23andMe Blog

>I mean for the 14,000 accounts accessed with compromised login credentials, yes that's logical that it's their fault. The provider has a responsibility here as well - after all, a breach like this followed by the negative public fallout (and potential lawsuits) represents a risk to the business itself. There are things they could have done to mitigate this risk ... Like enforcing 2FA. And they did mess up, and they know they messed up. Do you know how I know? Because they just started enforcing 2FA (and not in 2019) [1] [1]https://blog.23andme.com/articles/enhanced-customer-security-at-23andm…

Apparently yes, there's a common gene that does seem to come into play. I wonder if repeated exposure causes you to stop noticing it? https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-research/cilantro-love-hate-genetic-t…

It looks like it's not quite 30%, but still high enough to make an opt-out worthwhile [1]. As someone who is afflicted, I can say that it would be a deal-breaker. [1] http://blog.23andme.com/23andme-research/cilantro-love-hate-genetic-tr…

The only thing 23&Me has done really well in stat gen is IBD (which IIRC you worked on). I was a team from Google that evaluated 23&Me's data and technology many years ago for a business deal. We already talked about this with Anne and she confirmed what I said above. It might have been before you were hired- but I'm pretty sure we talked about building a variant store and a transpose service? I stand by my statements (note: I work at a competitor of GSK and I know all about these deals). It's not correct that being better at picking targets doesn't shorten the timeline, either- at least in the opinion of the scientists at my company. Additive models don't really account for most of the heritability of complex phenotypes. They're what have worked best and been published so far. Complex phenotypes are nonlinear because the generative processes in biology have feedback, homeostasis, enormous numbers of individual elements... etc... By the way, does 23&Me still put tongue-twisting as a heritable trait on its reports? https://blog.23andme.com/articles/tackling-tongue-curling-the-challeng… It's not.

Conversely I supplement my PCP with a cash pay MD (in a hospital setting with a background from a reputable school) who believes in "wellness" which he views as the flaw in western medicine. Instead of going from sick to ok, he believes we should go from ok to wellness. And he sells mega Vitamin D doses and maybe I'm a sucker but I buy them. Since its cash pay and I absolutely love testing/scanning myself randomly (any blood/dexa/cortisol/ekg/heart test I can find and afford) we usually spend 20 minutes twice a year going through the science of whatever I'm testing at the time and (typically) shooting down the necessity of whatever crazy thing I want to try next. But low impact low benefit things like vitamins and a few no-cost hobby things are super under-rated. For example theres a handful of entries on this chart that are low cost with low behavioral change required medium impact that were unexpected for me: https://blog.23andme.com/health-traits/what-patients-say-works-for-dep…

I want to look into something that is truly cutting edge and can cause disruption. John listed many good projects. Based on ^^, other good places to look to help generate ideas: Current notable movers: * http://rockhealth.com (also check out their Events page in case you may able to get cheap access to conferences as a student) * http://blog.23andme.com And places to see what people are talking about/building: * http://www.quora.com/Health-Informatics and all sorts of related topics * https://angel.co/health-care-information-technology and all sorts of related topics * http://mobihealthnews.com * http://www.imedicalapps.com And in general I'd recommend following any company/person you learn about from the above ^^ on http://crunchbase.com Also feel free to shoot me an email [email protected]. I'm in the process of starting up my own health tech-related project (http://blog.stayinyourprime.com) so I've been doing a lot of research. Happy to share what I've learned and chat more about what you're doing.

I refer you back to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45386018. What you say is "obvious" is your completely unsubstantiated perception. > There is no genetically pure or distinct native British phenotye to set apart other europeans. Nevertheless, such ancestry can be reliably determined by genetic testing, and Europeans do recognize it by sight. https://blog.23andme.com/articles/23andme-adds-more-detail-for-custome…

From their open letter: > Any buyer of 23andMe will be required to comply with applicable law with respect to the treatment of customer data. https://blog.23andme.com/articles/open-letter So the buyer is bound by the same terms but they absolutely do get the data ("be part of the assets transferred" as per FreeTaxUSA's terms that we are discussing). Do you have another reference in mind?

23andme say this about MTHFR: > Despite lots of research – and lots of buzz – the existing scientific data doesn’t support the vast majority of claims that common MTHFR variants impact human health. https://blog.23andme.com/articles/our-take-on-the-mthfr-gene Is their take on MTHFR out of date?

> But they did provide secure MFA as an option > So how did 23andme fail so hard here? Literally nothing you've suggested would have prevented this. They made MFA mandatory after getting popped, at the same time they changed their Terms of Service to attempt to evade liability. Why did they wait to get popped? Either negligence or an active decision was made to avoid support costs and engineering time for mandatory MFA was made. Also, a magic link I suggested would've solved for this, unless attackers were going to get into everyone's inbox with leaked creds to get the link to login and get that session token. Definitely more effort than credential spraying 23andme login endpoints. https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/07/23andme-ancestry-myheritage-two-fact… https://blog.23andme.com/articles/enhanced-customer-security-at-23andm…

Related: https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-research/transatlantic-slave-trade-pa…

See also: https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-research/23andme-paper-on-transatlant…

It's been tried using 23andMe genetic data for over a million people.[1] No one gene seems to have a large effect, “Yet when we analyze the combined effects of many genetic variants, taken together they can predict the length of a person’s formal education as well as demographic factors.” [1] https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-research/massive-study-on-the-genetic…

You have nothing to fear. You are already fingerprinted. Social networks have 6 degrees of separation. Genetic networks have 3. https://blog.23andme.com/news/make-that-three-degrees-of-separation/

There have been quite a few studies popping up recently regarding this and there does appear to be genetic mutations that account for being a "night owl". https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-research/the-genetics-of-being-a-morn… DSPD is also seen far more frequently in adolescents.

Well that is unsettling. In the article you linked it sounds like Ancestry.com was responsible for working with the police. 23andMe seems to have a better track record on privacy and claims to have resisted requests from law enforcement so far. But I agree that it's not ideal that law enforcement can even make these requests. People should be able to check their genetic health and not have to worry about being wrongfully placed at a crime scene. https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-and-you/23andprivacy-your-data-law-en…

Anything I can drill into on bipolar. Treatment, outcome and quality of life. I came across this https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-research/what-patients-say-works-for-… in 2013. Most studies are qualitative not quantitative and the data is not released.

there's also a genetic link to misophonia: https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-research/something-to-chew-on/

> it's the fight or flight response One time I was watching TV, a nature documentary, with my pet rabbit hopping around nearby. You should have seen her reaction when they played the sound of a rattlesnake on TV! Poor bunny was out of the room in no time and stayed quivering and stamping for quite a while. So when I read about things like misphonia or even food aversion, my first thought is that these people may be showing the rough outline of genetic variants that may, in the right circumstances, be advantageous. (Of course most times it's maladaptive, but you need that initial variance for evolution to act on). Lo and behold: https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-research/something-to-chew-on/

There are known genetic factors for crying easily.[1] My oldest son and I cry easily; my wife and youngest son don't. By "crying" here I mean tearing up in response to both positive and negative emotions, including emotions expressed by others. My oldest son and I are about normal when it comes to outright bawling or crying in response to physical injury. Some public individuals cry easily: definitely John Boehner and possibly Elon Musk. [1] http://blog.23andme.com/health-traits/too-many-teardrops/

This is really evident when you look at the genetic data from places like Ancestry.com and 23andMe. The states with highest percentage British/Irish are all in the South: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002929714004765#fig… http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2014/04/04/a-genetic-census-of-amer… http://blog.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Bryc_ASHG2014_textb…

In this context, this report from 23andMe is interesting....perhaps old news: http://blog.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/5-N8XiOLkGIgydwX_SS…

This immediately reminded me of this other map[0], where a plot of the two main components of a PCA of the human genome ends up looking like a map of Europe. ——— 0. http://blog.23andme.com/news/a-different-kind-of-gene-mapping-comparin…

What's the difference between the 2013 kits and today's? Edit: Answered my own question. http://blog.23andme.com/news/23andme-provides-an-update-regarding-fdas…

I think that's a misleading description. They do identify specific base pairs of your genotype (and you can download this data as a file), the difference is that they only identify a small subset of all base pairs, whereas sequencing identifies all of them. More info: http://blog.23andme.com/23andme-research/23andme-moves-into-the-world-…

It can, but in the negative: http://blog.23andme.com/health-traits/autism-study-reveals-no-genetic-…

23andMe also reported on their blog that their preliminary data also supports a protective role of blood type O: > Individuals with O blood type are between 9-18% percent less likely than individuals with other blood types to have tested positive for COVID-19, according to the data. and > While it is still very early in the study, 23andMe’s preliminary investigation into genetics seems to support these findings. Comparing the research participants who reported that they tested positive for COVID-19 to those who tested negative, our researchers identified a variant in the ABO gene associated with a lower risk. (The single nucleotide polymorphism in the ABO gene is rs505922, a T at that location is associated with lower risk. The P-value for the association is 1.4e-8, OR = 0.88). See: * https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-research/23andme-finds-evidence-that-… * https://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Rs505922

you say “obviously” there is no genetic criterion for being Latino... there’s nothing obvious about that at all. you say here yourself they aren’t a random sample of the population - then what are they? and whatever it is that ties these individuals together, I’d wager there’s a genetic history overlapping in those tying elements. Or else you’d find much more ancestral diversity within “Latinos” (or “Asians”, or “Blacks” or “Italians”. there’s a reason these partially-cultural-mostly-ancestral groups _tend_ to have similar ancestry. tend.) just one example of the genetic angle of Latino-ness: https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry/latino-ancestry/ if you go far enough back, we’re all african, and if you go far enough forward, we’re all exactly X% everything after enough gene-mingling. but we’re not at that X% mix and we’re also not all african. we’re in an in-between stage where the cultural groups that are typically called “races” in this in-between moment on average tend to share ancestry and as a result, on average tend to be genetically similar. why are you making this sound like it’s a wild claim? I think of it as similar to taxonomy of species - there’s no line during evolution where something stops being one species and starts being another. just like there’s no hard line between races. but a sparrow is clearly not a giraffe. that’s a useful comment about their genetic differences that may or may not give you information related to the correlations of those…

I wonder why its unethical to test such things on human beings. I'm assuming it's unethical, because there rarely seems to be any damn work on this using humans. Those rats ran themselves to death, will we humans? We share about 92% of the genes[0] (on the first google attempt), what changes does that giant 8% contain? Just pick up people like me, and make us run and give us food. I doubt we will object if it means there's a possibility that we might help ourselves. Are they afraid they'll make it worse? Sure that's a possibility, but that's the price to pay. I'm willing to pay that price if it means people after me, who have this wire crossed in their brains will be served better healthcare in the future. Some experiments might not work, but we've just discovered another way to _not_ make the lightbulb, but the good news is that the lightbulb _will_ be made if we try n times. [0] https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-and-you/genetics-101/genetic-similari…

Thank you for calling this what it is - a hack - despite 23andme's strenuous efforts to paint this as the fault of millions of users (see https://blog.23andme.com/articles/addressing-data-security-concerns) rather than owning the vast technical or management failure that allowed this to continue undetected for months. Without the risk of a giant fine or, say, jail time, many tech giants can and do get away with managing their data security badly. That's right. It's happened before, and will continue to happen as long as there are no consequences. Note that 23andMe is not the first online genealogy service to get hacked: - In 2017, MyHeritage had 92 million accounts hacked https://www.hackread.com/dna-testing-website-myheritage-hacked-user-ac… - In 2020, MyHeritage users were targeted in a separate phishing scheme. https://blog.myheritage.com/2020/07/security-alert-malicious-phishing-… - GEDmatch admitted “all user permissions were reset” in a 2020 attack. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/hackers-gedmatch-dna… - Ancestry and Ancestry affiliated companies have had multiple security breaches over the past 10 years (https://www.hackread.com/software-firm-leaks-ancestry-com-user-data/) - Ancestry has also destroyed people's archives when it decided it was no longer profitable or important enough to keep them.…