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Comment by yoavm | Hacker News Reader

Just a reminder that you're leaving your biometrics basically on every surface you touch, and your DNA pretty much everywhere you drop a hair.

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That doesn't mean sharing them online with whoever buys the data is good... Every time I change my clothes at the gym I'm fully naked, I wouldn't want that to be showed on live TV, it's really not that hard of a nuance to grasp

True, but the analogy is far from fitting. Your nudity is shared with people in the gym, your biometrics is shared with anyone that has access to anything you ever touched. Your nude picture being shown on TV isn't the same as you-and-15-other-million nude pictures being shown on TV, and while sending your nude photo to your boss can be harmful, it's hard to think about what harm can be caused by sending your DNA to... anyone.

Sure but unless you're a state level threat no one will collect your old coffee cups

Once your DNA is in some random company's DB it's there forever and available to whoever has the money

> it's hard to think about what harm can be caused by sending your DNA to... anyone.

Oh yeah ? Is this something that was determined by some kind of god and will be true forever ?

https://theconversation.com/life-insurers-can-charge-more-or...

> In Australia, life insurance companies can legally use the results of genetic tests to discriminate. They can decline to provide life insurance coverage, increase the cost of premiums, or place exclusions on an individual’s cover.

Yes, in meat space. You can't relate that meat space data to anything meaningful unless your DNA is also in some database.

This is how they found the Golden State Killer. He left some DNA in the 70s. Worthless for a long time. But, a third cousin of his did a DNA test with a company, and the company provided the data to law enforcement, and they worked backwards to the killer.

Yes, but most people aren't following me around with a plastic bag to grab that biometric data. And if someone were, I'd get pretty paranoid about what they're trying to do with it.

Perhaps the reason why people aren't following you with a plastic bag is exactly because it is worthless? Sounds to me like if it wasn't, someone would have been following you. 23andme didn't follow anyone around — people sent it to them — and that doesn't make the data valuable all of a sudden.

Yes, but these biometrics does not automatically come with your social information, and quite hard to sell.

It seems like a year ago 23andme was hacked and almost 7 million records were leaked. Wikipedia doesn't list one case of someone being affected by it. Was this kind of data ever used to harm someone? It sounds to me like we're just speculating.

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