How We Use Your Information

It takes more than just spit to deliver our Services to you, and we want to be transparent in how your information is used by 23andMe. Here’s a quick rundown of how we:

Provide our Services, including to develop, operate, improve, provide, maintain and safeguard our Services, including developing new product tools and features

We use your information to power and deliver the Services to you. These activities may include, among other things, opening your account, enabling purchases, processing payments, operating our business, billing, accounting, preventing fraud, and enabling, enhancing, and improving your use of our Services, such as our website and mobile application(s), or our internal operations.

Analyze and measure trends and usage of the Services

Good services and products mean there is a lot of testing, measuring, and analysis to deliver improvements and the most up-to-date and accurate data. This means we’re constantly working on identifying improvements to our Services. We also use information about how you use and interact with our reports, features and other elements on our Services to perform these research and development activities. For example, this can include activities like data analysis to develop new or improve existing products and services, and performing quality control activities.

Communicate with you, including customer support, or to share information about our Services or other offers or information we think may be relevant to you

We like to stay in touch with our customers. We use your information to respond to messages you send us, such as Customer Care questions, or to share information about our Services or other offers or information we think may be relevant to you, like policy changes, or security updates.

Conduct surveys or polls, and obtain testimonials or stories about you

We value your feedback and may send you surveys, polls, or requests for testimonials, which we use to improve and optimize our Services. It’s up to you if you want to provide us with your feedback, stories or other information.

Personalize, contextualize and market our Services to you

Rest assured, we will not use your Genetic Information for personalized or targeted marketing and/or advertising without your explicit consent. We do use your information to help contextualize our Services and provide relevant content based on how you interact with our Services. We may also use your information, such as Web-Behavior Information, to help us provide you with relevant advertisements or marketing. You can learn more in our Cookie Policy.

Provide cross-context behavioral or targeted advertising

Just like many websites and services, 23andMe may provide cross-context behavioral and targeted advertising to you. This helps us show relevant ads to people who may be interested in 23andMe’s Services. When you browse our websites or interact with our Services online and across different websites, cookies and other tracking technologies collect information, such as Web-Behavior Information, to provide you with cross-context behavioral advertising or targeted advertising. You can opt out of cross-context behavioral or targeted advertising cookies any time here.

Conduct 23andMe Research, if you choose to participate

Participating in 23andMe Research is entirely optional. If you agree to participate in 23andMe Research, you agree to let 23andMe researchers use your de-identified Genetic and Self-Reported Information to study a wide variety of research topics. You will also have the opportunity to participate in research in different ways. For example, you may decide to opt in to the Individual Level Data Sharing Consent, which means that 23andMe may share de-identified individual-level Genetic Information and Self-Reported Information with select third party research collaborators for research purposes. Further, in the event you choose to participate in specific 23andMe Research studies, additional study-specific consent may authorize other types of data sharing. You can always visit your account settings to view your consent history and make changes. Additionally, you can also see within your account how you personally have contributed to 23andMe research publications.

Enhance the safety, integrity, and security of our Services, including prevention of fraud and other unauthorized or illegal activities on our Services

We take security and the trust you place in us seriously. We implement physical, technical and administrative measures to prevent unauthorized access or disclosure of your information. To make these features work, we use your information, like when we email you in connection with two-factor authentication or when we authenticate a URL or link on our website, to ensure it’s safe.

Enforce, investigate, and report conduct violating our Terms of Service or other policies

We believe everyone deserves a safe place to discover and understand their DNA, which means we need to keep our platform a safe place for all. We use information to monitor, detect, prevent, investigate and mitigate any suspected or actual fraud, prohibited or illegal behaviors on our Services, to combat spam, and other behaviors or actions that break the promises we outline in our Terms of Service.

Comply with our legal, licensing, and regulatory obligations

We may use your information to comply with applicable legal, licensing and regulatory obligations. For example, we may use your information to investigate if unlawful content was posted on our website, or if we need to defend ourselves against legal claims. If legally required, we may also need to share your information to comply with a law enforcement request; for more information, please see our Transparency Report. As stated in our Transparency Report, we are prepared to use all legal measures to resist any and all law enforcement requests in order to protect the privacy of our customers.