*Actual* privacy focused genetic testing companies.

[iovey]

I'm trying to research genetic testing companies since me and my girlfriend are interested in learning more about our genetic history, but frankly I'm getting really annoyed at getting 2 pages down a promising looking companies website before finding the paragraph where they legally have to admit that they're still selling your data, just that they swear it's super private and only for research. Preferably I don't even want them to store my data any longer than it takes them to put my test results into a readable format and send it to me on a flash drive, but I'll settle for just actually not going to sell my data. Are there any companies that are actually decent, or am I going to continuously hit dead ends here?

 

[Oshino Shinobu]

Basically all of them run off the model of selling data in order to offer the tesitng at a reasonable price. It would be prohibitavly expensive otherwise.

[SimplyChunk]

If you're not paying/paying little money for a product.  You ARE the product

[Holmes108]

42 minutes ago, ChonkerFox said:

If you're not paying/paying little money for a product.  You ARE the product

 

Don't think any of these guys are offering their service for free.

[SimplyChunk]

47 minutes ago, Holmes108 said:

 

Don't think any of these guys are offering their service for free.

No but the model is still the same.  Charge an attractive amount for the work then make up the shortfall by selling on the data

[iovey]

10 hours ago, ChonkerFox said:

No but the model is still the same.  Charge an attractive amount for the work then make up the shortfall by selling on the data

I understand that that's the model, but how much more would it actually have to cost to keep data private? Double? Triple? I guess you get to double dip if you're only *pretending* to care about privacy but it feels like *someone* should at least have tried to run this business without data selling by now.

[LAwLz]

Even if you found a company that pinky promised it, you could never really be sure that they upheld their promise. In many cases, governments could force these companies to hand over your DNA to them without disclosing it to you. Even the world's most honest company could be gagged and forced to hand over your DNA to a party where it is no longer in their control, and this could happen even in countries like the the US and possibly EU.

[Heliian]

2 hours ago, LAwLz said:

hand over your DNA

All of them do it.  

 

Either you put your DNA into the public realm or you don't use these types of services. 

 

My family did it and it was fun, the results might not even be accurate.  I like to think that they are now building superclones with my DNA in a plot for world domination. 

[Guest]

On 4/19/2023 at 11:19 AM, Holmes108 said:

On 4/19/2023 at 10:36 AM, ChonkerFox said:

If you're not paying/paying little money for a product.  You ARE the product

Don't think any of these guys are offering their service for free.

 

[Holmes108]

11 minutes ago, fpo said:

 

 

That post was edited after our interaction, thanks.

 

And it's far less reasonable to expect customers to know "they're the product" when paying $100-$200+ for a service, compared to using Facebook for free. There's no reason an average Joe would know that it's heavily subsidized.

[Guest]

Just now, Holmes108 said:

 

That post was edited after our interaction, thanks.

 

Spoiler

no

 

Just now, Holmes108 said:

And it's far less reasonable to expect customers to know "they're the product" when paying $100-$200+ for a service, compared to using Facebook for free.

It's unreasonable, but still the truth. 

[Holmes108]

2 minutes ago, fpo said:

 

  Hide contents

no

 

It's unreasonable, but still the truth. 

 

Oops, you're correct about the edit, I clearly misread it the first time. Apologies.

 

Sure, it's the truth, and a good public service announcement for this product. But yeah, almost nobody would know in this instance. Which is annoying.

 

 

[Guest]

Just now, Holmes108 said:

 

Oops, you're correct about the edit, I clearly misread it the first time. Apologies.

No worries lol. 

Just now, Holmes108 said:

Sure, it's the truth, and a good public service announcement for this product. But yeah, almost nobody would know in this instance. Which is annoying.

 

 

Gotta teach scam protection in school. 

[Spotty]

On 4/20/2023 at 12:27 AM, iovey said:

I'm trying to research genetic testing companies since me and my girlfriend are interested in learning more about our genetic history

You should temper your expectations on what DNA testing services can tell you about your 'genetic history'.

My limited understanding of how they work is they'll look at a number of genes that they've done surveys of from sample groups to determine which genes are more common in certain ethnicities. For example if there's a certain gene that 80% of Italians have that the rest of the population might only have 15% of the time if that gene is present in you they might use that to say that you have some degree of Italian heritage, even though all it's indicating is that some genes you have are more common in those ethnicities and does not actually indicate any Italian heritage in your family.

If you know your biological family (not adopted) you're probably better off just asking your parents or grandparents about your family history if you are interested.

 

 

Also just for laughs South Park did a funny episode on those genetic tests.

 

[Needfuldoer]

1 hour ago, Spotty said:

If you know your biological family (not adopted) you're probably better off just asking your parents or grandparents about your family history if you are interested.

This.

 

If you're fortunate enough that you can still talk with your elders, record their stories. Ask them to label who's who in photos. It's a lot more interesting than just spitting in a tube and mailing it to a lab.

 

You don't want to inherit albums and boxes of photos that nobody who's still alive can identify.