California sues 23andMe over alleged data breach of 7 million users

California's top attorney sued genetic testing company 23andMe on Thursday, accusing the popular ancestry information provider of insufficiently safeguarding the sensitive data of 7 million users in a 2023 breach.

Attorney General Rob Bonta requested a number of civil penalties against Chrome Holding Co., which 23andMe rebranded to after it filed for bankruptcy in 2025. He also called for injunctions that would block the company from further violating the state's privacy protection laws.

23andMe has admitted to experiencing a serious security breach in 2023 that resulted in the theft of 7 million customers' data. The attacker used "credential stuffing," directly accessing only 14,000 but retrieving much more data by taking advantage of weak or common passwords.

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23andme is known for its direct-to-consumer DNA test kits that provided customers information on their ancestry and genetic predispositions for certain health conditions, The Associated Press reported .

Bonta’s office said this was a well-known attack that businesses should know to guard against. The attackers used stolen user account credentials including ones from a massive data breach in October 2017 that affected MyHeritage, one of 23andMe’s former partners.

After that breach, 23andMe did not take common protocols such as asking customers to reset their passwords or use multifactor authentication.

23andMe did not immediately respond to an emailed request for from AP.

“23andMe’s security measures were so lax that the threat actor was able to operate undetected within 23andMe’s systems for over five months, and remarkably, 23andMe only began investigating after the threat actor offered the stolen user data for sale on the dark web and reached out to 23andMe to demand a ransom,” prosecutors said in the complaint.

In October 2023, the stolen data appeared for sale on the dark web, with the poster specifically touting that 1.1 million consumers’ data belonged to Asian-Pacific Islander and Ashkenazi Jewish users.

“The sale of this data on the dark web took place amidst a period of mounting anti-Asian American and Pacific Islander and antisemitic hate and violence,” Bonta said in a press release. “This is disturbing and incredibly dangerous.”

Some of the data stolen included raw genetic data, health reports, DNA shared with other relatives, and locations and birth years of relatives.

The lawsuit says that after notifying the public the breach, 23andMe continued to mislead consumers the severity of the breach and the company’s role in it.

The company has said it only found out the breach in October 2023 when the stolen data was posted for sale on the dark web. However, the lawsuit said the company failed to properly investigate red flags that appeared months earlier, such as a “suspicious spike in user login attempts” in July and a post discussing a possible breach and sale of user data in August.

Genetic data requires “one of the highest levels of protection” and California law “mandates a heightened legal obligation” to protect it, the lawsuit said.

Bonta also intervened to ensure customers’ genetic data wouldn’t be mishandled during 23andMe’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy and asset sale, arguing that California’s Genetic Information Privacy Act required companies to obtain opt-in consent from customers before selling their genetic information to third parties. However, the sale was allowed to proceed.

In 2024, 23andMe agreed to pay a $30 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit accusing the company of failing to protect customers whose personal information was exposed in the breach. The amount was raised to $50 million to resolve most U.S. customer claims and received final approval in January by a federal judge overseeing 23andMe’s bankruptcy.