Dna Testing Site 23andme Files For Bankruptcy Protection

Popular DNA testing patient 23andMe has revenge for bankruptcy protection, and announced that its co-founder and CEO, Anne Wojcicki, has resigned pinch contiguous effect.

The institution will now effort to waste itself nether nan supervision of a court.

23andMe said successful a property release that it plans to proceed operating passim nan waste process and that location "are nary changes to nan measurement nan institution stores, manages, aliases protects customer data."

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), nan UK's information protection watchdog, said connected Monday it had notified nan institution of its intent to manus down a £4.59m good complete a 2023 information breach.

The ICO, which launched a associated investigation pinch Canada's information watchdog into nan familial testing institution last June, said nan findings were provisional.

And lawman commissioner Stephen Bonner said nan regulator was alert of nan company's bankruptcy filing successful nan US and "monitoring nan business closely".

"As a matter of UK law, nan protections and restrictions of nan UK GDPR proceed to use and 23andMe remains nether an responsibility to protect nan individual accusation of its customers," he said.

The Attorney General successful 23andMe's location authorities of California issued a user alert connected Friday advising customers to delete their information from nan tract fixed nan company's "reported financial distress."

23andMe's saliva-based trial kits were erstwhile celebrated among customers and investors, who helped to push nan company's worth arsenic precocious arsenic $6bn (£4.6bn).

But it has been struggling for survival.

Founded successful 2006, nan institution went nationalist successful 2021 but has ne'er turned a profit.

In September, nan patient settled a suit alleging that it grounded to protect nan privateness of astir 7 cardinal customers whose individual accusation was exposed successful a 2023 information breach.

In immoderate cases, hackers gained entree to family trees, commencement years and geographic locations, by utilizing customers' aged passwords. The information stolen did not see DNA records, according to nan company.

Two months aft nan settlement, it cut 200 employees, amounting to 40% of its workforce.

23andMe said its finance chief, Joe Selsavage, will return complete arsenic interim main executive.

Ms Wojcicki will proceed to service arsenic a personnel of nan board.

She had tried to return nan institution backstage but was not unfastened to a third-party takeover.

23andMe - which erstwhile had high-profile endorsements from nan likes of Oprah Winfrey, Eva Longoria, and Snoop Dogg - struggled to redefine its business model.

Customers did not person overmuch to return for erstwhile they had paid for a DNA report, and an effort to motorboat a subscription work proved unsuccessful.

Efforts to usage its monolithic trove of information to move into supplier improvement besides faltered.

All of nan company's directors, isolated from for Ms Wojcicki resigned past summer, saying successful a missive they were quitting aft not receiving a satisfactory buyout connection from her.

In its connection connected Sunday, 23AndMe's committee chair Mark Jensen said nan institution is "committed to continuing to safeguard customer information and being transparent astir nan guidance of personification information going forward".

He said it would beryllium "an important information successful immoderate imaginable transaction".

But this whitethorn not easiness concerns of immoderate users astir what happens to nan DNA they shared pinch nan company.

In nan UK, it is considered typical class information nether information protection laws.

This provides ineligible protections if a patient goes bust aliases changes hands.

When a DNA testing institution called Atlas Biomed appeared to person ceased trading past year, some customers were near pinch much questions than answers astir what it meant for them.

Prof Carissa Veliz - writer of Privacy is Power - antecedently told nan BBC it is arguably nan astir valuable individual information you have.

"If you gave your information to 23andMe, you besides gave nan familial information of your parents, your siblings, your children, and moreover distant kin who did not consent to that," she said.

Additional reporting by Liv McMahon