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Hair on fire 3 out of 5

Do you want to find our more about your family history by doing a DNA test, or maybe you want to give a DNA test as a gift? You need to know which testing companies protect your DNA data (and which do not)! Our special guest is Jules Polonetsky, CEO of the Future of Privacy Forum. 

Background:

Roughly three months after local investigators used a DNA-comparison service to track down a man police believed to be the Golden State Killer, who allegedly raped and killed dozens of women in California in the 1970s and 1980s. Investigators identified the suspect using a decades-old DNA sample obtained from the crime scene, which they uploaded to GEDmatch, a crowdsourced database of roughly a million distinct DNA sets shared by volunteers.

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/07/31/ancestry-andme-others-say-they-will-follow-these-rules-when-giving-dna-data-businesses-or-police/

The GINA Privacy Act: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_Information_Nondiscrimination_Act

Best practices for Genetics Services according to the Future of Privacy Forum: https://fpf.org/2018/07/31/privacy-best-practices-for-consumer-genetic-testing-services/

These are the DNA testing companies that have agreed to the Privacy Best Practices of the Future of Privacy Forum:

• Ancestry
• 23andMe.com
• Helix
• Habit
• Heritage

BRIEF GUEST BIO:

Jules Polonetsky serves as CEO of the Future of Privacy Forum, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit organization that serves as a catalyst for privacy leadership and scholarship, advancing principled data practices in support of emerging technologies. Jules previous roles have included serving as Chief Privacy Officer at AOL and before that Chief Privacy Officer at DoubleClick, as Consumer Affairs Commissioner for New York City..

https://fpf.org/jules-polonetsky/