- cross-posted to:
- news@kbin.social
- technews@radiation.party
At least a million data points from 23andMe accounts appear to have been exposed on BreachForums. While the scale of the campaign is unknown, 23andMe says it’s working to verify the data.
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And that’s exactly what people were worried might happen.
- Omega_Haxors ( @Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml ) 76•1 year ago
If people were actually taught history they would have known exactly what their genetic information being in a registry would result in.
Ooof.
IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black should be standard reading for high school students.
I can’t believe people voluntarily sent them their DNA.
Top notch victim blaming you got there…
ETA because I don’t engage with bigots:
Imagine that, the descendants of one of the biggest genocides in history want to try and piece their history together, and use the available tools to do it with, fucking shocker…
Then, when they continue getting targeted just for existing, privileged ignorant bigots who couldn’t even imagine what having over 90% of their community gassed is like, and have never been oppressed for who they are a day in their lives, simply can’t help themselves but jump to justify them being attacked again:tHe bAstArDs dEseRve eVerYthInG tHey GeT!!11
And somehow not a word about the attackers, nor the company that failed its customers.
Sure, antisemitic Jan…🙄🙄🙄
“I can’t believe this incredibly obvious thing happened!” Isn’t really victim blaming, is it? They’re not saying they did it to themselves or they deserved it, they’re saying that this was bound to happen and people volunteered their DNA to a private company
… Therefore blaming them for using the service.
Why even have a capitalist economy if private businesses can just abuse people like that and the customer is routinely blamed for participating in the economy the only way they’re allowed to?
Thanks!
As if victim blaming is always wrong.
It is
E. g. if somebody loses money in a multilevel marketing scheme, is it wrong to blame the victim? Or is not every victim a victim?
Regarding your edit, that’s assuming a bit too much to defend your point.
But that’s what I asked for, your reason why there is no responsibility on the side of the victims.
To engage with that line of thinking: if you leave agency at people, you can ask why one would trust a company with that data when every conspiracy theorist doesn’t use that service specifically because of the risk of genocide.
But you are right, there are valid reasons to take the risk.
It’s always wrong to blame the victim, yes. You just genuinely don’t believe they actually are victims, and if you want to have that debate, be honest and have it. But you don’t get to recognize their victimhood and then invalidate it by implying their suffering is partly their fault.
Is this a choice of words issue? Saying that somebody could have prevented something and with that knowledge should prevent it next time doesn’t change victimhood for me. The suffering of the victim remains.
What is lost if the victim had some agency? Is there some metaphysical aspect to it? Are victims prechosen by fate and it’s a sacrilege to question their fate?
I can agree that a zebra being killed by lions shouldn’t be blamed. But a person who ignores advice from friends and joines a multilevel marketing scheme is not entirely innocent.
Because attributing any blame to a victim is always a sleazy attempt to shift all responsibility for a situation away from the aggressor and onto the victim. It’s a common abuse tactic.
Plus, most people really aren’t capable of doing what they need to do in life-threatening or abusive situations. Adults really don’t have as much agency as they like to pretend they do, and I personally am tired of being dishonest about it.
I say that as one of the people who has been abused partly through their own failings and iniquities. I don’t call myself a victim. I’m also not an average representative of people in abusive situations – I have always been and always was capable of doing far more than most other people, and so I am telling you from that experience that you cannot attribute any responsibility for a situation on a victim like that. Most people are just NPCs and you need to respect that.
They also sent your DNA involuntarily. You can be IDed of someone in your genetic vicinity has sent theirs. They don’t even need to be super close.
But they trusted [youtuber]!!!
The company said its systems were not breached and that attackers gathered the data by guessing the login credentials of a group of users and then scraping more people’s information from a feature known as DNA Relatives.
The information does not appear to include actual, raw genetic data.
This doesn’t absolve them of anything. If you see thousands of accounts being individually logged in from the same block of IP addresses, and those users have never logged in from there before. That should raise red flags. No, Fred from California shouldn’t be logging in from a vpn based out of Ireland right after Anne from NY logged in from that same VPN from Ireland.
Users are dumb. This is why there’s tools to track odd behavior and clamp down on it.
The data that’s available on the hacker forum doesn’t contain the raw DNA, but that’s just a promotion to sell much bigger dataset, which the hackers claim has the DNA… https://twitter.com/mattjay/status/1710370443968856559
a lot of people in these comments who live in privacy-conscious bubbles and aren’t very familiar with “normal” people
Idiots believe their personal information was safe, with a private company.
For real, they already share it with the government which is the real danger anyways.
Nononono! It’s only dangerous if your government turns fascist and tries to harm you.
Oh!
Wait a second…
The full picture of why the data was stolen, how much more the attackers have, and whether it is actually focused entirely on Ashkenazim is still unclear.
From the article. Way to sensationalize a title…
