I gave my DNA to tracking company – then it vanished

Lisa Topping, from Saffron Walden, Essex, sent a saliva sample to Atlas Biomed several years ago, paying around £100 for a personalised genetic report.

As well as telling her about her DNA profile, it claimed to also inform her about her predisposition to diseases and even injuries, taking into account information she had provided in an accompanying questionnaire.

She could access her report online – which she checked from time to time – until one day the website disappeared. She got no reply when she contacted them to ask what had happened.

“I don’t know what someone else could do with [the data] but it’s the most personal information… I don’t know how comfortable I feel that they have just disappeared,” Lisa told me.

In 2023, Kate Lake from Tonbridge, Kent, paid Atlas Biomed £139 for a report it never delivered.

It promised her a refund – then went silent, despite her trying every means of contact she could find.

“I just never heard back from anyone, it’s like no-one was at home,” she said.

She describes the situation as “very alarming.”

“What happens now to that information they have got? I would like to hear some answers,” she said.

The BBC was also unable to contact Atlas Biomed.

A phone number listed for the company is dead. The BBC visited its offices in London, but there was no sign of Atlas Biomed there.

The firm’s Instagram account, with over 11,000 followers, was last updated in March 2022. Its final post on X was in August the same year.

It shared a post on Facebook in June 2023, but did not respond to any of the comments – which were full of people complaining about being unable to contact it or access their profiles.