23andMe has filed for bankruptcy, raising concerns about what will happen to the DNA-testing company and all the data it’s collected from customers over the years. In the event that 23andMe is sold, its massive genetic database may end up in the hands of a different company entirely — one that users never consented to handing their personal information over to.
If you’ve submitted your DNA to the company via its saliva-testing kits, 23andMe will typically have your genetic, ancestry, and family connections data on file, alongside any personal information that was used to create your account, including your name, address, email address, and payment information. Thankfully, the company will continue its regular operations while going through the Chapter 11 process, allowing users to access and at least partially delete their information for now.
23andMe says that genetic data is anonymized and stored separately from personally identifiable information such as names, addresses, and payment information. Anonymization has been known to fail in other situations, however, so here’s how you can proactively remove as much of your data as possible if you’d rather not take any chances. The process is the same across both mobile and desktop platforms.
How to remove your data from 23andMe
Deleting your 23andMe account is irreversible, and you’ll permanently lose access to it once completed. If there are multiple profiles created by other users on your account then those will also be wiped unless you transfer them to an account that isn’t being deleted.
One of the notable issues is that this process also won’t delete all of your data — according to 23andMe’s privacy disclosure, your genetic information, date of birth, and sex will be retained for an undisclosed amount of time to comply with the company’s legal obligations, alongside “limited information related to your account,” such as your email address and communications around your data deletion request.
23andMe did not answer our questions regarding what specific data actually is retained or deleted when a user removes their account. Some posts have appeared online that encourage 23andMe users to scramble their data before deletion by replacing things like name, date of birth, ethnicity, sex marker, and height with false equivalents. This will supposedly render any information that is retained useless, but will likely be ineffective if 23andMe only stores the data that was used to create your account — something that the company also did not clarify to The Verge.
As part of the account deletion process, 23andMe will destroy the genetic sample you submitted if you previously opted for it to remain in storage. Your 23andMe data will still exist in any scientific studies you consented to, but won’t be used in any future research projects. 23andMe directs customers who run into issues with the account deletion process to contact customercare@23andme.com for further assistance.
