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That's the least of it: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpvxgl3n138o

All 500,000 participants for sale on Alibaba...

And official response: https://www.ukbiobank.ac.uk/news/a-message-to-our-participan...

More details on leaked information from El Reg, especially after (laudably) the British government has been more transparent: https://www.theregister.com/2026/04/23/500k_biobank_voluntee...

"The charity did not specify the types of data that were included, but Murray stated in the Commons that several markers were included in the listings:

- Gender

- Age

- Month and year of birth

- Assessment center data

- Attendance dates

- Socioeconomic status

- Lifestyle habits

- Measures from biological samples related to haematology, biology, and chemistry

- Sleep, diet, work environment, mental health, and health outcomes data."

BioBank claims (1) only de-identified data was available and (2) none of the data was actually sold before the datasets were taken down.

unfortunately for most people, de-identified data is typically a very short analysis away from being re-identified.

the field of de-anonymization is booming.

Especially for a nation-state that's already hoovering up data broker products.

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