23andMe data breach overview:

• Who: Plaintiff Alyson Hu filed a class action lawsuit against 23andMe Inc.
• Why: 23andMe allegedly failed to take adequate cybersecurity measures to protect customers’ sensitive information from cybercriminals, resulting in a data breach that may have affected nearly 7 million individuals.
• Where: The 23andMe class action lawsuit was filed in Illinois federal court.

Genetic testing company 23andMe Inc. faces another class action lawsuit following an Oct. 6 data breach.

Unauthorized actors reportedly accessed 23andMe accounts, including millions of customers’ sensitive Personal Identifiable Information (PII), such as their names, usernames, regional locations, birth years, profile pictures and ethnicities.

Plaintiff Alyson Hu, a 23andMe customer, filed the 23andMe data breach class action lawsuit Dec. 26. She previously received notice her PII had been compromised.

“Since the [23andMe data breach] occurred, several news sources have reported that threat actors listed mass amounts of the stolen data for sale on the dark web,” Hu alleges. “Defendant has failed to address these reports, failed to inform victims when and how the data breach occurred and has even failed to say whether the security threat is still a risk to customers.”

Plaintiff argues adequate cybersecurity measures could have prevented 23andMe data breach

You can find the rest of the article in an article by Anne Bucher published in the topclassactions web site at: http://tinyurl.com/595ux7wt.

You inherited your blood type from your parents (and, in turn, from ALL your ancestors) so this article appears to be genealogy-related:

The idea has deep roots in Japan's cultural past, but a watered-down version is increasingly popular in Asia and even America.

 has important implications for how they are understood as an individual and how they may perform in their jobs. So what’s going on here?

What does your blood type say about you?

Okay, let’s get the fun part out of the way first. For the curious out there, this is what Ketsueki-gata says about the different blood types.

Type A blood: According to a casual internet search, people with Type A blood are regarded as warm, friendly, and compassionate. However, they can be obsessive, stubborn, and uptight. Type A individuals are said to be more common in Japan that people with other blood types.

Type B blood: Individuals with Type B blood are thought to be strong, passionate, decisive, and empathetic, but they are also more selfish, erratic, unforgiving, and wild. People with this type of blood are seen as being quite transitory, taking up projects and then leaving them half-complete.

Type AB blood: If you have AB type blood, you get the best of both worlds. According to Ketsueki-gata, you’re likely to be regarded as rational, composed, sociable, and adaptable. But you can also be unreliable, critical, indecisive, and aloof. AB type blood is the rarest in Japan, so people with it are often seen as eccentric.

Type O blood: These individuals are confident, strong-willed, optimistic, and natural leaders. But they are also competitive, insecure, and likely workaholics. According to this system of thinking, Type O people are not meant to get on with type A people.

There are other blood types out there – Ketsueki-gata was only designed to account for these main types.

You can read more in an article by Dr. Russell Moul published in the iflscience web site at: http://tinyurl.com/2yjya2ym.

The following announcement was written by the Board for Certification of Genealogists:

Registration for the Board for Certification of Genealogists’ twelve monthly webinars in 2024 is now live at our partner website Legacy Family Tree Webinars, BCG Upcoming Webinars.  Dates, topics, and speakers are shown below:

16 Jan 2024 - Shannon Green, CG “The Genealogical Proof Standard (GPS): A Review”

20 Feb 2024 - Jerry Smith, CG “Metes & Bounds Land Plats Solve Genealogical Problems”

19 Mar 2024 - Jill Morelli, CG, CGL “Maternal Threads Unwoven: Identifying Margareta’s Mother in 18th Century Sweden”

16 Apr 2024 - Anne Morddel, CG “French Emigrants: They Were Not All Huguenots, or Nobles, or from Alsace-Lorraine”

21 May 2024 - Thomas W. Jones, PhD, CG, “Editing Your Own Writing – Part 1”

18 Jun 2024 -Thomas W. Jones, PhD, CG “Editing Your Own Writing – Part 2”

16 Jul 2024 - David Ouimette, CG, CGL “Oral Genealogy in Asia-Pacific: The Essence of Personal Identity and Tribal Connections”

20 Aug 2024 - Debbie Mieszala, CG “He Had a Brother Who Disappeared: Finding John H. Hickey, Formerly of Rockton, Winnebago County, Illinois”

17 Sep 2024 - LaBrenda Garret-Nelson, JD, LLM, CG, CGL, FASG, “A Myriad of Slave Databases”

15 Oct 2024 - Robbie Johnson, CG “Sense and Sensibility: The Power of Logic, Intuition, and Critical Thinking”

19 Nov 2024 - Yvette Hoitink, CG “Dear Me: Writing Research Reports to Yourself”

17 Dec 2024 - Mary Kircher Roddy, CG “Lost and Found: Locating Ancestral Origins with FAN Club and DNA”

“Education is one of the most significant ways of achieving BCG’s mission for promoting public confidence in genealogy through uniform standards of competence,” said President Faye Jenkins Stallings, CG. “We appreciate this opportunity to provide these webinars that focus on the standards that help family historians of all levels practice good genealogy.”

Following the free period for these webinars, BCG receives a small commission if you view any BCG webinar by clicking at our affiliate link: http://legacy.familytreewebinars.com/?aid=2619. For access to all BCG webinars, see the BCG Webinar Library at Legacy Family Tree Webinars (http://legacy.familytreewebinars.com/?aid=2619).

To see the full list of BCG-sponsored webinars for 2024, visit the BCG blog SpringBoard at https://bcgcertification.org/bcg-2024-free-webinars. For additional resources for genealogical education, please visit the BCG Learning Center (https://bcgcertification.org/learning).

The words Certified Genealogist and its acronym, CG, are a registered certification mark, and the designations Certified Genealogical Lecturer and its acronym, CGL, are service marks of the Board for Certification of Genealogists®, used under license by board certificants after periodic evaluation.

From theMyHeritage Blog:

We’re thrilled to announce the opening of registration for the 2024 Legacy Family Tree Webinars series on Legacy Family Tree Webinars. This year, we’re offering a dynamic lineup of 168 live webinars, taught by some of the most respected educators in genealogy. Our 2024 series features 112 expert speakers from 14 different countries including 30 new faces.

New and Exciting Series for 2024:

In addition to these, we have a variety of specialized series covering regions like Australia, New Zealand, Africa, Canada, and Mexico. Plus, don’t miss our exclusive MyHeritage Webinars and sessions by the Board for Certification of Genealogists.

The following is an announcement from the Montana Historical Society:

Two newspaper digitization projects will improve and expand access to historical Montana newspapers, which is one of the most used collections at the Montana Historical Society (MTHS).

This latest project through the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP) makes more than 100,000 pages available online for free and includes newspapers from towns on or near reservations in Montana.

This is the fifth time the MTHS received a grant to be part of the NDNP, a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress to enhance access to historical American newspapers.

“The project we just completed includes newspapers from Browning, Harlem, Hot Springs, and Poplar, marking the first time that papers from these towns are accessible and searchable online,” noted Library Manager Dan Karalus, who headed the project.

Montana newspapers from all the NDNP projects, totaling more than 400,000 pages, are available on the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America website www.loc.gov/collections/chronicling-america/.

The second project, a partnership with Newspapers.com, included digitizing 5,000-plus microfilm reels of newspapers from more than 200 Montana cities and towns.

The MTHS now offers a free Public Access Portal where online users can search through nearly 2.5 million pages of historical Montana newspapers. The portal includes all the content migrated from its Montana Newspapers website, most material from Chronicling America, and some newly digitized newspapers in the public domain.

The portal replaces the Montana Newspapers website, which the MTHS plans to shut down in early 2024, saving significant costs. To access the new portal, go to mths.mt.gov/Research/collections/newspapers/mtnews and click on the Newspapers.com Public Access Portal link.

When the MTHS reopens to the public, visitors to the Library & Archives will have free access to more than 12 million newspaper pages and more than 650 titles via the Newspapers.com Onsite Portal, available in person in the Reference Room. The available papers include short-lived titles, like the Flaxville Democrat and its three issues published in 1920, and some of the longest-running papers in the state, such as The Madisonian out of Virginia City, which has 150 years of digitized issues.

Today, the MTHS can offer digital access to newspapers published in every Montana county.

“This is huge,” Karalus said. “Researchers used to visit us and spend hours scrolling through microfilm. But when we reopen in 2025, they can come here and just do a keyword search.”

Karalus adds that this improves access and preservation, as the microfilm collection will see less use. “We will still have to use microfilm for some more recent papers under copyright, but we probably won’t hear the microfilm readers rewinding as often,” he said.

As part of the MTHS agreement with Newspapers.com, the company performed the digitization work in exchange for access rights for a period of three years. After that time, digitized newspapers in the public domain will shift over to the Public Access Portal and be available online from anywhere.

Individuals with research questions may submit a research request via the MTHS website mhs.mt.gov/Research/ResearchRequests or by e-mail to mthslibrary@mt.gov.

Mahmudul has been going to the National Archives for the past five years and using the archives for his MPhil. 

"Whenever I need any information or reference, I visit the National Archives. Most of the time I get the information I need," said Mahmudul Hasan. 

Currently, Mahmudul is in pursuit of his PhD research on the political evolution of Rakhine from 1784 to 1990.

He has been collecting information on the past from the correspondence between the then-British officials posted at Chattogram and Dhaka office about the border situation. Later, Dhaka office would send the letters to the Governor-General in Delhi. 

The Department of Archives and Library in Agargaon is a repository for original documents from the past to be used by researchers and academics. The archive is massive.

Whilst it is commonly visited by researchers in Bangladesh like Mahmudul as well as foreigners –for historical documents like newspapers, maps, gazettes, government publications, political manifestos and land records of historical values – it remains almost unknown by the masses. Many people have little to no idea about the place and the documents it preserves. 

You can read more in an article by Ariful Islam Mithu published in The Business Standard at: http://tinyurl.com/mr2we7yw.

Here is a list of all of this week's articles, all of them available here at https://eogn.com: 

From an article in the techdirt web site:

Join our public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1928! »

Happy new year, everyone — and happy public domain day! That’s right: today’s the day that works from 1928 exit copyright protection and become public domain in the US, and that means it’s time for the latest edition of our annual public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1928! We’re calling on designers of all stripes and all levels of experience to put this year’s newly public domain works to use in digital and analog games. 

UPDATED U.S., Find a Grave® Index, 1600s-Current 12/19/2023

UPDATED Oklahoma, U.S., County Marriage Records, 1890-1995 12/14/2023

UPDATED Prince Edward County, Virginia, U.S., Deaths, 1880-1896 12/14/2023

UPDATED Sacramento, California, U.S., California Biographical Great Books, 1867, 1872 12/14/2023

UPDATED U.S., Cemetery and Funeral Home Collection, 1847-Current 12/13/2023

UPDATED U.S., Obituary Collection, 1930-Current 12/13/2023

NEW Washington, District of Columbia, U.S., Voter Registration Records, 1929-202312/13/2023

 UPDATED U.S., Newspapers.com™ Marriage Index, 1800s-current 12/12/2023

UPDATED New York, U.S., County Marriage Records, 1847-1849, 1907-1936 12/11/2023

UPDATED Kentucky, U.S., County Marriage Records, 1783-1965 12/06/2023