Aggregated News
A Harvard professor has re-identified the names of more than 40% of a sample of anonymous participants in a high-profile DNA study, highlighting the dangers that ever greater amounts of personal data available in the Internet era could unravel personal secrets.
From the onset, the Personal Genome Project, set up by Harvard Medical School Professor of Genetics George Church, has warned participants of the risk that someone someday could identify them, meaning anyone could look up the intimate medical histories that many have posted along with their genome data. That day arrived on Thursday.
Professor Latanya Sweeney, director of the Data Privacy Lab at Harvard, along with her research assistant and two students scraped data on 1,130 people of the now more than 2,500 who have shared their DNA data for the Personal Genome Project. Church’s project posts information about the volunteers on the Internet to help researchers gain new insights about human health and disease. Their names do not appear, but the profiles list medical conditions including abortions, illegal drug use, alcoholism, depression, sexually transmitted diseases, medications and...
From the onset, the Personal Genome Project, set up by Harvard Medical School Professor of Genetics George Church, has warned participants of the risk that someone someday could identify them, meaning anyone could look up the intimate medical histories that many have posted along with their genome data. That day arrived on Thursday.
Professor Latanya Sweeney, director of the Data Privacy Lab at Harvard, along with her research assistant and two students scraped data on 1,130 people of the now more than 2,500 who have shared their DNA data for the Personal Genome Project. Church’s project posts information about the volunteers on the Internet to help researchers gain new insights about human health and disease. Their names do not appear, but the profiles list medical conditions including abortions, illegal drug use, alcoholism, depression, sexually transmitted diseases, medications and...