737
23andMe frantically changed its terms of service to prevent hacked customers from suing
(www.engadget.com)
this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2023
737 points (98.0% liked)
Technology
60058 readers
1679 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
PSA: you can request deletion of your 23andMe account. It won’t do anything for this past hack, but it’ll at least prevent your data from being included in future hacks (assuming they actually completely delete your data like they’re supposed to).
it's almost always a soft delete, that is, change active field in database to false, coupled with their terms of service that state vaguely how they start the deletion process which could take months and how they may still keep certain data for legitimate purposes.
And this is why I wish we adopted GDPR more... if they are compliant, then they have to remove all data held when requested. Too bad the US will never care that much to respect individuals' data like that.
Exactly. I made a GDPR request for deletion. They can get in big trouble if they are soft deleting.
Have they ever been audited?
How does the legal authority work with GDPR if the company's physical and financial operations are entirely within the US? Would the GDPR even be allowed to audit them without their consent?
No idea if they’ve been audited. GDPR doesn’t require it. My understanding is that American companies doing any business or having any users in the EU need to be GDPR compliant for those users. I don’t think that’s been challenged in any courts yet.
They didn't.
They just made it so you couldn't see it anymore.
Why would you this wasn't even a hack for my understanding?
It was a password stuffing attack. Meaning that a bunch of users with reused crappy passwords had their accounts accessed with their legitimate passwords by attackers.
I'm not sure why this reflects horribly on the company in a way that would encourage one to delete their account?
This would be like leaving the key to your apartment in a public place and then complaining about your landlords terrible security when someone accesses your house when you're not there.
They stuffed passwords to get them access to information not just on the compromised accounts' profiles but to detailed data on a large group of other people whose accounts weren't compromised through a function within 23andMe's database browser.