[arthurjj]

I actually did some market research on creating a service to use 23andMe anonymously because of this worry (I'd call it 32andYou). Essentially the user could pay the service, and then the service would pay 23andMe. At higher paying plans you could pay for the swabs to be sent to a 32andYou shipping address so that 23andMe doesn't even have your mailing address.

[chrsstrm]

Preventing 23andMe from directly linking a subject's genome to a name, cc, and mailing address would be nice, but what prevents them from comparing the test results to other subjects who have submitted samples? If my genetic relatives have also been tested by 23andMe then filling in the relationship graph doesn't seem too difficult, especially if given access to other social graphs. Does 23andMe offer certified isolated analysis?

[make3]

good point, but on the short term at least, it would be pretty surprising if a sufficient amount of people took the test for that to be an actual preoccupation, lest you have reasons to think members in your family would specially likely to get the test (ie, history of genetic illnesses or a geeky uncle interested in biotech)

[chrsstrm]

Ancestry.com currently has a big marketing spend on pushing their DNA service to determine a person's ancestral origins. The FAQ [0] implies that Ancestry operates their own lab, but who knows what happens behind the scenes or where that test is outsourced to (23andMe maybe?). Of course the more likely scenario is that the Ancestry test normalizes providing a sample in exchange for information that regular people would be amazed by. If the test from Company A could tell me specifically what my ancestral makeup is (which is something Americans in general are fascinated with), what can the test from Company B tell me about my health?

I mean sure, I could be way off, but I could also totally see any of my family members taking the test out of curiosity and I don't see any of them announcing it beforehand. I totally see the genealogy use case as a gateway drug to making this more popular.

[0] https://www.ancestry.com/dna/en/legal/us/faq#about-3

[dikdik]

A friend of mine did this when he used the service. Used the office of an acquaintance as his address, a fake name, and paid with a pre-paid Visa card that he bought in cash.

[jacquesm]

And then he rounded this off by sending them a bunch of his DNA in a bottle.

[Balgair]

Is there a blog post or other written thingy that your friend has made to do this? I would love to know the step-by-step so I could repeat it.

[dikdik]

No, he just took every precaution he could to prevent his identity from being linked with the sample he sent.