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Accusatory linkbait title. Makes it sound like it was publicly shown. The "outing" was a user of 23andMe confronting her mother. Also making this case less rand

Accusatory linkbait title. Makes it sound like it was publicly shown. The "outing" was a user of 23andMe confronting her mother. Also making this case less random was that the man who was adopted joined specifically to try and find out about his origins. Finally, why not mention turning off the family finder feature as the first option, in the text below? Seems to be optimizing for sensationalism. If you’re afraid to find hidden relatives in your closet, you might want to stay away from DNA sites, or use 23andMe and simply turn off its “family finder” feature — which is basically like Facebook’s friend finder, but using genetic code instead of email addresses.

ajross 15y ago
Yeah, this is distorting. What happened was that two adults got their own genomes sequenced and discovered they were siblings and that their parents had hidden this fact. There was no privacy violated at all here, both of them had every right to this information.
- _delirium 15y ago
  There's traditionally been a view that parents who give babies up for adoption have a right to privacy, and not even the children, upon reaching adulthood, can retrieve that information. The main purpose of that policy is to encourage adoption over other alternatives, such as in earlier eras infanticide, and in more modern eras elective abortion. Now, technology makes it so that the children themselves can retrieve the information even if the state considers it private and won't divulge it. I tend to agree that this isn't doing anything wrong, but it unsettles the previous privacy status-quo and the policy that was based on it.
wpietri 15y ago
It's not just that one has to turn off Relative Finder. When I signed up for 23 and Me, I had to explicitly opt in to Relative Finder. And then I had to opt in again to finding any relatives closer than 2nd degree cousins, with a memorable warning section explaining that I might find out things I didn't want to know.

ajross 15y ago

Yeah, this is distorting. What happened was that two adults got their own genomes sequenced and discovered they were siblings and that their parents had hidden this fact. There was no privacy violated at all here, both of them had every right to this information.

_delirium 15y ago
There's traditionally been a view that parents who give babies up for adoption have a right to privacy, and not even the children, upon reaching adulthood, can retrieve that information. The main purpose of that policy is to encourage adoption over other alternatives, such as in earlier eras infanticide, and in more modern eras elective abortion. Now, technology makes it so that the children themselves can retrieve the information even if the state considers it private and won't divulge it. I tend to agree that this isn't doing anything wrong, but it unsettles the previous privacy status-quo and the policy that was based on it.

wpietri 15y ago

It's not just that one has to turn off Relative Finder. When I signed up for 23 and Me, I had to explicitly opt in to Relative Finder. And then I had to opt in again to finding any relatives closer than 2nd degree cousins, with a memorable warning section explaining that I might find out things I didn't want to know.