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this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2024
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I'm honestly asking what the impact to the users is from this breach. Wasn't 23andMe already free to selling or distribute this data to anybody they wanted to, without notifying the users?
That's not how this works. They are running internationally, and GDPR would hit them like a brick if they did that.
I would assume they had some deals with law enforcement to transmit data one narrow circumstances.
Well if you signed up there and did an ancestry inquiry, those hackers can now without a doubt link you to your ancestry. They might be able to doxx famous people and in the wrong hands this could lead to stalking, and even more dangerous situations. Basically everyone who is signed up there has lost their privacy and has their sensitive data at the mercy of a criminal.
This is different. This is a breach and if you have a company taking care of such sensitive data, it's your job to do the best you can to protect it. If they really do blame this on the users, they are in for a class action and hefty fine from the EU, especially now that they've established even more guidelines towards companies regarding the maintenance of sensitive data. This will hurt on some regard.
It's not that they said:
What they said was (paraphrasing):
Which, honestly?
Completely valid. The only way to stop this would be for 23andme to monitor these "hack lists" and notify any email that also has an account on their website.
Side note:
Any tech company can provide info if asked by the police. The good ones require a warrant first, but as data owners they can provide it without a warrant.
That's not 23 and me fault at all then. Basically boils down to password reuse. All i would say is they should have provided 2fa if they didn't.
At this point, every company not using 2FA is at fault for data hacks. Most people using the internet have logins to 100's of sites. Knowing where to do to change all your passwords is nearly impossible for a seasoned internet user.
A seasoned internet user has a password manager.
Not using one is your negligence, no one else's.
One password to break them all, and in the dark web bind them.
The sad thing is you have to balance the costs of requiring your customer to use 2FA with the risk of losing business because of it and the risk of losing reputation because your customers got hacked and suffered loss.
The sad thing is some (actuall most) people are brain dead, you will lose business if you make them use a complicated password or MFA and it puts them in the position to make a hard call.
They took the easy route and gave the customer the option to use MfA if they wished and unfortunately a lot of people declined. Those people should not have the ability to claim damages (or vote, for that matter)
I feel like that argument could be made for some things, but inherently cannot apply to companies involved in personal, genetic, or financial information.