California Attorney General issues consumer alert for 23andMe customers

Why People Used 23andMe Despite Risks

• Many participants say they joined out of curiosity, for ancestry fun, or as gifts.
• Some describe significant medical or personal benefits: discovering thrombosis risks, other actionable variants, or connecting with unknown biological relatives and half-siblings.
• A few adopted users or those with missing parents saw it as uniquely valuable for identity and health history.
• Others emphasize they knowingly traded limited SNP data for perceived small risk at the time, especially in the optimistic 2000s tech climate.

Privacy, Deletion, and Bankruptcy Fears

• Central concern: a financially distressed company may treat genomic data as a monetizable asset in sale or bankruptcy, with prior privacy promises weakened or voided.
• Commenters doubt deletion is verifiable; some report that after deletion requests, “regulatory obligations” still allow retention of samples or certain genetic records.
• Several note that even if you delete your data, relatives’ uploads make you partially identifiable; genetic data is inherently shared within families.
• Some argue data obligations should “follow” the data like real-estate covenants; others are pessimistic, expecting distressed firms to break promises.

Debate Over the Attorney General’s Role

• One camp sees the alert as pro-consumer: it informs people of their right to delete and may be the maximum legally available tool.
• Critics call it cosmetic “appearance of action,” arguing the AG and legislators should create stronger opt-in laws, ban secondary use/sale, and not shift burden to individuals.
• There is broader frustration about perceived corporate capture of politics, campaign finance, and “cargo cult democracy” without robust rule-of-law constraints on data abuse.

How Bad Could Misuse Get?

• Proposed harms: insurance discrimination, denial of coverage, targeted pricing, or exclusion from life/disability policies; others point to existing US laws limiting this but worry they’re fragile or incomplete.
• More extreme scenarios: state targeting of groups by ancestry, use in mass deportations or camps, or future genetic weapons. Some see this as realistic given historical precedents; others call it speculative or only relevant in already-dystopian conditions.
• Law-enforcement use via familial matching (e.g., serial killers caught) is cited as both a social good and a proof that non-users can be implicated by relatives’ tests.

Value and Viability of Genomic Data

• Some argue that if large-scale consumer genomics were truly lucrative, 23andMe wouldn’t be near collapse; they claim the data has limited predictive or commercial value.
• Others counter that, with full-genome coverage plus linked health records, modern compute could revolutionize prediction, drug discovery, and preventive care—though they doubt society would manage it ethically.

Wider Privacy Culture and Comparisons

• Multiple comments note that people routinely trade far more immediately exploitable data to Google, social networks, ride-share, food delivery, and credit-card ecosystems.
• A recurring theme is that most users either don’t understand or discount tail risks, prioritizing immediate benefits over abstract future harms.