[decebalus1]

Yeah, for now but in general, that's useless. They have the leverage to change the policy whenever they want as long as they notify the customers at the login screen and via email. And hey, they can change the policy to not even notify anyone. And of course, they can be bought out and the customer data is part of the company value so there's that.

Unless they provide an anonymous way of consuming their product I would never. ever. EVER. give a for-profit company my genetic data (and it's debatable who owns that data because last time I checked lawmakers don't really give a shit about information ownership unless it's about Hollywood) and have them tie it to my name. Fuck that!

[astrange]

Not only your genes worthless, since everyone has genes, but you leave them everywhere, like when you get a haircut.

Might be important if you were planning on a life of crime, or if you owe someone child support. But for the moment there's no good way to use them to make money off you.

[marchenko]

There's a big difference between leaving your DNA on a cup and storing it in an easily-queried database. To collect your DNA from a cup , an interested party has to have an a priori interest in you specifically. To get it from a database (or databank, if 23 and Me is retaining physical samples, as their terms indicate they might), the interested party just has to have an a posteriori interest in "people's DNA", and hoover yours (and by probabilistic inference, your relatives') up along with everyone else's.

In the US, the protections against insurance companies using your genetic data against you are about as deeply entrenched as the protections against letting ISPs sell your internet history, and subject to much more intensive lobbying. Other countries have no protections at all - Canada's current bill is strongly opposed by the Trudeau government. Remember, even though most of these genetic risk scores are incredibly weak predictors, it is only necessary for insurers to believe they improve their actuarial models slightly to have a huge effect on differential insurance costs.

[decebalus1]

> Might be important if you were planning on a life of crime

I'm very sad reading statements like this on hackernews.

Is that really an argument when it comes to privacy? Especially these days?

'crime' is a generic term which can change depending on who's in charge of the country.

[astrange]

I mean, personally I think everyone should be prepared to start a life of crime. But hiding your genes is like trying to hide what you look like - basically impossible. Privacy is about not being able to associate people's actions with them, not hiding that people exist in the first place.