A programmer came up with a way to block users from websites based on their DNA. The incident shows that personal DNA from companies like 23andMe can be used in unwelcome ways.
Nathan Siemers / Creative Commons / Via Flickr: nosha
23andMe bills itself as a company that "democratizes personal genetics" for the world. And that description's not necessarily all that far off: For $99, customers spit into an at-home kit, mail it in, and then go online to learn about their ancestral origins and far-flung relatives.
But consumers also get their raw DNA, in the form of big, downloadable spreadsheets filled with rows of genetic code, and they can do whatever they want with it — and thanks to 23andMe's open API, developers can do the same. Sometimes, this democratization of information yields more than what 23andMe likely bargained for.
This week, an anonymous programmer posted on GitHub an early-stage program called Genetic Access Control. The third-party program hooked up to the company's API and mined the 23andMe accounts of users who agreed to share their information. Genetic Access Control would then scan that data for information about "sex, ancestry, disease susceptibility, and arbitrary characteristics" — and then restrict users' access to websites based on this information.
For example, people with only the "right" amount of European ancestry would be allowed to access a website that used Genetic Access Control:
Other suggested uses, according to Genetic Access Control:
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