Genetic data collected by 23andMe is potentially at risk following the company’s recent bankruptcy filing, as it may be sold to another company, to which customers did not originally consent to their data being sold.
Customers are urged to delete their data from the platform, which is possible via the Settings option, although full deletion does not occur and 23andMe retains some personal details.
It is recommended that additional information, such as date of birth and sex, be scrambled before deletion to render the retained data useless.
Customers who have opted for their genetic samples to be stored by 23andMe will have these destroyed as part of the deletion process.
Data will still exist in any scientific studies customers had previously consented to, but will not be used in future research projects.