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fliptop [soylentnews.org] writes:

Hackers have been able to gain access to personal information from about 6.9 million users of genetic testing company 23andMe [bbc.com], using customers' old passwords:

In some cases this included family trees, birth years and geographic locations, the company said.

After weeks of speculation the firm has put a number on the breach, with more than half of its customers affected.

The stolen data does not include DNA records.

[...] As was first reported by Tech Crunch [techcrunch.com], the company has acknowledged that by accessing those accounts, hackers were then able to find their way into "a significant number of files containing profile information about other users' ancestry".

The criminals downloaded not just the data from those accounts but the private information of all other users they had links to across the sprawling family trees on the website.

The stolen data includes information like names, how each person is linked and in some cases birth years, locations, pictures, addresses and the percentage of DNA shared with relatives.

I'm with Bill Burr [youtube.com] on this.

See also: 23andMe Says Private User Data is Up for Sale After Being Scraped [soylentnews.org]

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