Maybe a naive question, but Is there a service like 23 and me but that doesn’t collect/keep my genetic information ? @nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
No. Every DNA collecting agent in the U.S. easily shares it’s data base.
Nope. And everyone knew what 23 and Me was doing and did it anyway.
I presume you are doing this for medical information rather than genealogy as they’d need to keep your information for it to be that useful to you.
If not, check out Family Tree DNA’s privacy policy as they seem pretty good with letting you set the level of sharing that you are comfortable with. They don’t share with third parties and you can adjust your sharing settings so law enforcement can use you for matching.
I’ve tested myself and a number of family members with them and am happy with the level of control they give but your mileage may differ.
Isn’t Family Tree the one that was first exposed for allowing LEOs access without a warrant?
I’m not sure of the timeline now but I seem to recall that this first came up through GEDmatch (which doesn’t do testing itself but allows people to upload results from different companies to compare them) and law enforcement had been creating data in compatible formats based on samples from cold cases. It hit the news because it helped identify the Golden State Killer. This got users nervous and they switched to you having to opt in allow that kind of matching.
FTDNA changed it ToS to allow law enforcement to use their database for rather vaguely defined crimes but that collided with laws (especially in the EU) and privacy groups, hence the large range of options available. In the EU you have to specifically opt in to allow those kind of matches,. elsewhere you have to opt out (which seems a bit confusing to me - it should be a blanket opt in).
You’re right, it was GEDmatch. I hope they got the right guy for the Golden State Killer and not just some dementia-ridden senior citizen that they could pin it on.
And I completely agree that any use should require positive action to authorize. No company should be able to assume consent just because they haven’t been explicitly told “No.”
It’s absolutely abusive that in order to get your genetic background you have to be willing for the government to have your DNA.
What are the potential downsides of the government having your DNA? I don’t think I can think of any for real
I mean other than getting in the fingerprint registry if you’re trying to commit a crime I guess
You’re absolutely right, I can’t think of a single point in history where there was mass persecution of any particular group by a government which might have been far more efficient of they had a handy database of every citizens DNA. Just never happens, not once in all of history. There’s definitely no shining example less than a century ago.
Both of the responses to your comment are batshit lol.
I don’t like the idea of the government having my dna, but does anyone have a genuine (non irrational) reason it would be bad?
The US alone has a rich history of repression (Wikipedia even has a sub-subcategory specifically for ethnic cleansing) and it’s common knowledge those DNA databases have been used by US police to track people down so it’s really not difficult to link those two concepts. These are concrete examples of things the US government does or has done, not some hypothetical scenario.
And that’s all assuming the data is only accessible to governments that have to pretend to care about their citizens, not the for-profit companies and malicious actors that currently do have access to that data.
Copy pasting my other comment
One day some insurance company will decide to pull out your protections because, turns out, you have X% chances to get a cancer by your 40. Then all other insurance companies do the same. Then, one of them accepts you, but you gotta pay N% more for the same coverage
It’s not even gouvernement, it’s other companies. One day some insurance company will decide to pull out your protections because, turns out, you have X% chances to get a cancer by your 40. Then all other insurance companies do the same. Then, one of them accepts you, but you gotta pay N% more for the same coverage
I’ve been wondering this myself. I don’t really agree with the other comments saying it’s impossible.
We do genetic testing on the medical side and that data is kept private. I don’t see why a company couldn’t offer similar stuff, paid privately, for a more comprehensive suite of tests. You could learn about your risk factors and keep the data private.
On the history/ancestry side, it could pick out known biomarkers to trace back from publicly accessible data. You wouldn’t be able to track down exact family trees, but I don’t think that was the intent since you’re looking for privacy. Instead you might get stuff like “you’re 40% Greek, 20% North African”
Such a company would
- collect a sample
- compare the data against literature
- delete the data
It could also allow customers to opt in for more detailed analysis (for those that don’t care for privacy) and let them know about the risks. Or it could give an option to share anonymized health data for researchers investigating diseases / risk factors
Edit: see the comment by Emperor@feddit.uk
For the record, ancestry dna is basically a scam. Especially when they give you a percentage score.
Ask yourself what is French. Or English. How much interbreeding has happened across the spectrum? It can’t tell you who you are- there is no genetic encoding for culture.
This makes sense, I don’t really know how they come up with those numbers. I feel like there is a realistic risk for harm if we DID try to classify it (ex. If you have X gene, you are Y race). It wouldn’t make any sense to begin with, and it would enable arbitrary persecution
I’m more familiar with the inverse, where doctors can provide better care by screening for risks and generic markers that are more common for a particular demographic. That actually helps humanity and is worth studying more
I don’t really know how they come up with these numbers
They sample multiple people from a given region of the world and then look at possible genetic similarities between most individuals in that sample.
Then, they collect your genetic data and “match” to all the different signatures they’ve collected from different regions, and compute a similarity score.
In theory, if they had sufficient samples and the genes were very characteristic, this could work. In practice, any geneticist will be able to point out multiple flaws with this methodology.
There are indeed certain traits that only occur in specific populations… And while someone else totally unrelated could randomly have a similar mutation, it’d be unlikely. But those are rare, and absolutely not something that can be used to say “78% German”
Yeah I’ve always thought when they give those stats “how long ago?”. Where people’s ancestors lived could be quite different during different time periods, that I don’t think can be accurately represented by percentages.
