5 ms·

Hmmm. As a consumer, am I allowed to submit someone else's DNA to 23andMe without their consent?

by scarmig 9y ago

dzink 9y ago
Sounds like they submitted to another, smaller, site.
- scarmig 9y ago
  Yeah. I'm more wondering about the general case, though. If I were an insurance company, what's to stop me from hiring investigators to go through customers' garbage to find their DNA, analyze it, and then take "appropriate" action?
  - dzink 9y ago
    Genealogy sites have no way of confirming the DNA submitted belongs to the person submitting it. Trash left on the street is considered abandoned property, so fair game for identity thieves and insurers alike. However, unless you know the person lives alone and has had no other guests between trash pickups, you can't be sure the garbage DNA is theirs. More likely an insurer might try to get a sample during a house visit or, stalking out the target at a cafe, or a hairdresser appointment, you name it. Life insurance companies can come to your house and get your EKG already, a swab would be easy.
    - mrunkel 9y ago
      >Trash left on the street is considered abandoned property. I wouldn't be so sure of that interpretation. In most places that I've lived, you could be arrested for taking things out of the trash, whether in front of your house, or even if dumped on the side of the road.
      - dekhn 9y ago
        Nope, law is pretty clear on this one: people can take things from trash.
      - astura 9y ago
        No you can't, in the US the case law is extremely clear that trash is fair game. See: California v. Greenwood That being said, you can't trespass to obtain the trash.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > If I were an insurance company, what's to stop me from hiring investigators to go through customers' garbage to find their DNA, analyze it, and then take "appropriate" action? Laws against discrimination, such as those for both genetic information and pre-existing conditions that already apply to health insurance in the US. Even if nothing stops you from getting the information, you are prohibited from using it.
    - zyx321 9y ago
      You can't use it officially, but if you're sneaky, you can identify potential targets for parallel construction.
  - pnutjam 9y ago
    This law: https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/testing/discrimination https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/testing/discrimination
  - fixermark 9y ago
    If you were an insurance company, what's to stop you from hiring investigators to tail a customer and figure out how many times per week they stop at McDonald's for breakfast?
anigbrowl 9y ago
Do you mean, will you incur any legal penalty for doing so, or just be violating their ToS? I don't believe so but haven't researched it in depth. It'd be tricky to sue because the right of publicity is generally treated as a property interest and you wouldn't necessarily be able to show any economic loss. I'm not an attorney though. In practical terms, I'm sure it's against the ToS but really the service providers have no way of knowing unless the person has already submitted their DNA and your submission raises a red flag, thus cutting you off from the information you desire. This is interesting from a game-theoretic standpoint in that it might be more secure to give your information to every website and then be the designated owner, but it probably wouldn't shield you from law enforcement getting the same information via subpoena. It's an uphill argument to say that a general right of privacy weighs heavier than the unsolved cases of 10 murders and 50 rapes, a record which will probably be broken again in future. I don't think DNA testing companies have much incentive to screen potential customers since each person can only submit DNA once without raising another red flag.
- prawn 9y ago
  A nefarious genetic catalogue company could offer a bounty for people submitting DNA samples and identities.
  - astura 9y ago
    Interesting idea, it could even be opt in and explicitly for crime investigation purposes.
  - fixermark 9y ago
    To be useful, they'd of course need a solution for verifying authenticity of the input data. Otherwise, it's just noise and we already have historical examples of that design failing (such as "informants" handing over people to the US as terror suspects).
  - reaperducer 9y ago
    >A nefarious genetic catalogue company Or simply Facebook. Imagine the improvement in advertising accuracy if it could use your DNA as a unique key in its database. Match
Declanomous 9y ago
Ignoring practical issues with obtaining the sample, I think a good lawyer could probably find a way to sue you for any damages that you caused. As for whether it's a criminal act, I think that it might be a form of assault, maybe. I know it would violate certain state laws regarding biometric data, but the penalty for violating those laws appears to be civil by and large, not criminal.
- gnode 9y ago
  > Ignoring practical issues with obtaining the sample > As for whether it's a criminal act, I think that it might be a form of assault, maybe. Are you suggesting that using their DNA without their consent is assault, or the taking of it from them? It'd be trivial to take it without contact with them, from e.g. a hair, or their toothbrush, particularly if you live with them.
  - Declanomous 9y ago
    23andme and ancestry.com use a process which needs more genetic material than is available from hair or toothbrushes. You have to get a fair amount of spit in a tube.
dzhiurgis 9y ago
Weird bit about these types of sites they are quite strict about using your real name, but do not really check your ID (but leaves it to post office I guess). On a fun side, I wonder what would happen if I submitted dogs or pigs saliva.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  They would know, the DNA is different. There are animal DNA matching sites for breeders' use. Dog DNA is especially interesting because their genes are more 'slippery' than those of other species.
  - fixermark 9y ago
    Interesting. What does 'slippery' mean in this context?
    - fixermark 9y ago
      (answered my own question: mutation rate from generation to generation in dogs is higher on average than in primates. Mechanism is not clear; one hypothesis is that mammals have DNA error correction "machinery" in their cells that is less effective in the canine genome. It's also unclear whether this has any impact on the evolution of dogs in terms of them being somehow more malleable to selective breeding than other species).
fma 9y ago
Reminds me of GATACCA where the woman kisses a man and the goes to a booth to submit the DNA to make sure he is a 'good catch'...
- eecc 9y ago
  Yeah and made me wonder if we'll end up having to daily scrub ourselves in an incinerator...
Matt3o12_ 9y ago
Couldn’t this be seen as identify theft? It is like saying. I am John Doe from Bakers Street except that a complete DNA sample would be even more conclusive (I.e. impossible to accidentally to use to hide one’s identity).
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

Hmmm. As a consumer, am I allowed to submit someone else's DNA to 23andMe without their consent?

dzink 9y ago

Sounds like they submitted to another, smaller, site.

scarmig 9y ago
Yeah. I'm more wondering about the general case, though. If I were an insurance company, what's to stop me from hiring investigators to go through customers' garbage to find their DNA, analyze it, and then take "appropriate" action?
- dzink 9y ago
  Genealogy sites have no way of confirming the DNA submitted belongs to the person submitting it. Trash left on the street is considered abandoned property, so fair game for identity thieves and insurers alike. However, unless you know the person lives alone and has had no other guests between trash pickups, you can't be sure the garbage DNA is theirs. More likely an insurer might try to get a sample during a house visit or, stalking out the target at a cafe, or a hairdresser appointment, you name it. Life insurance companies can come to your house and get your EKG already, a swab would be easy.
  - mrunkel 9y ago
    >Trash left on the street is considered abandoned property. I wouldn't be so sure of that interpretation. In most places that I've lived, you could be arrested for taking things out of the trash, whether in front of your house, or even if dumped on the side of the road.
    - dekhn 9y ago
      Nope, law is pretty clear on this one: people can take things from trash.
    - astura 9y ago
      No you can't, in the US the case law is extremely clear that trash is fair game. See: California v. Greenwood That being said, you can't trespass to obtain the trash.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > If I were an insurance company, what's to stop me from hiring investigators to go through customers' garbage to find their DNA, analyze it, and then take "appropriate" action? Laws against discrimination, such as those for both genetic information and pre-existing conditions that already apply to health insurance in the US. Even if nothing stops you from getting the information, you are prohibited from using it.
  - zyx321 9y ago
    You can't use it officially, but if you're sneaky, you can identify potential targets for parallel construction.
- pnutjam 9y ago
  This law: https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/testing/discrimination https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/testing/discrimination
- fixermark 9y ago
  If you were an insurance company, what's to stop you from hiring investigators to tail a customer and figure out how many times per week they stop at McDonald's for breakfast?

anigbrowl 9y ago

Do you mean, will you incur any legal penalty for doing so, or just be violating their ToS? I don't believe so but haven't researched it in depth. It'd be tricky to sue because the right of publicity is generally treated as a property interest and you wouldn't necessarily be able to show any economic loss. I'm not an attorney though. In practical terms, I'm sure it's against the ToS but really the service providers have no way of knowing unless the person has already submitted their DNA and your submission raises a red flag, thus cutting you off from the information you desire. This is interesting from a game-theoretic standpoint in that it might be more secure to give your information to every website and then be the designated owner, but it probably wouldn't shield you from law enforcement getting the same information via subpoena. It's an uphill argument to say that a general right of privacy weighs heavier than the unsolved cases of 10 murders and 50 rapes, a record which will probably be broken again in future. I don't think DNA testing companies have much incentive to screen potential customers since each person can only submit DNA once without raising another red flag.

prawn 9y ago
A nefarious genetic catalogue company could offer a bounty for people submitting DNA samples and identities.
- astura 9y ago
  Interesting idea, it could even be opt in and explicitly for crime investigation purposes.
- fixermark 9y ago
  To be useful, they'd of course need a solution for verifying authenticity of the input data. Otherwise, it's just noise and we already have historical examples of that design failing (such as "informants" handing over people to the US as terror suspects).
- reaperducer 9y ago
  >A nefarious genetic catalogue company Or simply Facebook. Imagine the improvement in advertising accuracy if it could use your DNA as a unique key in its database. Match

Declanomous 9y ago

Ignoring practical issues with obtaining the sample, I think a good lawyer could probably find a way to sue you for any damages that you caused. As for whether it's a criminal act, I think that it might be a form of assault, maybe. I know it would violate certain state laws regarding biometric data, but the penalty for violating those laws appears to be civil by and large, not criminal.

gnode 9y ago
> Ignoring practical issues with obtaining the sample > As for whether it's a criminal act, I think that it might be a form of assault, maybe. Are you suggesting that using their DNA without their consent is assault, or the taking of it from them? It'd be trivial to take it without contact with them, from e.g. a hair, or their toothbrush, particularly if you live with them.
- Declanomous 9y ago
  23andme and ancestry.com use a process which needs more genetic material than is available from hair or toothbrushes. You have to get a fair amount of spit in a tube.

dzhiurgis 9y ago

Weird bit about these types of sites they are quite strict about using your real name, but do not really check your ID (but leaves it to post office I guess). On a fun side, I wonder what would happen if I submitted dogs or pigs saliva.

anigbrowl 9y ago
They would know, the DNA is different. There are animal DNA matching sites for breeders' use. Dog DNA is especially interesting because their genes are more 'slippery' than those of other species.
- fixermark 9y ago
  Interesting. What does 'slippery' mean in this context?
  - fixermark 9y ago
    (answered my own question: mutation rate from generation to generation in dogs is higher on average than in primates. Mechanism is not clear; one hypothesis is that mammals have DNA error correction "machinery" in their cells that is less effective in the canine genome. It's also unclear whether this has any impact on the evolution of dogs in terms of them being somehow more malleable to selective breeding than other species).

fma 9y ago

Reminds me of GATACCA where the woman kisses a man and the goes to a booth to submit the DNA to make sure he is a 'good catch'...

eecc 9y ago
Yeah and made me wonder if we'll end up having to daily scrub ourselves in an incinerator...

Matt3o12_ 9y ago

Couldn’t this be seen as identify theft? It is like saying. I am John Doe from Bakers Street except that a complete DNA sample would be even more conclusive (I.e. impossible to accidentally to use to hide one’s identity).

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]