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Comment by pierat | Hacker News Reader

It's also one of my biggest regrets, and I never did it.

My mom did.

She never asked me, or anything. But half my material is right there, in an irrevocable database, now leaked online for the world. And I have no genetic rights or any claim, even though half is explicitly mine.

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Hang on can I understand your position? As I read it your (biological) mum took a swab of her own mouth and sent it to 23 and me. And you argue she should have asked your permission before doing so because she would be giving them half of your DNA?

Honestly I am not sure where I stand on that issue. Or rather it's probably to do with society wide regulation not individual rights ...

It's an interesting issue.

If a stranger had asked OPs mom for OPs phone number out of the blue, there are many moms that wouldn't share a PHONE NUMBER without asking the phone number holders permission.

But fewer would ask their relatives if it's ok to stick a decent portion of their DNA into a database.

Wait till they find out that 99% of our genes already got leaked to the public by the Chimpanzees.

Or that you can hit a tree up to get 50% of them.

This is really dismissive.

It should be obvious that, to the OP, the important part is the 1% that is unique, not the 99% which isn't.

What if OP lives with their mom and so when the stranger asked mom for her number, she also revealed OP’s.

Should mom not be allowed to give out her number. She had it first. Or should mom need to clear every use of her data with her kids because it might affect them.

Should OP get mom’s permission before emitting genetic material on a lover because that material is half of mom’s dna?

I think this is not a path that can be exactly logiced out, so I stick with “do what you want with your data.”

There are also a lot of moms out there that would give up a phone number without hesitation if not even suggesting the person should have it without being asked.

We used to have this thing called a phone book! Imagine the dystopian horror!

Even crazier, phone books where I lived had a Do NOT List arrangement with Telco providers that was actually respected and bulk leaks of DNL numbers | addresses names were almost unheard of.

Even stalking LEO ex boyfriends | former husbands mostly left a paper trail if they requested a DNL number.

Should an identical twin be required to get their twin’s consent? That would be 100% of their DNA. What about their twin’s children?

No, and there's no moral ambiguity about it. Separate human, separate decisions.

What is the John Donne quote again? Of course there is moral ambiguity about it. You can live your life pretending your actions don't have consequences for other people, but don't expect people to enjoy living in your wake.

Not sure why you chose this branch of the topic to share your declaration that the whole idea is nonsense, but ok.

And if their father also did it, 100% would be in there.

Except the data is randomized at conception

It was required of my sister to participate in 23andMe for an anthropology class of hers in college. I cringe now at what a violation that was. Even if she had the option to decline (which I am not sure she did), it's hard to say no to your professor when you're 19.

The ethics issues with that assignment would make for an interesting study all by itself.

I don’t know if holding a grudge against the naive parents of the world is productive, although I can understand the frustration.

Anger is better directed at legislators for not regulating these sorts of businesses under HIPPA and similar laws. Your mom’s medical records also contain a bunch of sensitive information about you and yet you probably don’t get mad each time she visits the doctor despite the privacy risk this incurs.

Treating 23andme like a lighthearted way to enhance your genealogy hobby or whatever is actually so fucking wild. This shit is not a game, only a SMALL fraction of the victims are 23andme’s customers. 23andme’s responses to me are proof enough the entire company should be shuttered because they are grossly negligent and don’t understand what business they are in or what they just did or how they fucked up.

The actual genetic data was not leaked. Why do people keep saying this?

Because nobody actually links to the leak proper. It ends up that people talk about writing about writings, rather than see what it is. And the prior post I did was auto-dead.. My guess is from the forum link. Cause we're not allowed to talk about breaches? Sheesh. (I edited enough stuff to review, but no direct links to leak documents.)

And digging around the breachforums DOT is/Thread-23andMe-Great-Britain-Originated-4M-Genetic-Dataset , you see stuff like

"The data includes information on all wealthy families serving Zionism. You can see the wealthiest people living in the US and Western Europe on this list."

This link combined with the 2nd one doesnt look good in any stretch of imagination. These are antisemitic leaks intended for harassment and/or hit lists. It definitely looks BAD. But again, it's already in the world now.

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Here's the schema of said data ( breachforums DOT is/Thread-DNA-Data-of-Celebrities-1-million-Ashkenazi-REPOST ):

profile_id; account_id; first_name; last_name; sex; birth_year; has_health; ydna; mdna; current_location;region_1;region_2;region_3;region_4;region_5;subregion_1;subregion_2;subregion_3;subregion_4;subregion_5;population_id1;population_id2;population_id3

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