It's a mistake to infer that this means "regular" 23andMe results are similarly affected. The exome project was clearly labeled as a research one and the data was returned with no guarantees whatsoever. The "regular" 23andMe SNPs go through a multitude of comprehensive checks before they are used in reports. Not to say that occasional issues don't crop up, but it's apples and oranges.

Edit: I was the first engineer at 23andMe, so I have a decent idea about what's involved in the analysis and quality control.

You can. Insurance spreads risk across population pools. You have to carve out those pools somehow, so you use broad variables like age and gender. The problem is genetic information has potential to make the pools too small.

You don't have to carve out those pools at all. Insurance is workable if everyone is lumped into a single huge pool. The trouble is that a company which is able to break their clientele into smaller pools will outcompete those who aren't, so you get a bit of a race to the bottom.

Indeed. Singe Payer + Universal Coverage = FTW.

And from a payer perspective, it's problematic if a sizable population secretly learns that they are at meaningfully greater risk of health problems. Those individuals could then adversely select against the payers by buying Cadillac healthcare plans.

Knowing a little bit about the culture of the company, I hope that they will be transparent about any laws they have to comply with, a la Google Transparency report: http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/government...

To my knowledge, this has not come up yet, but I'm sure it will one day.

They ran an exome sequencing pilot recently, so sequencing is certainly coming.

Broadly speaking, because there are laws on the books that prohibit using genetic information for health insurance discrimination.

Also, California has put a more stringent law on the books in 2011: http://www.privacylives.com/california-passes-bill-to-prohib...

And customs duties. They are not trying to gouge you, AFAIK.

@Dramatize: but the US might charge them import duties when you send it back. Not sure if the US has a duty-free allowance like we do.

There won't be duties as it's under $1000. I did realise after that it included the return postage.

It's OK. Nobody gets your genome. It would be suicidal for them to share, plus there are laws on the books (GINA at the federal level, a stronger law recently passed in CA).

Also, quite a few people have been posting their data openly, for example here: http://opensnp.org/ . So far I am not aware of any adverse effects. Not saying there won't be any ever, but I would be a lot more paranoid about my browser history.

That would be some glitch :) But no, it's the latter.

Yep, running tests with Optimizely. Surely they have updated it by now.

Next time you think you discovered a gigantic easily exploitable security hole in a mature service that has been around for 10+ years, please think again and research it a lot more before you make a fuss about it. It's possible, of course - but not very damn likely. It's much more likely you are confused. I tried to tell Matt Langley that yesterday on Quora, but he didn't quite buy it, and now he's drinking one big mug of mea culpa. Hopefully this thing will blow over soon, but as a former employee it pains me to see PayPal having to debunk this in social media this morning.