As the world traverses more and more into a digital age, how we interact with each other is increasingly changing; we use digital mediums such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and various other social media tools to communicate with each other. While communication is key to any healthy relationship, concerns about the privacy of information we share online are growing. With Facebook currently at the centre of a controversy about privacy and providing our personal information to third parties, many people are asking, ‘does it just stop there’? Ancestry.com is an organisation that provides a platform that aids in discovering consumers family tree and claims to host one of the world’s largest genealogy websites. Ancestry.com also has a subsidiary company Ancestry DNA which offers a service for consumers to provide a sample of their DNA to the company for analysis, and which then uses the DNA sequences to infer family relationships with other Ancestry DNA users. While it is exciting that we can locate potentially long-lost relatives and family connections, this does or should raise some concerns.
With the recent issues highlighted regarding Facebook, there has been a public outcry surrounding the privacy of personal information including details such as residential address, photographs and other personal information being made available and sold to third-party entities to be used for direct marketing and on other social media platforms. Ancestry.com is a cloud-based tool used to generate your family tree, and uses the collaborative platform to identify potential family members you may not know about, personal information about your family is submitted to this platform such as names, ethnicity and other identifiers to commence the search. However, Ancestry.com goes a step further than Facebook, with the facility to store your DNA. Ancestry.com now have the facility to complete a consumer grade DNA test, and the results are entered online into the Ancestry.com platform to enhance your search and match for family members further. Whilst these tests may not be entirely accurate such as an official DNA test, the information gathered is enough to potentially profile the individual concerned. Our DNA is the most unique identifier we possess, much like that of a tax file number, however instead of being the key to our finances, our DNA is the key to our body’s genetic makeup and the carrier or all our genetic information including fundamental and distinctive characteristics unique to the person. If the codes for our DNA were to fall into the wrong hands, these threat actors use this information for several illegitimate purposes associated with organised crime, people trafficking and encouraging the selling of organs on the black market.
It is estimated that millions of consumers have already accessed the DNA testing available at ancestry.com worldwide. The same issues that we are confronted by in the news on a daily basis surrounding Facebook are also pertinent to Ancestry.com, who are as susceptible to a cyber-attack as Facebook is, and a successful attack could potentially provide a malicious threat actor, such as hackers accessing these DNA results. These threat actors can then sell this information should that be the motivation and intent of the hacker. This act would put many people and their privacy at risk.
Technology is exciting, and the walls that it can break down around communication are large, however with technology comes a great responsibility with how we use it to ensure that communication is concise and to the point, and relevant to our audience. Furthermore, we are responsible for our own personal information whether it be a name, address, Tax File Number or our DNA code. Deciding who and where to share our personal information can be the difference between having a great experience in identifying people to communicate with, or on the other side of the spectrum, lose our identity online and have someone take this information and impersonate us.
So, what can we do to protect ourselves from such attacks occurring? Information that you value and you do not want the public knowing about do not post it online. We cannot avoid posting our names online due to the digital world ever increasing. However, we can avoid posting DNA information (no matter how accurate), personal photos or other information, no matter how inaccurate it is, from making its way into another entity’s domain.
Technology can be fun and with the digital landscape ever increasing, taking more care of what we are posting online or willing to share with others is essential. Taking a step back from our technology and thinking about what we post online is vital, especially to our health, happiness and peace of mind. There are many security settings on the online platforms to protect who can see our information. However, the key is deciding, do we want this information online in the first place.
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