Branson says he sees 23andMe as a company with “enormous growth potential.” No — home DNA kits weren’t some kind of “pandemic winner.” Rather, the once-booming DTC genetics industry has hit a lull in the past few years, as a result of growing concerns around privacy, accuracy and value.

Anne Wojcicki, the cofounder and CEO of direct-to-consumer DNA testing firm 23andMe, told 60 Minutes that she believes that her company adheres to stricter security measures than HIPAA requires.

For months, legal experts who follow investigative genetic genealogy have expected search warrants to be issued to Ancestry and its main competitor, 23andMe, which has about 10 million DNA profiles in its database.

Home DNA-testing company 23andMe is laying off about 100 people, or 14% of its staff, on Thursday, in the wake of declining sales.

When doctors told her they didn’t think there was a medical need to test her children, she decided to use 23andMe, the direct-to-customer genetic testing company.

We buy DNA tests from 23AndMe that could one day end up in a police database, we buy Amazon Echo and smartphone technology used to target us with ads, and, increasingly, we are buying Amazon’s Ring doorbell cameras that are being used to watch ourselves and our neighbors, create a warrantless police surveillance apparatus, and serve as an attack surface that can allow hackers to enter our homes.

King said it is much more likely the federal government will want this DNA data for law enforcement purposes rather than to exploit any employer-employee loophole in GINA.All of these DNA testing companies explain this in their privacy statements, and 23andMe makes clear that it stands on the side of consumers.

DNA testing from the likes of leading services 23andMe and Ancestry, among others, has always boiled down to risk and reward, a fascination and curiosity about one’s roots and/or predispositions to disease, balanced against trepidations around privacy, security, and, for sure, the possibility of an awkward or identity-altering discovery.

Buzzfeed reported in January that Family Tree DNA , one of the largest genetic testing companies in the country, regularly allowed FBI agents to search its database in order to solve crimes. Family Tree DNA, along with similar DNA testing services 23andMe and allows customers to opt-out of sharing such information with law enforcement.

While many people are enjoying the genealogical research aided by companies such as 23andMe, Ancestry.com , and MyHeritage, they are also unaware that law enforcement is using them as “genetic informants.” In fact, Family Tree DNA has been allowing the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to submit suspects’ DNA in order to investigate unsolved violent crimes.

The case of the Golden State Killer: how private and protected DNA data can be exploited in public databases Justin Sullivan/Getty Images When you mail your saliva sample to a company like 23andMe, Ancestry, Helix, or any one of a handful of current DNA testing startups , they run an analysis of the genetic data it contains.

Current laws like the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) prohibit employers or health insurance companies from discriminating against a person based on their genes, though that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen.

When Teuscher wanted to know more about her daughter's ancestry and possible health issues, she and other family members decided to get DNA tests from 23andMe and added one for Zoe. What turned up appeared to be one of the anonymous donor's immediate relatives.

Hazel, a researcher at Vanderbilt University, studied companies ranging from popular startups like 23andMe — which offers health and ancestry information — to under-the-radar outfits such as GEDmatch, which simply houses genetic information to help people build family trees.

The core service provided by most commercial genetic tests is built on the extraction of your DNA from your spit — that's how you get the information about your health or ancestry.

Ancestry, 23andMe and other popular companies that offer genetic testing pledged on Tuesday to be upfront when they share users' DNA data with researchers, hand it over to police or transfer it to other companies, a move aimed at addressing consumers' mounting privacy concerns.

By sending in their saliva samples, customers agree that their genetic data can be resold to research institutes or pharmaceutical companies, for example, leading to 23andme gaining such a large market value.

As DNA tests such as 23andMe and AncestryDNA become increasingly prevalent, concerns about genetic privacy are mounting—and with good reason, says the Atlantic writer Sarah Zhang. “Soon, it won’t be hard to imagine a world where everyone can be found for whatever reason through a relative’s DNA,” Zhang says in the video.

Klasko and the Thomas Jefferson University Hospital’s Karen Knudsen, enterprise director of the NCI-Designated Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center, spoke with me about initiative and its goal of promoting personalized treatment for employees—as well as what sets it apart from increasingly popular at-home DNA testing services like 23andMe.

Going forward, app developers will only be able to access data from the reports 23andMe generates for customers, such as ancestry composition or risk probabilities for genetic diseases like Parkinson’s. The company says qualified researchers will still have access to raw genetic data, provided that customers have consented to share their information through the API.

Developers of health apps, weight loss services and quantified self tests have been able to use 23andMe's anonymized data sets since 2012, when the company announced the opening of its application programming interface (API).

As the popularity of genetic and genealogy testing companies, such as Ancestry.com and 23andMe, skyrockets, and privacy concerns mount over how user data is secured, the companies are increasing their presence in Washington.