23andMe Customers Panic To Delete Genetic Data

Shortly after we published "23andMe Files for Bankruptcy, CEO Resigns — Fate of Americans' DNA Data Now in Court-Supervised Sale," the internet followed our lead on Monday morning and asked the same question. More importantly, 23andMe customers did too—frantically searching for how to delete their genetic data before a private equity firm scoops it up in a court-ordered sale.

Even MSM was forced to cover... 

Bloomberg reported that a surge of 23andMe customers overwhelmed the genetic testing startup's website on Monday, as many panicked and rushed to delete their genetic data profiles ahead of the court-ordered sale.

A 23andMe spokesperson confirmed on Tuesday that the website "experienced some issues and delays due to increased traffic" and that those problems have since been resolved.

Bloomberg spoke to one unfortunate 23andMe customer who could not delete her genetic data because of website disruptions: 

Ruthann Miller, 37, promptly received an email from 23andMe when she sought to reset her password to log in to her account, but didn't receive a "verification code" from the company that would allow her to do so, she told Bloomberg News on Tuesday.

"I've been checking my email rather frequently," Miller said. She's checked her spam folder, too, but hasn't received a code, she added.

The fear is that 23andMe's Chapter 11 reorganization and court-ordered sale could place the gigantic pool of genetic data of millions of Americans into the hands of private equity firms that will figure out some way to monetize the data.

Abe Schwab, a philosophy professor at Purdue University Fort Wayne, who has studied US genomic privacy, told Bloomberg that federal laws prohibit companies from using genetic information for health insurance or employment.

Bloomberg noted that the Justice Department stated last year that the sale of genomic data "appears common and is currently virtually unregulated."

On Monday, James O'Keefe of O'Keefe Media Group stoked maximum fears after releasing a video featuring an undercover journalist speaking with Nathaniel Johnson, a policy advisor at the US Department of the Treasury.

In the footage, Johnson suggests that 23andMe may have already sold off users' genetic data: "Do not give your information to those people [23andMe]... they sell it to other people."

Johnson explained: "There's a clause in their contract, that basically says, like, we can give your information to our shareholders. So that they can do stuff. And all of their shareholders are, like pharmaceutical companies. But some of those pharmaceutical companies are based in other countries, and those pharmaceutical companies in other countries are like the property of, like the Ministry of Defense of Russia. Or, like, owned, by China."

Read the fine print. That's the lesson of a lifetime.