Millions of Flickr images were sucked into a database called MegaFace. Now some of those faces may have the ability to sue.

Americans may soon be able to get their medical records through smartphone apps as easily as they order takeout food from Seamless or catch a ride from Lyft. But prominent medical organizations are warning that patient data-sharing with apps could facilitate invasions of privacy — and they are fighting the change.

It looks like Amazon is working on a new Alexa-powered gadget that can listen to you and decide how you feel, and make recommendations based on your human emotions. Citing internal documents and an unnamed source, Bloomberg reports that the company has designed a device that you wear like a wristwatch and beta testing is apparently underway. “Eventually the technology could be able to advise the wearer how to interact more effectively with others,” reads the report.

One night in November 1999, a 26-year-old woman was raped in a parking lot in Grand Rapids, Mich. Police officers managed to get the perpetrator’s DNA from a semen sample, but it matched no one in their databases.

Detectives found no fingerprints at the scene and located no witnesses. The woman, who had been attacked from behind, could not offer a description. It looked like the rapist would never be found.

Five years later, there was a break in the case. A man serving time for another sexual offense submitted a DNA sample with his parole application. The sample matched DNA from the rape scene.

There was just one catch: The parolee had an identical twin, and standard DNA tests can’t distinguish between identical twins. Prosecutors had no additional evidence to rule out one or the other. Because they couldn’t press charges against either of the men, the case remains open nearly 20 years later.

Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. said it will no longer be selling or servicing genetic sequencers in China’s Xinjiang region, following mounting criticism that its products were used for state surveillance of citizens there that enabled human rights abuses.

If no one reads the terms and conditions, how can they continue to be the legal backbone of the internet?

The average person would have to spend 76 working days reading all of the digital privacy policies they agree to in the span of a year. Reading Amazon’s terms and conditions alone out loud takes approximately nine hours.

Police stations from Massachusetts to Mumbai have received similar alerts from Facebook over the last 18 months as part of what is most likely the world’s largest suicide threat screening and alert program. The social network ramped up the effort after several people live-streamed their suicides on Facebook Live in early 2017. It now utilizes both algorithms and user reports to flag possible suicide threats.

These commercials are cute and make DNA testing look fun. And they’re clearly working. Clever marketing combined with holiday deals means parents are buying their kids DNA tests from companies 23andMe, AncestryDNA and MyHeritage. But these tests might not be appropriate for all kids, and experts say there are many reasons parents should think carefully before sending their child’s spit through the mail.

Katie Stoll, a genetic counselor and executive director of the nonprofit Genetic Support Foundation in Olympia, Wash., says her concerns around using these tests on minors boil down to the autonomy of the child. “Children should have the opportunity to grow up and decide for themselves whether or not this is information they want to know,” she says of DNA test results.

Theft of your personal medical information is on the rise, despite stringent privacy laws intended to safeguard it, according to a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The breaches of electronic health records can include a vast array of personal information, including your Social Security number and medical history. The theft is the latest example of how all private data is increasingly subject to breaches, where credit card numbers, account log-ins and more end up in the wrong hands.