During a recent media appearance, GAI Vice President Eric Eggers sounded the alarm on the recent bankruptcy of 23andMe — a genetic testing company offering all its gathered data to the highest bidder.
Teeing up Eggers, NEWSMAX host Carl Higbir called the data a “goldmine.”
“I think you use the phrase gold mined appropriately,” Eggers said. “When Ancestry.com was sold, they went to a private equity firm for $4.7 billion.”
Eggers continued: “When Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, who we never agree with, is
telling consumers to actively delete their information, it’s because there’s a very real threat that people who submitted their information to this company may have it used by somebody they didn&’t give it to for a purpose they didn’t agree to. That’s absolutely on the table, and it’s a real problem.”
Higbie highlights 23andMe’s bankruptcy policy, which says, “If we’re ever involved in a bankruptcy, merger, acquisition, reorganization or sale of assets, your personal information may be accessed, sold or transferred as part of that transaction. And this privacy statement will apply to your personal information is transferred to the new entity.”
Eggers says it “speaks to a fundamental paradigm shift” in our culture.
“It used to be that companies would pay a lot of money for market research to find out about customers so they could tailor advertisements towards them,” Eggers said. “But now we’ve been sold the lie that we should pay companies to collect information about us. You know, we invite the Amazon or the Alexas into our home. We invite devices that collect our information, then sell it to people, and then not only sell it to other people, but they use it to try to sell us things we don’t actually want.”
Watch the clip above.
