5 ms·

There's always https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com They won't give you information about potential diseases,

by curun1r 11y ago

There's always https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com They won't give you information about potential diseases, but they'll give you information about your ancestry and ethnic makeup and they'll do it anonymously. They give you the option to register, but you can also lookup your results by the tag on your sample.

jacquesm 11y ago
DNA and anonymously do not go together.
- maxerickson 11y ago
  What use is the DNA match to third parties if there is no name/identity information paired with it? I guess it reveals a few bits of information if you know your killer submitted a sample to the project (but an easy way to avoid this threat is to not be a killer). Most of the threats I can think of start with the third party already having the DNA, so it's existence in the project database doesn't seem important.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    Someone else that is a (distant) family member of yours could supply enough information that by combining a few of those records you'd be as identifiable as if you had added your name and SSN to the sample. It's not a problem in isolation, it is by combining data from several sources that you can re-establish identity from an otherwise anonymous submission. For instance, let's say my brother submits his DNA non-anonymously to some database. By looking at the match between his profile and mine it could be established that I'm a close relative. A few more like that and some constraint trickery and you'd have me as the only solution to your equation. For an interesting perspective on this: consider what could happen if Facebook bought 23andme... (not much chance, fortunately given who founded 23andme but still).
    - maxerickson 11y ago
      The relative match can happen whether you have submitted your DNA or not. The third party that is searching using DNA gets "Bill's close relative" or "Bill's close relative that also anonymously submitted their DNA to the database". The specter of the service working internally to de-anonymize submissions is real enough though. I guess I don't really care about protecting myself from future dystopias, not really in a sense that I have nothing to hide (I find attention quite uncomfortable), more in a sense that I hope I'd stand up and shout loudly, rendering irrelevant all the past hiding-planning.
      - jacquesm 11y ago
        There's approximately 100,000 Amsterdam Jews that would stand with you and should just as loudly, only they can't. Lessons from the past can only be applied to the future if you're actually willing to learn them. Unfortunately, it seems as though those lessons weren't serious enough yet. I shudder to think of the kind of lesson that it would take to get people to understand these things in a way that we will actually live by those lessons in the future. Standing and shouting loudly is not much of a defense against an organized entity that is 'out to get you', even if that seems like a distant and remote possibility, the damage it could do is sufficient to warrant the - small - premium we'd pay in being careful with our data today. It's a bit like the rest of the security industry: probability of incidence * potential damage is a good way to figure out whether or not something is worth protecting against. I wrote a bit more about this here: http://jacquesmattheij.com/if-you-have-nothing-to-hide http://jacquesmattheij.com/if-you-have-nothing-to-hide Because I got very tired of the 'if you have nothing to hide' mantra, and even if you freely admit to finding attention quite uncomfortable you might be persuaded by the argument that seemingly innocent entries in databases have cost many lives already.
        maxerickson 11y ago
        Is it okay if I think the better lesson (vs hiding) is to not allow tyranny? Maybe it's overly optimistic or foolish or something, but it's still a shit world if only the people that (properly!) planned ahead survive. Edit: Imagine a modern populist horror that subjected everyone to mandatory genetic testing and slaughtered people with certain genes; You can't escape your genes, the problem would be the populist horror, not whether you were on some preexisting list of people that needed slaughterin'.
- curun1r 11y ago
  That may be true, but there are degrees of anonymity. The problem described in the article is not the DNA, but the association of the DNA with some other identifier. If all they have is a DNA sample, the only current way to look it up would be to match it against another DNA sample, which only tells you that you submitted a DNA sample. In the future, it may be possible to take a sequenced DNA and simulate what the person looks like, but we've barely crossed the threshold of having enough computing power to sequence a genome, so we're many years from that being possible and, even then, without knowing the donors age, you wouldn't be able to say what the donor looks like today.
  - currymj 11y ago
    You can still get a lot out of DNA today. There have already been murderers apprehended because their family members agreed to undergo DNA testing even though they didn't. IIRC it's possible in many cases to go from anonymous genome (and no other info) to a surname with a distressingly high degree of accuracy. It doesn't really involve trying to predict phenotypes or anything, it's basically just because you are distantly related with at least some people who have their names attached to DNA sequences. It becomes even easier to identify someone if you have some very limited extra information. Like, say, the postcode their sample was mailed from. My understanding is that basically the idea of an "anonymous" DNA sequence is going to quickly become meaningless, that unless the person being sampled takes extraordinary effort it will be possible to narrow down who they are. It only takes like 30-40 bits of information to uniquely identify a human.
  - dekhn 11y ago
    we've had enough computing power to sequence a genome for 15 years now.
13of40 11y ago
I have an uncle who got tested by a program like that a few years back. I'm not sure if it was the same one, but the results basically just said he was a male of Western European descent.

by curun1r 11y ago

jacquesm 11y ago

DNA and anonymously do not go together.

maxerickson 11y ago
What use is the DNA match to third parties if there is no name/identity information paired with it? I guess it reveals a few bits of information if you know your killer submitted a sample to the project (but an easy way to avoid this threat is to not be a killer). Most of the threats I can think of start with the third party already having the DNA, so it's existence in the project database doesn't seem important.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  Someone else that is a (distant) family member of yours could supply enough information that by combining a few of those records you'd be as identifiable as if you had added your name and SSN to the sample. It's not a problem in isolation, it is by combining data from several sources that you can re-establish identity from an otherwise anonymous submission. For instance, let's say my brother submits his DNA non-anonymously to some database. By looking at the match between his profile and mine it could be established that I'm a close relative. A few more like that and some constraint trickery and you'd have me as the only solution to your equation. For an interesting perspective on this: consider what could happen if Facebook bought 23andme... (not much chance, fortunately given who founded 23andme but still).
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    The relative match can happen whether you have submitted your DNA or not. The third party that is searching using DNA gets "Bill's close relative" or "Bill's close relative that also anonymously submitted their DNA to the database". The specter of the service working internally to de-anonymize submissions is real enough though. I guess I don't really care about protecting myself from future dystopias, not really in a sense that I have nothing to hide (I find attention quite uncomfortable), more in a sense that I hope I'd stand up and shout loudly, rendering irrelevant all the past hiding-planning.
    - jacquesm 11y ago
      There's approximately 100,000 Amsterdam Jews that would stand with you and should just as loudly, only they can't. Lessons from the past can only be applied to the future if you're actually willing to learn them. Unfortunately, it seems as though those lessons weren't serious enough yet. I shudder to think of the kind of lesson that it would take to get people to understand these things in a way that we will actually live by those lessons in the future. Standing and shouting loudly is not much of a defense against an organized entity that is 'out to get you', even if that seems like a distant and remote possibility, the damage it could do is sufficient to warrant the - small - premium we'd pay in being careful with our data today. It's a bit like the rest of the security industry: probability of incidence * potential damage is a good way to figure out whether or not something is worth protecting against. I wrote a bit more about this here: http://jacquesmattheij.com/if-you-have-nothing-to-hide http://jacquesmattheij.com/if-you-have-nothing-to-hide Because I got very tired of the 'if you have nothing to hide' mantra, and even if you freely admit to finding attention quite uncomfortable you might be persuaded by the argument that seemingly innocent entries in databases have cost many lives already.
      - maxerickson 11y ago
        Is it okay if I think the better lesson (vs hiding) is to not allow tyranny? Maybe it's overly optimistic or foolish or something, but it's still a shit world if only the people that (properly!) planned ahead survive. Edit: Imagine a modern populist horror that subjected everyone to mandatory genetic testing and slaughtered people with certain genes; You can't escape your genes, the problem would be the populist horror, not whether you were on some preexisting list of people that needed slaughterin'.
curun1r 11y ago
That may be true, but there are degrees of anonymity. The problem described in the article is not the DNA, but the association of the DNA with some other identifier. If all they have is a DNA sample, the only current way to look it up would be to match it against another DNA sample, which only tells you that you submitted a DNA sample. In the future, it may be possible to take a sequenced DNA and simulate what the person looks like, but we've barely crossed the threshold of having enough computing power to sequence a genome, so we're many years from that being possible and, even then, without knowing the donors age, you wouldn't be able to say what the donor looks like today.
- currymj 11y ago
  You can still get a lot out of DNA today. There have already been murderers apprehended because their family members agreed to undergo DNA testing even though they didn't. IIRC it's possible in many cases to go from anonymous genome (and no other info) to a surname with a distressingly high degree of accuracy. It doesn't really involve trying to predict phenotypes or anything, it's basically just because you are distantly related with at least some people who have their names attached to DNA sequences. It becomes even easier to identify someone if you have some very limited extra information. Like, say, the postcode their sample was mailed from. My understanding is that basically the idea of an "anonymous" DNA sequence is going to quickly become meaningless, that unless the person being sampled takes extraordinary effort it will be possible to narrow down who they are. It only takes like 30-40 bits of information to uniquely identify a human.
- dekhn 11y ago
  we've had enough computing power to sequence a genome for 15 years now.

13of40 11y ago

I have an uncle who got tested by a program like that a few years back. I'm not sure if it was the same one, but the results basically just said he was a male of Western European descent.