Attorney General Ellison reaches multistate settlement of bankruptcy claims against 23andMe over genetic data breach

Minnesota to receive more than $500K after breach affecting over 92,000 Minnesotans

23andMe also agrees to $47M class-action settlement for consumers as part of bankruptcy

July 14, 2026 (SAINT PAUL) — Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison today joined a coalition of 42 attorneys general announcing a settlement with the bankruptcy trustee for 23andMe, resolving allegations stemming from a 2023 data breach that compromised the genetic data of 6.9 million customers worldwide. Due to the finite amount of funds in the bankruptcy estate and numerous other claims, recovery is limited to $18 million that will be paid out of available bankruptcy funds immediately. Minnesota will receive $514,871 of this recovery. 

“When we share our sensitive data with a company, we do so with the understanding that the company will safeguard it,” said Attorney General Keith Ellison. “23andMe broke that trust. They ignored industry-standard data security practices, and when the breach occurred, they tried to lay the blame at the feet of their customers. This settlement sends a message to any company we trust with our information—if you don’t hold our personal data securely, you will be held accountable.” 

In October 2023, direct-to-consumer genetic testing company 23andMe announced that it had discovered a data breach that affected 6.9 million consumers, including 92,385 in Minnesota. This data breach exposed a wide range of data about 23andMe customers, including in some cases genetic ancestry information. Subsets of this data were subsequently published for sale on the dark web. 

23andMe learned about the breach months after impacted personal information was publicly available. 23andMe first denied a breach and then, once it confirmed the breach, blamed consumers for how their accounts were set up or how passwords were used. 23andMe initially accepted no responsibility for the credential stuffing breach, which was particularly egregious considering 23andMe’s partnership with online genealogy company MyHeritage, which itself was compromised years prior to the breach, exposing thousands of credentials shared between the websites. 

In the immediate aftermath of the data breach, Attorney General Ellison and the coalition formed a multistate investigation and found that 23andMe engaged in unreasonable data security practices, including, but not limited to: 

• Failing to employ safeguards against credential stuffing attacks, including comparing passwords against blocklists of known breached passwords or requiring multifactor authentication;  
• Failing to implement appropriate rate limiting or intrusion prevention; 
• Failing to implement logging and monitoring or other tools likely to detect a data breach; 
• Failing to appropriately investigate and/or address unusual login in patterns, including, for example, a massive spike in login attempts; 
• Failing to remediate known vulnerabilities; and
• Failing to properly review and test design features.

In March 2025, 23andMe filed for bankruptcy protection, and states subsequently filed claims related to the data breach investigation. As part of the bankruptcy proceedings, the assets – notably 23andMe’s consumer data – were sold to TTAM Research Institute, a non-profit formed by 23andMe founder and former CEO Anne Wojcicki. The terms of the sale included many information and data security requirements that likely would have been included in a settlement with 23andMe had it not filed for bankruptcy. Such terms included enhanced data security requirements, appropriate risk analysis, the addition of an Advisory Board, agreeing to be bound by comprehensive privacy laws without exception, and continuing to offer consumer deletion rights. These terms will make sure that TTAM Research Institute, now reregistered as 23andMe Research Institute, will be a safer custodian of genetic data moving forward.

In addition to general consumer protection and privacy laws, individuals are also protected under Minnesota’s Genetic Information Privacy Act, which gives consumers the right to access, delete, and destroy their genetic data. 

Attorney General Ellison joined the attorneys general of Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Michigan, North Carolina, North Dakota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, and West Virginia in today’s settlement.