The Office of the Attorney General of California (United States) has issued an consumer alert advising the Customers of 23 Andme They request the company, which has recently declared it insolvent, the elimination of their personal data, destroy their test samples and revoke the permission for their data to be used in other investigations.
23Andme is an American company founded in 2006, which was funded by Google and specializes in genetic analysis in health and ancestry tests. It is known for sending test kits directly to the consumer and the publication of the results on its online ‘platform.
This Sunday, 23Andme declared bankruptcy. With this, he requested the authorization of the court to Start a sales process “of practically all its assets”. With this, the resignation was announced as CEO with an immediate effect of its executive director, Anne Wojcicki, who will continue as a member of the company’s Board of Directors.
Despite this insolvency statement, the company intends to continue operating normally throughout the sales process and has insisted that No changes have been made in the way it stores, manages and protects the data of your customers.
Privacy experts have shown concern about user data, now that the company’s actives are on sale, since They fear that this information falls into the hands of cybercriminals And expose the genetic information of the people who have trusted the 23Andme services, as Bleeping Computer has pointed out.
The California Attorney General’s Office has issued a consumer alert, advising 23Andme customers to ask the company with the elimination of their data, destroy their DNA samples and revokes permission for your data to be used for investigations.
To do this, they must login In your 23Andme website, access the ‘configuration’ section on the profile, choose the ’23Andme’ option at the bottom of the page and click on the ‘See’ button.
In this interface it is also possible to download the data, for those who wish to make a copy of their genetic information on their devices. Otherwise, the ‘Continue’ button and conclude the action with ‘Delete data’ permanently. The deletion application It is confirmed via e-mail.
The destruction of samples is also ordered through the configuration page, while to revoke permission so that the genetic data of using for other research purposes, it is necessary to access the section ‘Research and Product Consent’.