Bad News: Google Probably Has Your DNA

With talk of Elizabeth Warren running for president, as well as our President’s recent (amazing) meme tweet, there seems to be plenty talk in recent days of DNA and DNA testing. What isn’t brought up too often though is the sinister truth of what these companies that test our DNA do with said information and genetic profiles of users.

Earlier today, however, libertarian content creator Mack and Liberty prompted quite an online discussion on the matter of privacy and DNA tests on Twitter.

After a quick (and somewhat ironic) Google search, it was easy to find out that the above is very much true.

As Gizmodo reported, truth is “if you actually read those policies, though, you might not have gone ahead with the test”.

So you might have thought before clicking on this article that “oh, these companies will totally respect the private nature of your genetic information” and as hard as it’ll be to admit, that was totally wrong. You don’t have any level of privacy, you give those companies full rights to the details of your DNA.

Companies like AncestryDNA, 23andMe, and the rest of them all get full legal access to your DNA, all the while not claiming anything other than the DNA information itself being your personal property. The clever reality of this language of course sets your DNA up like a sort of licensed information that you “happened” to give these companies access to.

So yeah, the price of learning that you are 0.18% Japanese is that your very life profile is once again sold to the highest bidders keen on using it to sell you otherwise mediocre products. Sorry chief!

It gets worse too! Here, I’ll let Mack and Liberty explain again:

Yeah, she’s right too. Anne Wojcicki, one of the founders of 23andme, is married to Google founder Sergey Brin. More than that, she is also the sister of the CEO of YouTube (another company owned by Google!), Susan Wojcicki. To say she might be on the side of favoring deals with the world’s largest internet company is an understatement.

In short, the likelihood that Google knows that your great-great-great-great-great-grandmother might have been from Thailand (and that as a result you are predisposed towards wanting Almonds as a snack) is extremely likely. Not just Google too, many more media companies who sell (or “need”) probably know what your genes look like!