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I did 23andme a year or two ago. I found out I have a really boring genome. No real diseases or unexpected ancestry (I guess I was secretly hoping I was adopted from Russian/Jewish royalty or martians or something?).

It's certainly worth $49 to me to know this (I think I paid $99 under a FNF deal a while ago; I know one of the founders, who is awesome and a great entrepreneur).

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So you're saying they won't sell us down the river? I'm sold

Yeah, they're pretty decent people. I'm sure if the government went to them with a warrant or something, they'd fully comply, but they genuinely care about privacy and customers, and would be unlikely to do anything evil. They're also rich enough that I doubt they'd be forced into a sale to some crappy entity who would then abuse things, and their privacy policy is decent enough.

The only real risk I see is if your account is compromised somehow, but at least for me, there's nothing so sensitive in my account that I'd care.

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