Submitted 1 year ago by L4s@lemmy.world [bot] to technology@lemmy.world
https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/08/protect-or-perish/
DNA companies should receive the death penalty for getting hacked | TechCrunch::Personal data is the new gold. The recent 23andMe data breach is a stark reminder of a chilling reality – our most intimate, personal information might
I worked at McDonald’s to be able to afford to go to college and they sold my fingerprint data. I got like 50 dollars in the mail for compensation. Always thought that was fucked. They probably made more selling it all than the fine was. I should’ve gotten a lot
I am honestly surprised you got anything at all
Honestly same as well
This logic is equivalent to a bank saying, “It’s not our fault your money got stolen; you should have had a better lock on your front door.”
Isn’t that exactly what the bank would tell you if someone stole your personal info from your home and used it to empty your account?
This author is a dumbass.
It seems to me like the biggest problem was that in accessing just 14,000 accounts, they got some amount of personal information of nearly 7 million people. Less “you should have had a better lock on your front door” and more “your neighbor’s cousin should have had a better lock on his front door.”
And a little of the old “you shouldn’t have listened to us when we said you didn’t need a better lock because wE tAkE cUsToMeR pRiVaCy VeRy SeRiOuSlY.”
I swear this headline was just a comment the last time this got posted…
The 23andMe breach saw hackers gaining access to a whopping 6.9 million users’ personal information, including family trees, birth years and geographic locations. It brings to the fore a few significant questions: Are companies really doing enough to protect our data? Should we trust them with our most intimate information?
Well . . . NO. But that has never not been the case. These fucking cheese-brained twits who pour out every scrap of personal - and genetic! - info to the tatty basket of whatever Zuckerberg their moron friends are using has been a problem from day one.
Nothing has changed. Google is evil, Twitter went fascist, facepals is an arm of the FSB, and All Your Genes Are Belong To Us. No fucking shit.
Using computers for everything requires understanding them and most. People. Don’t.
Twitter has always been a cesspool. Thanks for noticing finally.
I like entertaining the idea that purchasing technology should require some form of license like a firearm.
The only problem with the idea is that I would probably be out of a job pretty quick, given no one would be able to use computers.
I had to explain where the windows key is.
That says enough.
Many of my friends and family sent their DNA away to these outfits. Early on I just ruled it out as I heard they were able to link cold cases to people in these databases. Combine that with the grave miscarriages of justice when they railroad people into convictions my “I haven’t done anything to worry about” still did not want to be a part of that machine.
I didn’t even think of this reality which is pretty bad. I’m glad I didn’t sign up despite some interest in knowing more about my fractured family connections.
They don’t need your DNA to connect you to solve a cold case. They determine we shares tiny chunks of DNA with a sample from a crime. With that, they find the family tree of the known person and can often determine who the guilty party is.
As in they know the suspect shares a paternal great grandfather with this person and a maternal great great grandmother with that person so we know it’s one of these people. Then the police collect trash to find who from the limited pool the crime DNA belongs to.
That’s some Minority Report type shit, scary stuff.
Life in prison for the executives.
Because users used bad passwords and had their accounts logged into by with these legitimate passwords…?
Seems like misinformed outrage to me.
Bring out the guillotines!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The recent 23andMe data breach is a stark reminder of a chilling reality – our most intimate, personal information might not be as secure as we think.
The 23andMe breach saw hackers gaining access to a whopping 6.9 million users’ personal information, including family trees, birth years and geographic locations.
Government overreach is certainly a possibility, as the FBI and every policing agency in the world is probably salivating at the thought of getting access to such a huge data set of DNA sequences.
This logic is equivalent to a bank saying, “It’s not our fault your money got stolen; you should have had a better lock on your front door.” It’s unacceptable and a gross abdication of responsibility.
The fact that the stolen data was advertised as a list of people with ancestries that have, in the past, been victims of systemic discrimination, adds another disturbing layer to this debacle.
I’ve long argued that after the Equifax breach, the company should have received the corporate equivalent of the death penalty.
The original article contains 734 words, the summary contains 171 words. Saved 77%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Read DNS and wondered why those are supposed for that to happen lol.
In regards to the headline: Just don’t use that service and discourage anyone in the family?
Seems more like a gimmick to me.
If I’d need something like that, I’d go to a professional lab.
Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Maybe you shouldn’t use the same user+pass across dozens of different services then.
The data from 23 and Me was stolen using the legitimate login credentials of users acquired from an entirely different services data breach. Not via their own lax security policies.
You can’t expect a corporation to protect you from yourself. And they certainly shouldn’t be punished for your ineptitude.
bandario@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
You nailed it. Users cannot be trusted to not re-use login credentials.
I know we all hate it, but proper 2-factor authentication via authenticator apps must be the default position for everything.
chatokun@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
I work in IT and don’t want to have to use annoying long passwords, so I’ve been team mfa for at least a decade now. I had physical code devices for SWOTR and FFXIV until I got a software one for the latter. I don’t play the former much but I still have a working physical key somewhere.
In fact, I’m more annoyed when a service still uses texting your phone and no option to use a mfa app.
spudwart@spudwart.com 1 year ago
Legit have had conversations with people where they position themselves as superior because they use “the same password” but with an @ instead of an a, or an extra 0 at the end.
Password Managers are really the best solution to using 1 password everywhere without actually putting yourself at risk. 1 password, to unlock the manager, that lets you copy/paste logins.
But nope 99% of all bullshit I experience in my friends and family is “but thats too complicated” or “thats too hard” when its 200% fucking not.
I’m calling them out. These are shit excuses for what their real issue is which is “i don’t wanna change my habits” which is just childish and ignorant.
Even if its easier, even if its safer. If its different, then they don’t want to even try it.
There are some people who will have “always used” a spoon to dig holes, and if you showed them a shovel, they’d complain that it’s too hard or too complex, and go back to using the spoon.
Rinox@feddit.it 1 year ago
Well they should have 2fa, but yes, if that’s the case I agree with you.
Use Bitwarden or KeePass
Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Unfortunately, even that’s not enough. That’s often a user choice to enable, and totp itself is a flawed system.
Really, services should be transitioning to Passkeys, however adoption of a new standard always takes time. There are not a huge number of services that have implemented them yet. [passkeys.directory](Here’s a list.)