20 Oct DNA Testing Companies’ T&C Do Not Protect Customer’s Privacy
Tech publication Gizmodo, along with several privacy experts and lawyers, recently went through the terms of service and privacy policies of three popular DNA testing companies and found that it does not offer any protection for its customer’s privacy.
After studying the policies of Ancestry.com, 23andMe, and Helix, consumer protection lawyer Joel Winston said that the companies were taking all the information without regard for the subject’s privacy.
It was also noted that for Ancestry and 23andMe, the customer will only be shown the informed consent document when registering a kit that has already been purchased, and while the companies say that they will not share the user’s data with a third party for research, they do not specifically state that they will not use it to improve their own business.
When asked to comment on the matter, former FDA Associate Commissioner Peter Pitts advised customers never to sign away their rights to their genes.
Source: Gizmodo
