Security Breach Exposed More Than One Million DNA Profiles On A Major Genealogy Database

[upnorth]

Content source

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/hackers-gedmatch-dna-privacy

On July 19, genealogy enthusiasts who use the website GEDmatch to upload their DNA information and find relatives to fill in their family trees got an unpleasant surprise. Suddenly, more than a million DNA profiles that had been hidden from cops using the site to find partial matches to crime scene DNA were available for police to search. The news has undermined efforts by Verogen, the forensic genetics company that purchased GEDmatch last December, to convince users that it would protect their privacy while pursuing a business based on using genetic genealogy to help solve violent crimes.

A second alarm came on July 21, when MyHeritage, a genealogy website based in Israel, announced that some of its users had been subjected to a phishing attack to obtain their log-in details for the site — apparently targeting email addresses obtained in the attack on GEDmatch just two days before.

A Security Breach Exposed More Than One Million DNA Profiles On A Major Genealogy Database

First GEDmatch, the DNA database that helped identify the Golden State Killer, was hacked. Then email addresses from its users were used in a phishing attack on another leading genealogy site.

www.buzzfeednews.com

 

[Ink]

Oxymoron.

"convince users that it would protect their privacy while pursuing a business based on using genetic genealogy to help solve violent crimes"

 

[Stopspying]

Its bad enough having passwords and such like stolen, but they can be changed, I don't fancy having a DNA transplant!

I hope that people who unthinkingly upload more and more of their data, and selves, think seriously now before doing so. I suspect that its a waste of time hoping much as people have been trained to 'like', 'share'# etc etc and probably don't 'like' articles like this as it won't enter their filter bubbles.

Another article on this story -

Website Security Breach Exposes 1 Million DNA Profiles

A genealogy website used to catch one of California’s most wanted serial killers remained shut down Thursday after a security breach exposed the DNA profiles of more than a million people to law enforcement agencies

www.securityweek.com