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Are any of the DNA testing companies trustworthy? (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by Snapz@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
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So obviously we're all on Lemmy for a complicated combination of reasons, but we all likely share some common ground, namely...

  • need for privacy
  • need to own/control/access the data we produce
  • healthy skepticism about the trustworthiness of for-profit corporations, in general

So if we don't want meta to know even innocuous things; like how many times/when we message our grandma, and we don't google to know when we're searching for remedies to a rash, and we don't want reddit to... Well we just don't want reddit - we don't want them to profit from or weaponize that data against us in a myriad ways.

We also don't want them artificially removing features and creating tiered layers of service/value hidden behind a paywall (I understand this is very present in the some of the commercially available DNA services).

So that brings me to DNA testing services. Since they started to emerge in the mainstream they were immediately an interesting, exciting novelty and I also knew it was data I wouldn't feel safe trusting with a for-profit org - with broken systems like law enforcement and health insurers on speed dial and just salivating for the goodies they collect.

So all that considered, any groups that provide this type of service that you do trust/use, and why?

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[-] Devi@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago

Most companies don't cooperate with law enforcement, it's only Gedmatch who do currently and you need to personally opt in to that because they originally gave free access and there was a legal challenge. None will give info to health insurance companies, privacy laws in most places wouldn't allow that. All of them have to let you delete your info whenever you want.

However if you don't trust for profit orgs then you're out of luck. Many of them are run by the LDS though, and their goal is to get your family tree so that they can baptise your dead relatives, so like, kinda harmless as far as corporate strategy goes.

I've had mine done and nobody has made an evil clone to frame me for killing the king yet, so it's not too bad.

[-] snowe@programming.dev 0 points 1 year ago

Do you have a source on that LDS thing? I’d like to read about it

[-] Hhffggshn@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago

Hundreds of thousands of Holocaust victims were posthumously "converted" to the LDS cult.

[-] snowe@programming.dev 0 points 1 year ago

hm. that doesn't say anything about the mormans owning genealogy dbs though.

[-] Hhffggshn@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago

The Mormons created the databases. They literally went to Europe and volunteered to manually enter handwritten records that survived World War ii. Source, I used to work for ancestry.

[-] snowe@programming.dev 0 points 1 year ago

That has nothing to do with dna databases. I understand mormans did a ton of ancestry research, but none of those sources say anything about using DNA genome sequencing to accomplish what you’re talking about.

[-] Hhffggshn@lemmy.ml -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I wasn't talking about dna. I was talking about genealogical databases. After the DNA hit is made, they use a genealogy database to find relatives. Also... Who do you think owns Ancestry DNA?? Look up My Family Inc. They're Mormons.

[-] snowe@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago

The entire point of the post was about DNA sequencing. If you’re going to change the subject say so.

this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2023
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