OpenSNP, a large open source repository for user -loaded genetic data, will close and delete all its data in late April, co -founder Bastian Greshake Tzovaras confirmed.
In a blog postOpenSNP’s Greshake Tzovaras has rendered the decision to close the place due to privacy concerns after the economic collapse of the 23ndme and the increase in authoritarian governments around the world.
Founded in 2011 by Greshake Tzovaras, along with Philipp Bayer and Helge Rausch, OpenSNP became an open and public repository for customers of commercial genetic tests, including 23Andme, to load test results and find others with similar genetic variations. The site had nearly 13,000 users at the time of the closing announcement, making it one of the largest public data repositories. Since its establishment, OpenSNP has attracted its contributions to academic and scientific research and has identified more than 7,500 genomes.
The news of the OpenSNP shutdown comes after depositing 23AndME to protect bankruptcy, intensifying the concerns that the huge banks of sensitive customer genetic data will be sold to the bidder, who may not comply with the 23 ADMA privacy commitments. The Attorney General for the states of California and New York, Among other thingsThey have warned 23AndMe customers to delete their data before Court-Egended Selloff later this year.
Greshake Tzovaras also said that a factor contributing to the closure of OpenSnp was the “rise of far -right and other authoritarian governments”, citing the Remove public data from US government sites Soon after the expansion of President Trump to power.
“The risk/benefit calculation for providing free and open access to individual genetic data in 2025 is very different compared to 14 years ago,” Greshake Tzovaras wrote. “Sunsetting OpenSNP – along with deleting stored data – feels like it is the most responsible management act for these data today.”
‘It has always been an act of balancing’
When TechCrunch arrived, Greshake Tzovaras was bluntly in his decision to close OpenSnp now and no earlier.
“” Why now “for me is finally under what counts for a fascist coup in the US,” Greshake Tzovaras told TechCrunch, a local Germany.
“Seeing people disappear from the streets under the most doubtful they really can be called nothing else,” he said, referring to recent reports of people living in the United States, including US citizensarrested in immigration raids, some of whom remain unknown.
Greshake Tzovaras said that the “wholesale disassembly of scientific institutions and science itself” from January – the beginning of Trump’s second administration – was a factor in closing OpenSNP.
“I don’t think it’s a stretch to worry about how genetic data could soon be abused to make false allegations about a variety of issues, effectively bringing a darker eugenics age,” he said.
Greshake Tzovaras said that OpenSNP “has always been an act of balancing” between possible uses and risks and that the existence of space was a “constant thought of whether the benefits can offset the dangers”.
In a historical example given by law enforcement, it used genetic data from the Gedmatch Genealogy in 2018 to detect an infamous serial killer-Greshake Tzovaras stated that the OpenSnp appeared at that time as it was less relevant or at risk. (Greshake Tzovaras confirmed to TechCrunch that despite the open and public nature of the data it saves, OpenSNP never received a law enforcement request for any genetic data or user data.)
Greshake Tzovaras said that compared to Trump’s first administration, “the abuse of science was both qualitatively and quantitatively different from what we see today.”
“Along with the biggest debate on the impact of genetic data on the bankruptcy of the 23ndme, we decided that it was time to pull the plug,” Greshake Tzovaras told Techcrunch.
Greshake Tzovaras also told TechCrunch that in a positive reflection, maintaining OpenSNP for 14 years can be his “biggest achievement”. He said OpenSNP ran to about $ 100 a month, in view of the commercial newly established businesses working to create revenue from people’s data, eventually failed. Greshake Tzovaras said that in this sense, OpenSnp “feels like proof of the power of open source/culture”.
The site also contributed to the research and publications “in a wide range of branches – from Infosec/Privacy to the biomedical study,” said Greshake Tzovaras. Many students also benefited from access to real world data hosted by OpenSNP, he said.
“In this sense, I think our hope of ‘democratization’ of access to genomics was at least partially successful,” said Greshake Tzovaras.
Was informed to modify the name of the OpenSNP name throughout.
