Quintilla , Pre-season and Corona

[Bethnal Yellow and Green 1,557]

10 hours ago, cornish sam said:

Can't think of a better way of pasting this at the moment, but this was what they told the wife (yes, press release obfuscation going on to an extent, but clearly claiming that the quarantine could be cut to 5 days):

 

Looks like either a hoax or a poorly worded emailing suggesting if the Government allowed them to, they could cut quarantine. 

Government guidelines mention nothing of shortening the quarantine period. They are very firm that even if you test negative you must still quarantine. 

The company’s website makes no mention of being able to reduce quarantine with their test kit either. 

[cornish sam 942]

15 minutes ago, Bethnal Yellow and Green said:

Looks like either a hoax or a poorly worded emailing suggesting if the Government allowed them to, they could cut quarantine. 

Government guidelines mention nothing of shortening the quarantine period. They are very firm that even if you test negative you must still quarantine. 

The company’s website makes no mention of being able to reduce quarantine with their test kit either. 

In all honesty I thought the latter, but deliberately badly worded (notice it only mentions FDA approval for example). The offer of speaking to the CEO was sent to the wife because they were trying to get it onto the BBC, they didn't manage, which I suppose backs up the falsehood...

[Nuff Said 5,088]

1 hour ago, cornish sam said:

In all honesty I thought the latter, but deliberately badly worded (notice it only mentions FDA approval for example). The offer of speaking to the CEO was sent to the wife because they were trying to get it onto the BBC, they didn't manage, which I suppose backs up the falsehood...

I had a look at the FitnessGenes website because I’m a little bit paranoid about privacy of personal data. Before I get into that, their original pitch before the COVID testing thing, that they devise a personal fitness and diet plan based on a DNA test, sounds like snake oil to me. So, they do some complicated scientific magic, give you a personalised plan that tells you to eat better and exercise more - and **** me! You lose weight! Who’d have thought it! 
 

If there genuinely was any scientific basis to claim their results are better than just following a generic diet and exercise plan then I’d expect to see research and some sort of blind testing. Nothing whatsoever about anything like that on their website.

 

Anyway, I also had a look at their information on privacy. While they are a UK company, and do refer to GDPR, which is good, it looks like if you consent to them using your data for research (and on the face of it, who wouldn’t, it’s for a good cause and they make reassuring noises about anonymising data) they say “Research and development activities may include, but are not limited to:“...“sharing information with academic groups and other relevant third parties to advance their studies”. While the third parties could be a university or other UK public body, I can’t see anything that means it couldn't be a US drug company, so it’s effectively carte blanche for them to give your data to anyone - and they will probably get a fee for doing this. Once your data is outside the EU, it’s open season for whatever anyone wants to do with it. It’s entirely possible that in a couple of years you could get a call out of the blue from a non-EU drug company saying you have been identified as at risk from a particular condition (e.g. cancer, heart disease...) based on your DNA, and they have a product which can lower your risk by xx%. Or an insurance company could refuse to cover you based on data an outside company have about your medical history. 
 

Anyway, tl;dr - be extremely careful about consenting to share any data *especially* anything medical related.

Edited August 22, 2020 by Nuff Said
Speeling

[cornish sam 942]

1 hour ago, Nuff Said said:

I had a look at the FitnessGenes website because I’m a little bit paranoid about privacy of personal data. Before I get into that, their original pitch before the COVID testing thing, that they devise a personal fitness and diet plan based on a DNA test, sounds like snake oil to me. So, they do some complicated scientific magic, give you a personalised plan that tells you to eat better and exercise more - and **** me! You lose weight! Who’d have thought it! 
 

If there genuinely was any scientific basis to claim their results are better than just following a generic diet and exercise plan then I’d expect to see research and some sort of blind testing. Nothing whatsoever about anything like that on their website.

 

Anyway, I also had a look at their information on privacy. While they are a UK company, and do refer to GDPR, which is good, it looks like if you consent to them using your data for research (and on the face of it, who wouldn’t, it’s for a good cause and they make reassuring noises about anonymising data) they say “Research and development activities may include, but are not limited to:“...“sharing information with academic groups and other relevant third parties to advance their studies”. While the third parties could be a university or other UK public body, I can’t see anything that means it couldn't be a US drug company, so it’s effectively carte blanche for them to give your data to anyone - and they will probably get a fee for doing this. Once your data is outside the EU, it’s open season for whatever anyone wants to do with it. It’s entirely possible that in a couple of years you could get a call out of the blue from a non-EU drug company saying you have been identified as at risk from a particular condition (e.g. cancer, heart disease...) based on your DNA, and they have a product which can lower your risk by xx%. Or an insurance company could refuse to cover you based on data an outside company have about your medical history. 
 

Anyway, tl;dr - be extremely careful about consenting to share any data *especially* anything medical related.

Technically there are things that can be identified from DNA testing to personalise a diet plan, whether or not they actually did them is another matter, but, on the personal data front, you are right, be very careful about giving consent to transfer data, especially personally sensitive information and whilst they talk of anonymisation be very wary, the majority of people who claim anonymisation will just remove a few direct identifiers leaving plenty of scope for reidentification, especially with data such as medical or insurance data. There are plenty of examples online of how easy it is to reidentify someone from apparently anonymised data, but in the UK from roughly 5 or 6 data points such as DOB, postal town, marital status and gender you could reidentify most people with a 95%+ degree of certainty.

[Michael Wynless Jones 161]

I don't get your "set a good example to the fans" comment that you've mentioned a few times, anyone taking life lessons from a football club is way beyond help anyway. 

[Nuff Said 5,088]

3 hours ago, cornish sam said:

Technically there are things that can be identified from DNA testing to personalise a diet plan, whether or not they actually did them is another matter, but, on the personal data front, you are right, be very careful about giving consent to transfer data, especially personally sensitive information and whilst they talk of anonymisation be very wary, the majority of people who claim anonymisation will just remove a few direct identifiers leaving plenty of scope for reidentification, especially with data such as medical or insurance data. There are plenty of examples online of how easy it is to reidentify someone from apparently anonymised data, but in the UK from roughly 5 or 6 data points such as DOB, postal town, marital status and gender you could reidentify most people with a 95%+ degree of certainty.

Fair enough, DNA might help identify factors that help with health, but enough to make it worth spending a significant amount of money over following a generic weight loss plan? I would imagine it’s the amount invested that acts as a greater incentive than any personalisation.

I heard about the part in bold at work. It’s called the Mosaic Effect. FTIW, the Wikipedia entry on data re-identification says “A 2000 study found that 87 percent of the U.S. population can be identified using a combination of their gender, birthdate and zip code”. Let’s be careful out there!

[cornish sam 942]

3 minutes ago, Nuff Said said:

Fair enough, DNA might help identify factors that help with health, but enough to make it worth spending a significant amount of money over following a generic weight loss plan? I would imagine it’s the amount invested that acts as a greater incentive than any personalisation.

I heard about the part in bold at work. It’s called the Mosaic Effect. FTIW, the Wikipedia entry on data re-identification says “A 2000 study found that 87 percent of the U.S. population can be identified using a combination of their gender, birthdate and zip code”. Let’s be careful out there!

In the UK, that combination of data is about 68% I think (but postal town not full post code, with the full postcode you're probably up to about 97% though)... It is fascinating stuff (and my day to day)

[Nuff Said 5,088]

55 minutes ago, cornish sam said:

In the UK, that combination of data is about 68% I think (but postal town not full post code, with the full postcode you're probably up to about 97% though)... It is fascinating stuff (and my day to day)

Your day-to-day job is identifying people from their anonymised information? GCHQ or MI5? 😉😆

[cornish sam 942]

13 minutes ago, Nuff Said said:

Your day-to-day job is identifying people from their anonymised information? GCHQ or MI5? 😉😆

If I told you I'd have to kill you...well I would get sacked at least.

Actually it's advising people how to properly protect the data and meet regulatory requirements and anonymisation is one of the tools we use, which includes guiding people on how to achieve appropriate k-anonymisation and l-diversity whilst still retaining value in the data.

[Nuff Said 5,088]

21 minutes ago, cornish sam said:

If I told you I'd have to kill you...well I would get sacked at least.

Actually it's advising people how to properly protect the data and meet regulatory requirements and anonymisation is one of the tools we use, which includes guiding people on how to achieve appropriate k-anonymisation and l-diversity whilst still retaining value in the data.

I guess your skills are in demand at the moment?

[cornish sam 942]

38 minutes ago, Nuff Said said:

I guess your skills are in demand at the moment?

You could say that... 

Also, I checked and I remembered my identifiability, not the average, it's actually 79% identifiable from dob, postal area and gender. There's a good tool here to help people realise how little info it takes: https://cpg.doc.ic.ac.uk/individual-risk well worth 2 minutes of anyone's time just to open their eyes.