[upwardbound]

Someday when DNA synthesis machines have enough write length to be able to synthesize entire human chromosomes, someone with your genome data could clone you without your consent. Even if this takes 50 years to become possible, you still might not want unauthorized clones of you being made using data that you gave up when you were younger.

[a_bonobo]

That's not possible with 23andMe data, they have 640,000 SNPs, not the entire genome/exome/methylome. They have 640k points where the genome is often different from others, but your own genome is 3Gbp long (3,000,000,000 basepairs) with usually a few million SNPs per person. 23andMe has a subset of the diversity in your genome.

[upwardbound]

That's good to know. In that case, my concern would lie with the physical saliva samples that 23andMe has retained, since they could be comprehensively sequenced later.

[a_bonobo]

That is true! Samples are usually good forever in the freezer. Do they keep all samples?

Running -80C freezers is not cheap! I have 3 -80C freezers in my lab, those large chest-freezers, and each uses 22 kWh per day for a total of 66 kWh per day. Apparently the average US household consumes 29 kWh per day, so we use up 2 houses per day.

Our freezers certainly don't hold the 14 million samples 23andMe supposedly has, more like in the low thousands. They'd need the power-usage of a city to keep all those samples OK!

[aden1ne]

You can extract the DNA and store that instead - and they already had to that to their analysis in the first place. Far smaller volume than the raw sample.

Storing this for an effectively indefinite amount is not uncommon. I used to work at a clinical genetics lab, and some material had to be stored (by law!) for a whopping 120 years.

[kaba0]

As opposed to getting a bit of hair/dead skin from you, they rather hack into some digital system?

[31337Logic]

You don't hack into the system to obtain the data. You buy it. It's literally the most profitable thing on the planet right now.

[keskival]

I hereby authorize any and all clones anyone ever wants to make out of my full DNA or parts thereof.