Incode Labs on DNA Discovery Gifts
By Incode Labs - Published 2018-12-24
This article is not a joke, this is serious. This is a PSA and we want you to be safe.
Hello, this is Incode Labs, the company sponsoring Huntington Post and creator of Clandestine, the software on the Huntington Post. This is just a short message warning you about DNA discovery gifts.
DNA is well known to be the source code of humans. However, many companies that do private DNA, do a lot more than tell you your DNA profile and ancestors. In fact, one company, that cannot be mentioned for potential legal reasons, has recently started selling the copies they have kept of your DNA. Yes, it is immensely useful to know your DNA, especially for medical reasons, but it also has all the information you would never want public. Do you want a potential employer to know your expected lifespan? No, that will lead to bias. Do you want companies to give you targeted advertising based on your DNA? No, that leads to censorship and gives too much power to corporations. You do not want these companies to keep a copy of you. They can and will sell you.
And it's not just the companies that you need to be worried about. Let us take a look at this from another perspective, one with much more malicious intent.
How secure are these companies? Do you trust them entirely? Can you trust their servers and warehouses with a copy of your life? It may sound paranoid, but where would a hacker looking for a lot of personal data to steal go? DNA Discovery Corporations. Their efforts are so focused on the user experience and on research and selling your life away to other corporations that they may completely forget not make the single dumbest mistake they could make. There are far too many ways to attack a website that do not require much skill. I will name a few: SQL Injection, consecutive databases, scraping, man-in-the-middle, forgetting to install a freaking firewall, exploiting old SSL certificates, ect. (These are in order of easiest to hardest if your curious, I do not mind mentioning these because they shouldn’t have been possible in the first place). These are all really easy to not fix, actually pretty easy to prevent, and too easy to exploit. Any one of these could end up with severe data breaches that leak everyone's DNA, including yours, and your family’s.
You should not take these gifts. You might as well sign your life away. If you do want to do this for whatever your reasons may be, your grandma was an Irish witch, whatever, investigate the company first. Read their privacy policy, their EULA, and review their security measures. And, if you need, ask a friendly tech nerd or a lawyer if it is safe.
Stay safe, own yourself. Do not pay to have your life taken away like it’s an old CRT television.
Thank you, and have a happy holiday.
