Genetic testing company 23andMe revealed that its data breach was much worse than previously reported, hitting about half of its total customers.
  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    4·
    7 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    On Friday, genetic testing company 23andMe announced that hackers accessed the personal data of 0.1% of customers, or about 14,000 individuals.

    In an email sent to TechCrunch late on Saturday, 23andMe spokesperson Katie Watson confirmed that hackers accessed the personal information of about 5.5 million people who opted-in to 23andMe’s DNA Relatives feature, which allows customers to automatically share some of their data with others.

    The stolen data included the person’s name, birth year, relationship labels, the percentage of DNA shared with relatives, ancestry reports, and self-reported location.

    23andMe also confirmed that another group of about 1.4 million people who opted-in to DNA Relatives also “had their Family Tree profile information accessed,” which includes display names, relationship labels, birth year, self-reported location and whether the user decided to share their information, the spokesperson said.

    Considering the new numbers, in reality, the data breach is known to affect roughly half of 23andMe’s total reported 14 million customers.

    In early October, a hacker claimed to have stolen the DNA information of 23andMe users in a post on a well-known hacking forum.

    The original article contains 527 words, the summary contains 179 words. Saved 66%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • PumpkinSkink@lemmy.world
    4·
    7 months ago

    “As proof of the breach, the hacker published the alleged data of one million users of Jewish Ashkenazi descent and 100,000 Chinese users, asking would-be buyers for $1 to $10 for the data per individual account”.

    Fuckin yikes. I haven’t had this level of concern over a data breach since the Equifax breach. Like, I feel like it’s a little concerning that this company has this set of data that might as well be in a folder named “NeoNazisLookHere”. Its really hard for me to look past the part where 23andMe has evidently build a pogrom organizer’s wet dream and all they had to do was wait around for the inevitable data breach.