23andMe is not doing well. Its stock is on the verge of being delisted. It shut down its in-house drug-development unit last month, only the latest in several rounds of layoffs. Last week, the entire board of directors quit, save for Anne Wojcicki, a co-founder and the company’s CEO. Amid this downward spiral, Wojcicki has said she’ll consider selling 23andMe—which means the DNA of 23andMe’s 15 million customers would be up for sale, too.

23andMe’s trove of genetic data might be its most valuable asset. For about two decades now, since human-genome analysis became quick and common, the A’s, C’s, G’s, and T’s of DNA have allowed long-lost relatives to connect, revealed family secrets, and helped police catch serial killers. Some people’s genomes contain clues to what’s making them sick, or even, occasionally, how their disease should be treated. For most of us, though, consumer tests don’t have much to offer beyond a snapshot of our ancestors’ roots and confirmation of the traits we already know about. (Yes, 23andMe, my eyes are blue.) 23andMe is floundering in part because it hasn’t managed to prove the value of collecting all that sensitive, personal information. And potential buyers may have very different ideas about how to use the company’s DNA data to raise the company’s bottom line. This should concern anyone who has used the service.

DNA might contain health information, but unlike a doctor’s office, 23andMe is not bound by the health-privacy law HIPAA. And the company’s privacy policies make clear that in the event of a merger or an acquisition, customer information is a salable asset. 23andMe promises to ask its customers’ permission before using their data for research or targeted advertising, but that doesn’t mean the next boss will do the same. It says so right there in the fine print: The company reserves the right to update its policies at any time. A spokesperson acknowledged to me this week that the company can’t fully guarantee the sanctity of customer data, but said in a statement that “any scenario which impacts our customer's data would need to be carefully considered. We take the privacy and trust of our customers very seriously, and would strive to maintain commitments outlined in our Privacy Statement.”

Certain parties might take an obvious interest in the secrets of Americans’ genomes. Insurers, for example, would probably like to know about any genetic predispositions that might make you more expensive to them. In the United States, a 2008 law called the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act protects against discrimination by employers and health insurers on the basis of genetic data, but gaps in it exempt providers of life, disability, and long-term-care insurance from such restrictions. That means that if you have, say, a genetic marker that can be correlated with a heart condition, a life insurer could find that out and legally deny you a policy—even if you never actually develop that condition. Law-enforcement agencies rely on DNA data to solve many difficult cases, and although 23andMe says it requires a warrant to share data, some other companies have granted broad access to police. You don’t have to commit a crime to be affected: Because we share large chunks of our genome with relatives, your DNA could be used to implicate a close family member or even a third cousin whom you’ve never met. Information about your ethnicity can also be sensitive, and that’s encoded in your genome, too. That’s all part of why, in 2020, the U.S. military advised its personnel against using consumer tests.

Read: Big Pharma would like your DNA

Spelling out all the potential consequences of an unknown party accessing your DNA is impossible, because scientists’ understanding of the genome is still evolving. Imagine drugmakers trolling your genome to find out what ailments you’re at risk for and then targeting you with ads for drugs to treat them. “There’s a lot of ways that this data might be misused or used in a way that the consumers couldn’t anticipate when they first bought 23andMe,” Suzanne Bernstein, counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, told me. And unlike a password that can be changed after it leaks, once your DNA is out in the wild, it’s out there for good.

Some states, such as California, give consumers additional genetic-privacy rights and might allow DNA data to be deleted ahead of a sale. The 23andMe spokesperson told me that “customers have the ability to download their data and delete their personal accounts.” Companies are also required to notify customers of any changes to terms of service and give them a chance to opt out, though typically such changes take effect automatically after a certain amount of time, whether or not you’ve read through the fine print.

Consumers have assumed this risk without getting much in return. When the first draft of the human genome was unveiled, it was billed as a panacea, hiding within its code secrets that would help each and every one of us unlock a personalized health plan. But most diseases, it turns out, can't be pinned on a single gene. And most people have a boring genome, free of red-flag mutations, which means DNA data just aren’t that useful to them—at least not in this form. And if a DNA test reveals elevated risk for a more common health condition, such as diabetes and heart disease, you probably already know the interventions: eating well, exercising often, getting a solid eight hours of sleep. (To an insurer, though, even a modicum of risk might make someone an unattractive candidate for coverage.) That’s likely a big part of why 23andMe’s sales have slipped. There are only so many people who want to know about their Swedish ancestry, and that, it turns out, is consumer DNA testing’s biggest sell.

Read: DNA tests are uncovering the true prevalence of incest

Wojcicki has pulled 23andMe back from the brink before, after the Food and Drug Administration ordered the company to stop selling its health tests in 2013 until they could be proved safe and effective. In recent months, Wojcicki has explored a variety of options to save the company, including splitting it to separate the cash-burning drug business from the consumer side. Wojcicki has still expressed interest in trying to take the company private herself, but the board rejected her initial offer. 23andMe has until November 4 to raise its shares to at least $1, or be delisted. As that date approaches, a sale looks more and more likely—whether to Wojcicki or someone else.

The risk of DNA data being misused has existed since DNA tests first became available. When customers opt in to participate in drug-development research, third parties already get access to their de-identified DNA data, which can in some cases be linked back to people’s identities after all. Plus, 23andMe has failed to protect its customers’ information in the past—it just agreed to pay $30 million to settle a lawsuit resulting from an October 2023 data breach. But for nearly two decades, the company had an incentive to keep its customers’ data private: 23andMe is a consumer-facing business, and to sell kits, it also needed to win trust. Whoever buys the company’s data may not operate under the same constraints.

No thanks. I'll just stay in my own time and keep all my stuff.

Not a fun story but new CEO comes in, pricing structure heavily modified to be more aggressive towards bringing clients into our ecosystem of products, we lose a whale of a client, 7 percent of the company is laid off including the newest guy on my team,and then magically acquire new responsibilities for the same pay. Capitalism baby.

Not for takeout. I only tip for eating-in, which I still find dumb. We should ban tips and force restaurants to pay a livable wage

Using one genocide to justify another is disgusting. Go crawl back to whatever nazi hole you crawled out of

Which of the suggested policies in the article would you consider to be radical?

When Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Halliburton, and friends stop lobbying our Congress to fund defense contracts, Israel, and other imperialist entities that have turned that region into a sandbox for the military industrial complex.

100 percent this. My local DSA chapter is often the only group showing up to school board meetings to pressure a vote that would protect LGBTQ+ kids from discriminatory and harmful legislation. We do mutual aid regularly to serve our homeless community. We organize rallies in support of unions, Palestinian liberation, healthcare access, etc. We network with other local non profits and engage in events that directly benefit the community like creating care packages for women (and girls) seeking abortion access. We have working groups for environmental restoration work. The list goes on.

We have other political action groups in the area for both major parties. Wanna guess how involved they are with the most marginalized and underserved communities in the area?

People need to log off social media once in awhile and actually work in their community before posting empty platitudes to an echo chamber.

Exactly. Rip Bozo

Add this to the list of his crimes against humanity

Manufactured consent is a helluva drug

She went full Winnie the Pooh

Unfortunately discord is the main app used for a lot of communities I follow for specific games, streamer communities, local organizations, etc. But for my friend group we use a self hosted matrix server. It lacks all the nifty bots for music streaming, I'm pretty sure I can't screen share for movie nights or to share gaming, but it had the bare bones chatting experience

Both USA and Israel

It's McMillan's gloves and beard that make it for me

We also used to have socialist political figures in power, if you learned American history at all. Abject failure is supporting genocide, ignoring worsening material conditions of the working class, criminalizing homelessness, and blaming immigrants as a scapegoat for everything.

I'm voting for Claudia de la Cruz. Reading is hard

If that's what you gotta tell yourself before you sleep at night go off. Personally, I hope you hear the screams of the 15k+ dead Palestinian children every night for the rest of your miserable life.

By not voting for one of the two outwardly fascist parties, I'm enabling more fascism. Got it. You should put this effort in convincing a Trump supporter to vote for Kamala. You're more closely aligned in policy with that voter.

"I see you, I hear you." And enjoy voting for genocide.

I'm voting for Claudia de la Cruz as mentioned previously. But even if the green party secures 5 percent of the vote, they are eligible for federal funding which is a step away from 2 conservative parties that ignore worsening material conditions for working class Americans.

We're going to have the most lethal military because 70 percent of your tax dollars should go to the department of defense rather than addressing the tens of thousands of Americans dying from lack of access to healthcare, lack of public transit that would provide accessibility to underserved communities, particularly those of color, or funding education so that teachers don't need to live out of their cars or have fundraisers to pay for their curriculum.

We will continue to ensure Israel can defend itself from children throwing rocks and homemade rockets against a brutal apartheid regime that controls every aspect of Palestinian life.

We're going to focus on border security because immigrants are clearly the problem as stated initially by the GOP, rather than counter a racist narrative using a false premise with the fact that undocumented immigrants commit crimes at a substantially lower rate than American citizens and also greatly contribute to our economy.

Yeah that's literally just conservative policy.

I think I've said this like 3 times now but I'm not voting for green party, I'm voting for Claudia de la Cruz. Again not that it matters. I'm anti imperialist whether it's genocide by Israel, Russia, or the US.

It's a dumb argument. A mental math to justify voting for genocide.

My proposed course of action aligns with the Palestinian Americans in my community. We speak out at our city council every month and hold rallies near our house reps office every week. But I guess I just don't care as much as someone voting in favor of the slaughter of their families, someone like you.

That's cool, enjoy cheering on the slaughter.

League of Legends

I've been heavily anti-Israel since the murder of Rouzan al-Najjar in 2018. I've worked on multiple local campaigns for both independent and Democratic candidates alike. But reading through your rant it definitely sounds like you're projecting a lot of your own personal insecurities. I'm sorry that exercising my freedom to vote for a candidate that aligns with my values of not commiting genocide upsets you. I hope you can look past your own shortcomings as a human being and learn to forgive yourself for being ok with your tax dollars slaughtering an entire indigenous population.

Oh I give a shit about the working class of Ukraine, thanks for asking. It's just that Biden/Harris aren't bypassing Congress multiple times to send $60 billion of my tax dollars to Russia to further their imperialism. But yeah you definitely don't care about Palestinians, you've made that clear. I'm willing to bet you don't care for the people of Syria, or Libya, or Afghanistan, or Iraq either. I wonder what the common denominator is there. Maybe you just absolutely despise brown Muslims on the opposite end of US imperial conquest.

Don't worry. Dick Cheney, the architect of the invasion of Iraq, stepped up and took my vote for Kamala instead. Birds of a feather.

Why do liberals assume they are entitled to leftist votes? The entire DNC prevented anti genocide speakers, yet platformed former Republicans, the Israeli family of a hostage, etc. it's clear the party is more invested in appealing to conservatives, so good luck 👍

Mentioning that the current admin has been actively funding a genocide for a year and that both major parties promise to continue to do so in 2025, isn't a whataboutism. Sorry to criticize your genocidal queen, I know stopping to consider that brown Muslims are humans too can be very taxing on most Americans.

I'm voting for Claudia de la Cruz, not that it matters. neither Claudia, Cornel West, or Jill Stein are actively funding a genocide.

No thoughts on the democratic party completely capitulating to a reactionary right wing framework on Israel, immigration, and foreign policy? No thoughts on the Biden/Harris administration actively funding a genocide for the past year? No thoughts on Kamala promising to continue allowing Israel to "defend itself"? Blue maga is literally celebrating the endorsement of the architect of the invasion of Iraq. Did the Democratic establishment forget to at least pretend to be an opposition party?