I was having a conversation about security basics with my wife; we touched on a lot of topics pretty quickly – phone settings, app settings, ways to protect accounts, and just general security hygiene. “You should write about some of these things”, she says – and I think she was right.

I’ve got 3-4 ideas drafted, for posting across the next few weeks. The plan is to deliver small bits, one topic at a time, making them shorter and quicker reads. I’ll be cross posting them between the Bridegroom Technologies and Beyond the Defaults sites, I think they work in both places.

To give you quick taste of things, I’ll offer some quick thoughts on news that broke today – the Chapter 11 Bankruptcy filing of 23andMe (the DNA testing company).

The quick thought: if you have information/data there about you, or have submitted things to them, start the deletion process. Now.

Chapter 11 is protection from creditors (versus a Chapter 7 liquidation) – but that doesn’t change the urgency here. One of the founders is trying to purchase the company and its assets (key point: all of the collected DNA results here are one of main assets of the company). However, she’s already been rebuffed once, and there’s no guarantee those assets won’t be sold to someone else to recover value for its investors and creditors as a part of the reorganization plan.

Since these are the days of doomsday thinking – can you imagine what a treasure trove of DNA data would be worth to someone like, say, some of the big tech names we read in the news almost every day? It’s all about data, especially when we consider things like training AI models. Scenarios like that make me and a lot of other people concerned about privacy and ethics lose sleep.

So 23andMe customers – protect yourself, act now, start deleting. While you’re at it, look at the privacy policies of other companies that have your personal data. Some jurisdictions (like California) have stiff privacy laws, but whether or not that covers companies that endure financial distress is up for debate. Yes, they’re boring to read, but this is why you should.

I hope you find these helpful and interesting. If you do, be sure to check back or subscribe to the site for future posts.