23andMe just sent out an email trying to trick customers into accepting a TOS change that will prevent you from suing them after they literally lost your genome ro thieves.

Do what it says in the email and email arbitrationoptout@23andme.com that you do not agree with the new terms of service and opt out of arbitration.

If you have an account with them, do this right now.

Here’s an email template for what to write: https://www.patreon.com/posts/94164861

  • jordanlund@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Nobody’s genome was lost. What happened was, users with weak passwords had their accounts compromised, something like less than 2,000 of them, and from those accounts, bad actors were able to access and download family tree data for something like 6.5 million accounts.

    I don’t really see how the data lost is actionable in any way except for the spoofed “Hey gramma! It’s me! I’m in jail and I need bail money!” phone calls.

    • IzzyScissor@kbin.social
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      10 months ago

      From what I understand - the first action the bad actors are taking are releasing the family trees to “out” anyone with Jewish relatives.

      So, just hate crimes to start.

    • dQw4w9WgXcQ@lemm.ee
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      10 months ago

      One of the typical arguments is selling ancestry history to insurance companies, effectively handing them health data which could lead to up-pricing or rejections for customers with bad health history.

    • JonEFive@midwest.social
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      10 months ago

      I don’t really see how the data lost is actionable in any way

      Agreed unfortunately. An important thing in US law that people often don’t know is that in most cases, you need to prove that you were damaged in some way. Unless the company broke a specific law, you probably just have to accept it until you have problems relating to identity theft. And even when that happens, you’d still need to prove that the the attacker used the lost 23andMe data.

      I personally don’t understand why people use these services in the first place. Let’s all let some private company that we know nothing about build an absolutely massive database of people’s DNA. And let’s voluntarily do it and even pay them for that “service”. Sure, that sounds like a good idea. What could possibly go wrong? Hope your minor curiosity was worth the massive privacy invasion.