23Andme interim chief executive Joseph Selvage told lawmakers on Tuesday that since filing for bankruptcy protection in March, he had requested that genetic data be removed from the company’s servers.
Selsavage was speaking at a House Oversight Committee hearing. Meanwhile, lawmakers scrutinised the company’s sales following previous bankruptcy auctions. The bankruptcy sparked concern that data from millions of Americans using 23AndME could fall into the hands of uncruel, stimulating customers to ask the company to delete the data.
Pharmaceutical Giant Regeneron won a court-approved auction in May, providing $256 million to 23andMe and its clients’ DNA and genetic data banks. Regeneron said it will use 23andMe data to help discover new drugs and is committed to maintaining 23andMe privacy practices.
The federal bankruptcy court will consider a Regeneron bid for 23andMe in late June.
23Andme’s bankruptcy comes a year after experiencing a month-long data breach that exposed sensitive individuals and genetic data from 6.9 million customers. Rather than admitting that it was unable to secure a customer’s account or that it could not detect violations until months later, the company accused the customer of data breach of not using multi-factor authentication.
Also on Tuesday, more than 20 states, including Florida, New York and Pennsylvania, sued 23andme, challenging the sale of customer personal data. The state claims that the company cannot sell data for 15 million customers without express permission.
TechCrunch has a short guide on how to delete 23andMe data.