The genetic data posted online seemed perfectly anonymous —
strings of billions of DNA letters from more than 1,000 people.
But all it took was some clever sleuthing on the Web for a
genetics researcher to identify five people he randomly selected
from the study group. Not only that, he found their entire
families, even though the relatives had no part in the study —
identifying nearly 50 people. The data are from an international
study, the 1000 Genomes Project, that is collecting genetic
information from people around the world and posting it online
so researchers can use it freely. It also includes the ages of
participants and the regions where they live. That information,
a genealogy Web site and Google searches were sufficient to find
complete family trees. While the methods for extracting relevant
genetic data from the raw genetic sequence files were
specialized enough to be beyond the scope of most laypeople, no
one expected it to be so easy to zoom in on individuals.