It's the Brian Lairn Show on WNYC.

Welcome back, everybody.

Matt Katz filling the keep the seat warm for Brian today.

How many of you have ever completed a 23 and Me genetic testing kit?

I did. It changed my life in 2018. As some listeners may know, I found a biological half-sister on 23 Me who informed me that I was conceived via sperm donor. This was something I never knew about. It changed

my life. I ended up making a podcast called Inconceivable Truth about the search for my real

biological father. But now I'm told that I should delete all of my data off of 23 and me.

And that's because the company last week filed for bankruptcy and is now

looking for a buyer to keep them afloat. And numerous attorneys general across the country,

including Attorney General Letitia James here in New York, have advised users to delete their

data from the site in order to protect it from whoever the highest bidder may be.

The thing is, 23Mee and another genetic site, Ancestry.com, have been such a valuable tool for me.

I now have three half-siblings that I found through these sites.

And if I shut it down now, there might be half siblings out

there that I never meet, that I can never find. So I'm struggling with this. And joining me now

to talk about all of this issue and these concerns and the 23 me bankruptcy and walk us

through the data deletion process is Max Eddie. He covers privacy,

security and software at Wirecutter. Max, welcome to WNYC. Very glad to be here.

Walk us back a little bit. How did 23M.E fall into this predicament? It was a company that

kind of took the country by storm, who was founded by Ann Wuchitsky,

former wife of Google founder, Sergey Brin, held great promise, had immense influence.

What went wrong with the business?

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