Hacking Humans

Protecting our DNA from cybercriminals is crucial. As referenced in the “Hacking Criminals” article, your social security, credit card and bank account information are all items that can be replaced-your DNA? Not so much. That is permanent and once it is digitized it is stored in a database where anything could go wrong. While I do see how digitizing DNA could be beneficial medically, the risks are far greater. Hackers will hack any and everything but “hacking a human” is taking it a bit far. Cyberbiosecurity takes a deeper look into the risks of digitizing of life sciences, including DNA. I believe that DNA digitizing has opened up the idea that now jobs can ask for DNA to determine if someone is right for a specific role. I am completely against this. What does your DNA have to do with you being the right “fit” for a job? At this point it seems it would be safe to say this could be considered as workplace discrimination. We work hard to gain the knowledge for a job position just for us to be potentially turned down because of what our DNA consists of. Me, personally, I have always wanted to try some form of DNA ancestry testing but was always skeptical of the “what ifs” and unknown risks following the testing. Digging deeper into the article, I did additional research where I saw that a few ancestry DNA companies helped to solve cold case murders due to family members of those convicted DNA being on file and police having access to it. While it is a relief to know a case that went cold is closed with the help of DNA digitizing, it is also scary not knowing who has access to your DNA. I agree with “Hacking Humans” that we have the ability to slow down making digitizing DNA a trend and protect ourselves, and our DNA, at all cost. I do not want to see a DNA breach any time soon.

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