Department of English professor Julia Creet discusses how the company 23andMe recently filed for bankruptcy and what this means for its customers’ privacy in a recent article published in The Conversation. Creet, who has studied the family history industry for 20 years, says that 23andMe aimed to circumvent the health care industry to provide consumers with direct access to their genetic information. However, since third parties have acquired rights to access this private information, consumers have become increasingly nervous about the privacy of their data.
Professor Julia Creet is a leading international scholar in Cultural Memory Studies whose research spans Humanities and the Social Sciences. Her other research interests include the history of the Holocaust, literary studies, film studies, archival studies, public history, data privacy and direct-to-consumer genetics.