Health records of all 500,000 UK Biobank volunteers – including cancer diagnoses, metabolomics, and ICD-coded outcomes – listed for sale on Alibaba.
Key Takeaways
Three Alibaba listings appeared on April 20; at least one contains the full 500,000-person dataset with genomic, proteomic, and haematology measurements.
Data scope is unusually deep: gender, age, socioeconomic status, mental health, cognitive function, self-reported history, and ICD-coded disease outcomes including cancer diagnosis dates.
Listings also offered paid support for submitting formal UK Biobank data access applications, suggesting insider knowledge of the access workflow.
UK Biobank is a research charity whose data underpins thousands of peer-reviewed studies; a full leak undermines consent guarantees for every participant.
Hacker News Comment Review
The single comment links to a prior HN thread about UK Biobank health data surfacing on GitHub, suggesting this is a recurring exfiltration pattern rather than a one-off event.
No broader technical or policy discussion has emerged yet on this thread.
Notable Comments
@WalterGR: points to earlier HN thread on UK Biobank data leaking via GitHub, implying a pattern of repeated unauthorized redistribution.