The 23andMe Data Breach Reveals the Vulnerabilities of Our Interconnected Data

October 27, 2023

(The Conversation) – On Oct. 6, news broke that 23andMe, the genomics company that collects genetic material from thousands of people for ancestry and genetic predisposition tests, had a massive data breach.  But as it turns out, the company’s servers were not hacked. Rather, hackers targeted hundreds of individual user accounts — allegedly those that had repeated passwords. After gaining access to the accounts, hackers could leverage the “DNA relatives matches” function of 23andMe to get information about thousands of other people. This data breach challenges how we think about privacy, data security and corporate accountability in the information economy. (Read More)