Comment by dvh 3 days ago
There is absolutely no reason for these companies to collect your PII whatsoever. You should go to nearest pharmacy and buy sterile swab, swab yourself and write long random number on it and send it. Once a month company publishes one giant zip with all the monthly result where you find your file by that random number you wrote.
This fixes the issue with leaks. But it creates a much worse issue: anyone can now sequence anyone else's DNA with zero oversight or privacy controls.
The film Gattaca covers how this could lead to a sort of night are society pretty well, I highly recommend it.
It also makes it much much harder to use the data for clinical research.
aye. fake emails aren't hard to come across. create a fake username and ID, and then claim the sample is you or your kid.
OK, you send the company two random numbers. One an ID, and the other a unique encryption key to encrypt the results.
It's relatively easy to go from genetic data to a surname, which is a big flaw in your described release method...
> write long random number on it
Human brains when generating 'random' numbers: https://xkcd.com/221/
> Once a month company publishes one giant zip with all the monthly result where you find your file by that random number you wrote.
Given how much of our appearance is due to genetics, that's basically all the harm with none of the convenience.
>Human brains when generating 'random' numbers
Fortunately, contemporary humans have access to computers, which can generate random numbers for them free of charge.
>Given how much of our appearance is due to genetics, that's basically all the harm
I can't fathom your concept of "harm"; and neither, I think, would any prospective customer of this service.
> I can't fathom your concept of "harm"; and neither, I think, would any prospective customer of this service.
I'm fairly relaxed about my medical history, but it's really obvious to me that I'm weird in being relaxed.
Despite my relaxed attitude, it's still fairly obvious that this lists every genetic condition*, which in turn obviously going to be relevant to any health insurance provider that isn't banned from using it.
Monetary damages are one of the easiest ones to quantify, from what I hear.
* even those that have not yet had the relevant genes discovered, because statistical methods need a larger population
What? “I’m worried my genetic sequence will be leaked and abused” turns into “why not just have the company leak the genetic sequences of everyone every month” and you can’t see the harm?
At this point we practically have a single search engine that’ll take you genetic sequence aa input and return your face, you entire family tree, your current job and address and what you do in your free time.
Are you kidding? The CIA would never fund that and if such a company existed, the founder would probably end up going for a 130 MPH drive at 2 AM and getting in a crash that burned so hot nothing but ash remained.
Your genetic data is probably most accurate / valuable PII there is. Assuming multiple relatives use the service and at least one of them leaks online identity the whole jig is up.
So the issue is not tying it to your online identity, but rather them keeping a resource which becomes more valuable as the time goes on. So why is that an issue... most obviously because of genetic predisposition. There is always a temptation to sell diseases you are predisposed to insurers (and maybe employers... ugh). After that you can imagine someone figuring that genetics affects any number of things (sugar / weight / addiction) and sell that to advertisers...