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The DNA-testing company’s site was slow in responding to some deletion requests, leading customers to be uncertain about the process

An array of 23andMe ME -59.22%decrease; red down pointing triangle customers rushed to its website Monday, seeking to delete their genetic data from the DNA-testing company after its bankruptcy filing.

They faced long wait times or error messages and had to make repeated attempts to receive confirmation that their request had been received. Some sought unsuccessfully to delete the data of a deceased family member, and many expressed uncertainty about whether or how they would receive confirmation that the data had been deleted.

Several 23andMe users also said they have a heightened interest in what happens to their data due to a password hack at the company in 2023 that exposed information belonging to 6.9 million people.

Those whose requests for deletion were processed received an email from the company that said: “Your data is being deleted,” followed by an added detail: “Your account will no longer be accessible, and will be deleted per your request.’

Once a buzzy consumer startup, 23andMe filed for chapter 11 on Sunday and announced the resignation of its chief executive officer, Anne Wojcicki. Facing inflationary pressures and challenges in its efforts to use DNA data to help develop pharmaceutical medicines, the company is now trying to sell itself through bankruptcy.

Its customers, more than 15 million of whom provided 23andMe with their genetic information, saliva samples, and family and personal health history, are worried about what will happen to their data under a new owner.

23andMe has a standard process for data deletion, which requires users to confirm they have made a request after receiving an email confirmation. Some customers said that the process appeared straightforward, but they lost confidence in it when they faced delays on Monday.

Ted Weidner, an Indiana resident who has been a 23andMe customer for four years, said that he decided to delete his data on Monday because he is worried about his privacy in the event of a sale. The deletion process was slow, but he managed to get through it with little issue. Now Weidner said he is waiting on further confirmation from the company that his data has been deleted.

“I’m trying to audit the process because there’s some sensitive information in there,” he said.

23andMe’s privacy policy, which shields customer data from employers, insurance companies, public databases and law enforcement, will continue to apply after it is sold, the company said in its open letter to customers Monday.

Given that customers agreed to the policy when they signed up for the service, the customer data isn’t subject to HIPAA, or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which protects personal health data, according to legal experts.

Instead, state laws in Illinois and California will govern data uses after a potential sale.

A new buyer could choose to change 23andMe’s privacy policy, Sara Gerke, associate professor of law at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, told The Wall Street Journal. Customers would still need to sign off on the changes, she said.

Don Bieber, an 88-year-old New York resident, spent three hours on Monday trying to delete his data, as well as that of two now-adult children he had guardianship over. Bieber said he is concerned about what would happen to that data after 23andMe is sold, and worried that his family would be unable to access that information if he died.

Over the course of three hours, he received several error messages before being able to successfully begin the deletion process.

Like others who deleted their data Monday, he received an email saying that the company is in the process of deleting his data, and that his account would be deleted per his request. Bieber, along with other customers who received this email, said he was worried about how long this process would take, and whether he would receive a second confirmation message once his data was deleted.

On Monday afternoon, Lucia McIntosh, 46, said that she had spent a couple of hours trying to delete her data. She said she hoped to download her information before deleting her account, but was met with an error message when she attempted to do so.

Customers who had more complicated situations, including those who accidentally sent 23andMe emails to their spam folders or who couldn’t remember their passwords, said they faced hourslong customer service queues on Monday.

Meta Plans to Charge $14 a Month for Ad-Free Instagram or Facebook

European users would have option to pay fee or agree to personalized ads, according to company’s pitch to regulators

Would people pay nearly $14 a month to use Instagram on their phones without ads? How about nearly $17 a month for Instagram plus Facebook—but on desktop?

That is what Meta Platforms META 3.79%increase; green up pointing triangle wants to charge Europeans for monthly subscriptions if they don’t agree to let the company use their digital activity to target ads, according to a proposal the social-media giant has made in recent weeks to regulators.

The proposal is a gambit by Meta to navigate European Union rules that threaten to restrict its ability to show users personalized ads without first seeking user consent—jeopardizing its main source of revenue.

Meta officials detailed the plan in meetings in September with its privacy regulators in Ireland and digital-competition regulators in Brussels. The plan has been shared with other EU privacy regulators for their input, too.

Meta has told regulators it hopes to roll out the plan—which it calls SNA, or subscription no ads—in coming months for European users. It would give users the choice between continuing to access Instagram and Facebook free with personalized ads, or paying for versions of the services without any ads, people familiar with the proposal said.

Under the plan, Meta has told regulators it would charge users roughly €10 a month, equivalent to about $10.50, on desktop on a Facebook or Instagram account, and roughly €6 for each additional linked account, the people said. On mobile devices the price would jump to roughly €13 a month because Meta would factor in commissions charged by Apple’s and Google’s app stores on in-app payments.

Planning to launch a subscription option for core Meta services is a major turnaround for the company. Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has long insisted that his core services should remain free and supported by advertising so that they can be available to people of all income levels.

“You don’t need thousands of dollars to connect with people who use our services,” Zuckerberg said at a 2018 conference in a not-so-thinly veiled dig at rival Apple, where CEO Tim Cook for his part decried what he called a “data industrial complex.”

Privacy-conscious users in the U.S. shouldn’t expect to be offered the option to pay for ad-free Instagram or Facebook soon. Meta’s proposals have been pitched specifically as a way to navigate demands by EU regulators to seek consent before crunching user data to select highly personalized ads.

To be sure, Zuckerberg has also said he would be open to the idea of a paid service to cope with tougher scrutiny about privacy. And earlier this year, amid a broader tech slump and a growing trend toward subscriptions from apps such as Snapchat and X, formerly Twitter, Meta introduced a paid user-verification service.

It isn’t clear if regulators in Ireland or Brussels will deem the new plan compliant with EU laws, or whether they will insist Meta offer cheaper or even free versions with ads that aren’t personalized based on a user’s digital activity.

One issue for regulators, some of the people familiar with the proposals said, is whether the prices Meta is proposing to charge will make the ad-free service too expensive for most people, even if they don’t want to have their data used to target ads.

A Meta spokesman says the company believes in “free services which are supported by personalized ads” but is exploring “options to ensure we comply with evolving regulatory requirements.”

A spokesman for Ireland’s Data Protection Commission, which leads enforcement of EU’s privacy law for Meta because it has a regional headquarters in Ireland, didn’t immediately have a comment. The European Commission, which enforces the digital-competition law, didn’t immediately have any comment.

Meta’s proposal to regulators and specifics of the plan such as the price and timing haven’t been previously reported. The New York Times reported last month that Meta was considering offering ad-free versions of its apps for a fee.

Driving Meta’s proposal has been demands by privacy regulators, led by Ireland, that Meta seek user consent before showing so-called behavioral ads, targeted with user activity data. In response, Meta had offered to seek such consent as soon as the end of October, The Wall Street Journal previously reported.

Separately, the EU’s executive arm said last month that Instagram, Facebook and Meta’s advertising network would fall under the scope of the bloc’s new digital-competition law, the Digital Markets Act. That law requires user consent before mingling user data among its services, or combining it with data from other companies.

Meta has said it hopes its subscription plan could comply with both edicts. Under the EU law, a user who declines to give consent for certain data use must still be able to access a service.

Meta reported its overall revenue in Europe worked out to roughly $17.88 per Facebook user in the second quarter, or just under $6 per user across all of its apps, on average, per month. The real average-revenue-per-month figure for EU users is likely somewhat higher, however, because Meta’s broader Europe region includes several non-EU countries including Turkey and Russia where lower revenue may drag down the average.

Meta estimates it has 258 million monthly Facebook users and 257 million Instagram users for the first half of the year in the EU, according to data it publishes under the bloc’s content-moderation law. The company said in a U.S. securities filing that it had 3.88 billion monthly active people on its apps as of June 30.

Meta has been pushed toward a subscription service by tightening enforcement of EU rules. A July decision from the bloc’s top court ruled Meta would need consent for certain kinds of targeted ads based on users’ online activity. That led privacy regulators in Ireland to tell Meta it had to change its practices.

Norway’s privacy regulator said it wanted a faster resolution and in July ordered Meta to suspend its ads targeted based on user activity in the country. Last week, the Norway regulator asked a board of all EU regulators to expand its ban across the bloc. Such an order, if approved, would likely face court appeals.

Meta has in pushing for its plan pointed to previous examples of how some other companies, such as music-streaming service Spotify, offer users a choice between a free ad-supported service or a subscription service without ads. Meta’s proposed pricing on mobile is similar to what YouTube charges for its ad-free premium service in Europe.

The company has also pointed to a paragraph in that July EU court decision that said social-media companies could charge a “reasonable fee” to users who decline to let their data be used for certain ad-targeting purposes, saying that opens the door to a subscription service.

Rolls-Royce warns UK risks losing out in small nuclear reactor race

Government delay in selecting companies to build SMRs could undermine supply chains, says chief executive

The head of Rolls-Royce has warned that the UK government runs the risk that critical supply chains to support the development of small nuclear reactors will be built elsewhere if it fails to select the companies to build them by the end of June.

Tufan Erginbilgiç, chief executive of the FTSE 100 engineer, said Britain risked repeating what happened during the offshore wind energy revolution over the past decade when the country lagged behind other European nations in manufacturing key turbine components. 

Rolls-Royce was one of four companies shortlisted last year by the government to develop small nuclear modular reactors (SMRs). The competition has been subject to delays, although Great British Energy, the government’s state-owned energy company, is expected to select two winners by the “spring”. 

Although further delays would be a risk for Rolls-Royce’s own plans, there was more of a risk for the UK with regards to the supply chain, said Erginbilgiç.

“Why do you think the wind supply chain didn’t happen in the UK? These supply chains, once they are developed somewhere, it is hard to change them because external economies happen there, economies of scale happen etc, etc,” he told the Financial Times in an interview. 

It was important that GBN did not “delay any more” and that the “selection now comes in June,” Erginbilgiç added. 

Governments are interested in the potential for SMRs — nuclear reactors that are smaller than the gigawatt-scale plants widely built around the world — to provide a reliable electricity supply to meet rising demand without generating carbon emissions.

Officials hope the scale and modular design of SMRs mean they can be built without the budget overruns and delays that have beset large-scale nuclear-power projects in recent years. 

SMRs have also come into focus as tech groups such as Amazon and Google have struck power supply deals to power energy-hungry artificial intelligence data centres.

Rolls-Royce’s SMR design, which will have a 470 megawatt generating capacity, is relatively large for the type. They are generally 300MW capacity or less.

The company has already been selected as the preferred supplier in the Czech Republic. The group last year sold a minority stake in its SMR business to Czech utility ČEZ as part of a wider strategic partnership between the two companies to deploy the nascent technology. The first reactor is planned near the South Bohemian Temelín nuclear power plant, and is likely to be built in the mid-2030s.

In the event that Rolls-Royce is selected in the UK, Erginbilgiç said the company’s intent would be to do both projects in the UK and in the Czech Republic, “in parallel”.

Although there were some components that only a few global suppliers made, if the UK government pushed ahead with its SMR strategy, 70 per cent of the supply chain could be based domestically, he said.

There had been some speculation that Erginbilgiç, who has orchestrated a sweeping turnaround at Rolls-Royce since taking the helm in January 2023, would close down the SMR business after but he has remained behind it.

Ethereum faces ‘midlife crisis’ as rivals play catch-up

Emergence of memecoin craze sweeping through crypto markets distracts enthusiasts

The price of ether has slumped 40 per cent in the past three months as the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency and blockchain battle a “midlife crisis” in the face of competition from rivals.

The token, which represents the Ethereum blockchain, the most widely used in financial markets, has fallen to $2,087 a token. The crypto market has also dropped sharply this year as a rally following US President Donald Trump’s election victory has faded.

Yet ether has underperformed other large cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, solana and cardano. Its decline underscores ether’s loss of favour among investors, who once flocked to a corner of the crypto market that promised to shake up the financial system with “decentralised finance” applications.

“The whole DeFi vision looks much further away now than a year ago,” said Carol Alexander, professor of finance at the University of Sussex. “There’s disillusionment as scales are falling from the eyes.”

Ethereum has long pitched itself as the crypto industry’s “grown up” network, as a form of safe programmable money that can store financial assets and execute actions automatically.

That has made it the blockchain of choice for mainstream financial institutions dabbling in crypto innovation.

Stablecoin issuers such as Tether, USDC and PayPal use Ethereum to underpin their digital forms of cash while companies including BlackRock and Fidelity use it as the basis for their tokenised versions of US Treasuries.

The recent craze for so-called memecoins — tokens with no purported use — has also sucked crypto traders’ attention away from Ethereum this year.

Most coins, including the ones promoted by Trump and Argentina’s leader, Javier Milei, have used the Solana blockchain, a rival that touts itself as faster, cheaper and better adapted to large-scale use.

Memecoin trading has generated $721mn in the past six months for users of Solana, according to Nansen, a data provider. Up from very little a year ago, that is almost as much as the $824mn in fees Ethereum generated.

“Ethereum is just not interesting to most people — it’s hard to get too excited about amazing feats of engineering when there [are] so many competing things now in the attention economy,” said Adam McCarthy, research analyst at Kaiko, a data provider. “Compare this to bitcoin which has the ‘digital gold’ narrative nailed down.”

Traders were also disappointed when the Trump administration said the government would not be making sweeping purchases of ether as part of a US strategic reserve for crypto, contradicting indications from the president days earlier.

“[There are] two pools of capital for the market — the ‘crypto native’ and ETFs,” said David Lawant, head of research at FalconX, a US crypto prime broker. “Ethereum lost ground in the native space and it’s not got a lot of traction from the ETF crowd.”

A net outflow from US ETFs investing in ether of $401mn in March — the biggest monthly total since July — has wiped out inflows for the year.

The outflows come as the network of Ethereum developers also faces its own crisis of confidence. The number of crypto wallets regularly sending and receiving payments on the network is little changed since last March, according to FT Wilshire data.

Alexander argues much of the activity in the decentralised finance projects that use Ethereum is exaggerated, with many trades counted multiple times.

She also noted the Ethereum Foundation, which is responsible for the blockchain’s development, has split as developers argue over the project’s broader direction. “Decision-making has become a bit of a shambles,” Alexander said.

Geoff Kendrick, head of digital assets research at Standard Chartered, said Ethereum is in a “midlife crisis” as it fumbles a series of technical upgrades intended to make itself more attractive to a wider audience.

Ethereum developers have been trying to improve the speed and efficiency of the network, handing the transaction processing legwork to third parties. But that sends fees to the third parties, known as Layer 2 networks, at the expense of the Ethereum developers. The decision “gave away value for free”, said Kendrick, adding “Ethereum has essentially commoditised itself”.

Supporters say Ethereum has the best-established community of developers. High-profile promoters, including co-founder Vitalik Buterin, are also working on new networks to help it handle large volumes of trades.

The price of rivals such as Solana and ada, the token representing Cardano, have also dropped more than 20 per cent in the past three months as the volatile crypto market loses momentum without a fresh catalyst or new funds flowing into the market.

But Simon Forster, co-head of digital assets at broker TP ICAP, said Ethereum and ether were increasingly becoming just one of many speculative crypto projects.

“It’s a harder sell,” he said. “Nobody knows which of these decentralised networks will emerge as dominant.”

Heathrow is coming under growing scrutiny over its decision to close for nearly 24 hours following a fire at a nearby electrical substation, even though it was still able to receive power from other parts of the grid.

Senior management at Europe’s busiest airport took the decision to close on Friday as they battled to restore full power to a complex that uses the same amount of electricity as a small city.

But John Pettigrew, chief executive of National Grid which operates Britain’s high-voltage transmission network, told the Financial Times that two other substations serving Heathrow were working throughout the incident, meaning the airport never lost potential access to power.

As concerns grow over the resilience of the UK’s critical infrastructure, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer on Monday said “there are questions” for airport executives to answer over the scale of disruption.

Heathrow has enough diesel generators to power critical operations, including its control tower and runway lights, and passengers were able to safely leave the airport late on Thursday night after the outage was first reported. But its generators do not have the capacity to run the whole airport.

Simon Gallagher, managing director of UK Networks Services, a consultancy specialising in power grids, said few other airports have better backup supplies than Heathrow.

But he said other industries “are far more resilient”.

“The airport industry as a whole has this issue with resilience . . . other industries with even bigger connections ensure they never go off supply,” he said.

A nearby data centre run by Ark Data Centres, which is equipped with 12 emergency generators, was also affected by Friday’s substation fire, but says it managed to avoid disruption by switching on its backup supply.

“I don’t think that the people buying services off me would buy them without this resilience built in,” said Huw Owen, Ark’s chief executive.

A 2023 US government report found one large hub airport reported having 10 diesel fuel generators and enough fuel on site to power the entire airport for three weeks. The airport was seen as an outlier, analysts said.

Resilience must “strike the right balance between risks and costs”, said Olivier Jankovec, director-general of trade group Airports Council International Europe. “Ensuring minimum disruptions and keeping operations going as much as possible is simply not always possible — especially when faced with rare and extreme events.”

While the fire took North Hyde substation out of operation, two others remained capable of providing power to the airport. But in order to access the power from the remaining two substations, Heathrow said it had to “reconfigure” its internal electrical networks.

In practice, this meant the airport had to send technicians to its own power distribution points, where they physically toggled circuit breakers to disconnect Heathrow from North Hyde and reconnect it to the other stations.

The airport also had to shut down, restart and systematically test hundreds of its systems before it could resume operations.

Heathrow said: “Given Heathrow’s size and operational complexity, safely restarting operations after a disruption of this magnitude was a significant challenge.”

It is unclear how long each step of the process took, and some experts said they were surprised by the length of time it took to return the airport to normal operation.

Heathrow announced at 4.30am on Friday that it would close until midnight, and by 12.30pm it had begun restarting its systems. By 4pm the airport was “100 per cent confident that all systems were safely operating”, said transport secretary Heidi Alexander. The first flights restarted around 7pm.

“In some ways, this seems to [have been] a process failure,” said David Wallom, professor of informatics at Oxford university. “It seems like Heathrow had never considered the possibility of this scale of failure.”

All contingency planning requires a “weighing up of the economics”, said Malte Jansen, an energy policy researcher at Sussex university.

“No technical system will be 100 per cent fail-proof,” he said. “I didn’t get the feeling this was a reckless design — the system is designed to be reliable and a very unlikely case has come to fruition.”

Nevertheless, power industry executives said Heathrow should have been better prepared given its status as Europe’s busiest airport. The ability to switch power quickly “should be a minimum standard”, said one executive.

A 2014 report by consultancy Jacobs, prepared as part of an earlier Heathrow expansion push, said “even a brief interruption to electricity supplies could have a long-lasting impact”.

But it concluded “Heathrow is equipped with on-site generation and appears to have resilient electricity supplies that are compliant with regulations and standards”.

Heathrow has spent a total of £7.4bn in capital expenditure on the airport since 2014, including on new security scanners. But at a time when landing fees have risen, airlines have criticised its owners for spending this money inefficiently, leaving the airport with ageing infrastructure.

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