The latest venture funded by Google - 23andMe - involves posting personal DNA information on the Internet. Sorry, folks, but this is just way too much and way too scary.

Google wants you to pay nearly one thousand dollars for a saliva test so they can map your DNA and post the results on a web site where you can "compare your genetic blueprint to your friends and family." Is anyone else concerned about this?

Sure, they say they have massive levels of security and claim no one will ever see your personal results, but, come on, are people really that gullible? Hey, just because we're paranoid doesn't mean Google isn't out to get us.

From Reuters:

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - 23andMe, a Google-funded online company selling a $999 DNA test, launched on Monday as a kind of genetics-based MySpace or Facebook that also has the more serious aim of allowing medicine someday to target Americans' ills more precisely.

Users sign up for the DNA saliva test online and receive and return it by mail. Four to six weeks later, the results are online, allowing them to learn about their inherited traits, their ancestry and -- likely with the help of a professional to look at the data -- some of their personal disease risks.

The Web site, which takes its name from the 23 pairs of chromosomes that make up each person's genome, says it will display more than a half-million data points in users' genomes in a form they can visualize and understand.

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"There wasn't an effective way for people to contribute," said fellow founder Anne Wojcicki, who has a background in health-care investing and is married to Google Inc co-founder Sergey Brin.

The site does not now make interpretations about a user's risk for developing such diseases as cancers, Alzheimer's disease, diabetes and others, although users could in some cases get help from genetic counselors or other experts to make some basic assessments.

SECURITY AND PRIVACY CONCERNS

While technology has made it easier to find and share information, it has also made security and privacy issues critical.

The protection of genetic information is particularly important to many consumers, who fear that insurers or other groups may use genetic data to deny coverage to or discriminate against people predisposed for serious disease.

23andMe's founders say the personal data in their system is secure and under the user's control -- protected by more than a dozen levels of authentication and encryption from the lab to the user.

The two women say aggregated genomic data will eventually be made available to people outside 23andMe for study -- but never sold.