Privacy issues have come into the spotlight once again with a significant data breach incident at 23andMe, the leading genetic testing company.
We recently reported that the company acknowledged that a security breach had compromised the personal data of about 14,000 customers. In what seemed to be a ripple effect, the hackers gained access to “a substantial amount of files with ancestral profile information of additional users.”
However, despite the serious nature of the breach, the extent of the damage was not fully disclosed by the company earlier in October when the breach came to light.
The situation is actually even worse. As TechCrunch reported, the magnitude of the breach became starkly clear when, on Saturday, 23andMe spokesperson Katie Watson revealed to TechCrunch that close to 7 million users had had their data exposed in the breach—far beyond the 14,000 initially reported.
