Popular DNA testing firm 23andMe has filed for bankruptcy protection, and announced that its co-founder and CEO, Anne Wojcicki, has resigned with immediate effect.The company will now attempt to sell itself under the supervision of a court. 23andMe said in a press release that it plans to continue operating throughout the sale process and that there “are no changes to the way the company stores, manages, or protects customer data.”The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK’s data protection watchdog, said on Monday it had notified the company of its intent to hand down a £4.59m fine over a 2023 data breach.The ICO, which launched a joint investigation with Canada’s data watchdog into the genetic testing company last June, said the findings were provisional.And deputy commissioner Stephen Bonner said the regulator was aware of the company’s bankruptcy filing in the US and “monitoring the situation closely”. “As a matter of UK law, the protections and restrictions of the UK GDPR continue to apply and 23andMe remains under an obligation to protect the personal information of its customers,” he said.The Attorney General in 23andMe’s home state of California issued a consumer alert on Friday advising customers to delete their data from the site given the company’s “reported financial distress.”23andMe’s saliva-based test kits were once celebrated among customers and investors, who helped to push the company’s value as high as $6bn (£4.6bn).But it has been struggling for survival.Founded in 2006, the company went public in 2021 but has never turned a profit. In September, the firm settled a lawsuit alleging that it failed to protect the privacy of nearly seven million customers whose personal information was exposed in a 2023 data breach. In some cases, hackers gained access to family trees, birth years and geographic locations, by using customers’ old passwords. The data stolen did not include DNA records, according to the company.Two months a …
