Comment by burningChrome
Comment by burningChrome 3 days ago
>>> selling pharmceuticals online
That would explain them selling 5 million users DNA information to GSK.
Earlier this summer, the often-scrutinized at-home genetic testing company 23andMe sold genetic data from five million customers to the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). This surprised a lot of their customers who had forgotten that they consented to this when they signed up for the service.
https://cglife.com/blog/23andme-sold-your-genetic-data-to-gs...
https://investors.23andme.com/news-releases/news-release-det...
This is complicated. The don't just zip up all the customer data and send it over, at least they say that they run aggregated queries for GSK and just tell them the answer. But then they say that the data is "anonymized" before this, which seems unnecessary and impossible.
Imho it's very difficult to anonymize any data, and especially something like DNA. Without an external audit amd some mathematical guarantee (e.g. differntial privacy) I work on the assumption that they do the bare minimum to pass legal muster but anyone who made the effort could confidently associate the data with real people after the fact.