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this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2024
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A successful breach of a family member's account due to their bad security shouldn't result in the breach of my account. That's the problem.
Edit: so people stop asking, here's their docs on DNA relatives: https://customercare.23andme.com/hc/en-us/articles/212170838
It clearly says select information, which one could reasonably assume is protecting of your privacy. All the reports seem to imply the hackers got access to much more than just the couple fun numbers the UI shows you.
At minimum I hold them responsible for not thinking this feature through enough that it could be used for racial profiling. That's the equivalent of being searchable on Facebook but they didn't think to not make your email, location and phone number available to everyone who searches for you. I want to be discoverable by my friends and family but I'm not intending to make more than my name and picture available.
I mean...
You volunteered to share your info with that person.
And that person reused a email/password that was compromised.
How can 23andme prevent that?
It sucks, but it's the fault of your relative that you entrusted with access to your information.
No different than if you handed them a hardcopy and they left it on the table of McDonald's .
Quick edit:
It sounds like you think your account would be compromised, that's not what happened. Only info you shared with the compromised relative becomes compromised. They don't magically get your password.
But you still choose to make it accessible to that relatives account by accepting their request to share
Could I please have your personal information?
No.
See... it's that easy.
Ok, who else would be able to give me your personal information. I'll go get it from them instead.
And that’s exactly how the attackers got in in the first place lol.
The ding dongs used the same creds elsewhere which were leaked.
Thank you for explaining the point I was making to me.
Ah I misread the thread somehow.
I doesn't. Sharing that info was opt-in only. In this scenario, no 23andMe accounts were breached. The users reused their credentials from other sites. It would be like you sharing your bank account access with a family member's account and their account getting accessed because their banking password was "Password1" or their PIN was "1234".
Yep it was 14,000 that were hacked, the other 6.9 million were from that DNA relative functionality they have. Unfortunately 23andMe's response is what to expect since companies will never put their customers safety ahead of their profits.
So if you enabled a setting that is opt-in only that allows sharing data between accounts and you are surprised that data was shared between accounts how is that not your fault?
afaik there was no breach of private data, only the kind of data shared to find relatives, which is opt-in and obviously not private to anyone who has seen how this service works. In other words, the only data "leaked" was the kind of data that was already shared with other 23andMe users.
Name, sex and ancestry were sold on the dark web, that's a breach of private data.
The feature that lets a hacker see 500 other people's personal information when they hack an account is obviously a massive security risk. Especially if you run a single use service - no one updates their password on a site they don't use anymore.
Launching the feature in the first place made this inevitable.
It would be a breach if the data was private, but the feature itself exposes this data. That would be like presenting a concert to hundreds of people then complaining your facial attributes were leaked in social media.
You shouldn’t have shared your information with someone who is untrustworthy then. Data sharing is opt-in.
Credential stuffing attacks will always yield results on a single use website because no one changes passwords on a site they don't use anymore.
Launching a feature that enables an inevitable attack to access 500 other people's info is very clearly the fault of the company who launched the feature.
How do you and the surprising number of people who upvoted you want options on websites to work?
These people opted into information sharing.
When I set a setting on a website, device, or service I damn sure want the setting to stick. What else would you want? Force users to set the setting every time they log in? Every day?
Wtf?
Even if you didn’t reuse a compromised password yourself, the fact that your relatives did indicates that you’re genetically predisposed to bad security practices. /s
How the hell would they prevent that if you voluntarily shared a bunch of information with the breach account? This is like being mad that your buddy's Facebook account got breached and someone downloaded shared posts from your profile, too. It's how the fucking service works.