Genetic data site openSNP to close and delete data over privacy concerns

The openSNP project, a platform for sharing genetic and phenotypic data, will shut down on April 30, 2025, and delete all user submissions over privacy concerns and the risk of misuse by authoritarian governments. The decision was announced earlier this week by co-founder Bastian Greshake Tzovaras, who expressed concerns about how personal genomics data is subject to abuse today and how fundamentally the landscape has changed over the last 14 years. OpenSNP is a free and open-source platform where individuals can upload and share their genetic and phenotype data for research and educational purposes. Its original goal was to democratize access to genetic data, breaking the monopoly of commercial DNA testing companies and enabling researchers or regular people to explore human genetic data without financial or institutional barriers. Over the years, openSNP became one of the largest repositories of its kind, used in research, education, and even community-led investigations like deb ... Read full article.