THE FINANCIAL TIMES
Reversing Roe has sharpened the data mining threat



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When I went to get a quarantine-releasing Covid test last year, I had no idea that my DNA could end up permanently in someone else’s hands. There was no explicit warning when I booked the test online with Cignpost Diagnostics, trading as ExpressTest. I simply ticked a box next to the privacy policy, as we all do. Had I trawled through the 4,876-word policy and clicked a further link, I would have found a document on Cignpost’s “research programme”, and discovered that it reserved the right to sell customers’ DNA to third parties. And that the swabbers’ data would be retained indefinitely. Cignpost has since changed its privacy policy — the company said the document had been uploaded in error and that it has “not shared any human DNA” from Covid tests.