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The appetite for data on individuals’ genetic sequences is growing, both from consumers—the number of testing kits sold by leading companies such as 23andMe and Ancestry.com topped 26 million by the start of 2019—and from scientists looking to amass large datasets for medical research. In addition to whole genome sequencing and genotyping, in which scientists identify a person’s genetic variants, new functional genomics tools such as RNA-seq, ChIP-seq, and single-cell sequencing have led to an exploding number of tests detailing how people (and their individual cells) respond to environmental conditions, medications, or disease.
But as more and more people volunteer their information, the seemingly anonymized data that results from such tests is becoming a target for hackers looking to glean sensitive medical information. In particular, the many genetic variants that make each person unique can be used to identify them as surely as a fingerprint, revealing ...
