23andme: 7M accounts hacked DNA data

23andme: 7M accounts hacked DNA data(theguardian.com)

20 points by alexeichemenda 2 years ago | 5 comments

louison11 2 years ago |

Misleading title - from what I gather, the raw DNA data wasn't hacked. It's the interpretation (racial percentages and family links) that were obtained.

Someone1234 2 years ago | |

Indeed, and while it is the original title, the original title itself is highly misleading. The actual figure is 14K and supposedly all of them reused passwords on other, compromised, services.

Then the media ran away with the 6M figure because the shared profiles of anyone in the Family DNA thing were also available to those 14K users.

I'd love to pretend that HN can see right through that, but if you read any of the threads about it they fell for it hook-line-and-sinker. You wouldn't even know from those threads that 23AndMe wasn't even itself compromised nor DNA for "6M" people weren't stolen.

louison11 2 years ago | | |

Yep. Don’t get me wrong, I think 23andme deserves the heat. Mostly for allowing so many relatives from being visible on their page. If 14K accounts were compromised and 6M relatives were downloaded, that’s 428 per account.

I can’t imagine anyone would benefit from finding relatives beyond sharing a great-great-great grandparent. It seems to be a mistake to allow for hundreds if not thousands of matches to be displayed.

Cause although the DNA data wasn’t hacked. You could quite accurately infer what a relative’s raw DNA could look like if you had the raw DNA of the compromised account AND the percentage of shared DNA.

ryandvm 2 years ago | |

What a boon for genealogy.

jsnell 2 years ago |

Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38527965