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You literally drop your DNA in public everywhere you go. It’d be like walking around dropping copies of your bank statements 24/7 and then saying that they are
by breck 7y ago
You literally drop your DNA in public everywhere you go. It’d be like walking around dropping copies of your bank statements 24/7 and then saying that they are private. Nearly all of it is a straight clone off the main branch anyway. So I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Source—I do genomics work at a cancer lab.
- gvhst 7y agoRight, however in public its a bit more challenging to identify a DNA sample with the identity of its owner. One can get this via a targeted attack, yet this seems in the same spirit of going through someone's trash to find their bank statements.
- breck 7y agoThat’s a fair point. Operating a global database that connects someone’s DNA to their identity brings up different issues than just being able to easily sequence someone’s DNA in a “targeted attack”. I think worrying about keeping your DNA private is a fools errand (See oxford nanopore and extrapolate), but discussing what companies can do with these databases is probably a more fruitful effort.