly connected individuals

Doesn't sound very anonymized to me.

As the genetic sequencing graph grows, the odds of maintaining anonymity rapidly drops to zero. Poor choice of words on parent’s part, but I think one can understand what they were trying to convey (datamining the genotype matrix).

Disclaimer: Interviewed at 23andme a decade ago. Good folks.

I think that commenter was thinking that 23andme would be able to identify many people as children of the same unknown person, but unless that person also submitted their DNA to the service, they would effectively be anonymous. An unknown parent of dozens or hundreds.

Anonymous until a cursory investigation.

They’d only be anonymous if none of their family had used 23andme. CODIS already supports similar familial searches.

> highly connected individuals

I believe this is how they caught Joseph Deangelo

Since patients are likely to have geographical proximity, such an effect could be observed even if a Doctor commit that fraud just in just few occasions.

This is how these fertility doctors are caught. Their illicit offspring find matches for half siblings on genealogy sites.

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