Illumina, Inc.
Health Care
54
out of 100. Number 177 of 512, counting from the worst.
Where Illumina, Inc. does well
- Renewals 2 of 20. Few problems found.
- Illumina publishes an annual Privacy Transparency Report; the 2025 report states it received zero law-enforcement requests for genomic information and zero national-security letters/FISA orders in FY2025. The privacy policy pledges not to disclose genomic information without a valid subpoena or search warrant (or otherwise sufficient legal basis). It offers California residents a 'Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information' footer opt-out and honors the Global Privacy Control signal, and states it does not knowingly sell or share data of anyone under
- Several cloud programs (BaseSpace Sequence Hub, Clarity LIMS, Correlation Engine, Connected Analytics) hold ISO/IEC 27701 privacy certification.
Illumina alone gets to decide whether a dispute goes to secret arbitration or court.
The fine print
6 clauses and findings from the draft archive, dated 1 October 2026. The plain English comes first; the small print is the company's own words. None of these has been checked yet.
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Illumina alone gets to decide whether a dispute goes to secret arbitration or court. If it's arbitration, it's confidential and the loser must pay Illumina's legal bills — so challenging them means risking a massive legal bill on top of everything else.
"In Illumina's sole discretion, any dispute, claim or controversy arising out of or relating to this Agreement, shall be determined by confidential binding arbitration conducted in the English language, in accordance with the Commercial Arbitration Rules of the American Arbitration Association, in San Diego, California... the losing party at the arbitration will be required to reimburse the prevailing party's legal fees and other expenses incurred in such arbitration."
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If you bring your own DNA samples to an Illumina training course, the resulting genomic data gets a permanent, royalty-free, never-expiring license to Illumina for its own internal business — including sub-licensing to others. Your sample data, their forever rights.
"Customer hereby grants Illumina a worldwide, royaltyfree, fully paid up, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable license, with the right to sublicense, all Intellectual Property Rights in the Results, to use such Results for its internal business purposes and to improve Illumina's Training Courses." ("Results" includes genomic data generated by sequencing Customer's samples.)
Illumina Terms and Conditions — Onsite Training Courses (EU - English), Section 7.2
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Illumina admits its ad-targeting data sharing can count as a 'sale' of your personal data under California law. Your browsing behavior on illumina.com feeds Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and data-broker LiveRamp retargeting systems — opt-out is on you, buried in a footer toggle.
"We share personal information with third parties as described in this policy, including, in certain circumstances, for cross-context behavioral advertising purposes. This 'sharing' may meet CCPA's definition of 'sale of personal data'." Ad-targeting partners named in the policy include Google AdWords Remarketing, LinkedIn Website Retargeting, Twitter, Facebook Website Retargeting, Salesforce Audience Studio, Adobe Analytics, and LiveRamp.
Illumina Privacy Policy (updated February 11, 2026), California Privacy Rights section
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Illumina can rewrite its privacy policy (effective the moment they post it) and raise prices on its software platforms just by posting a notice — and you 'agree' simply by not quitting. No signature, no click-through, no real opt-in required.
"We reserve the right to change this Privacy Policy at any time... All changes are effective immediately when we post them, and they apply to all access to and use of the website and our products and services from that point onward. Your continued access to or use of the website, products or services represents your acceptance of any such changes." (Platform agreement version: "Illumina may make changes to this Agreement... and pricing from time to time... Pricing changes will become effective 60 days after they are posted... Customer's continued use of the Service(s) after such material change will constitute Customer's consent to such changes.")
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Once Illumina de-identifies or aggregates your genomic data, you can never get it back or deleted — it can't even be traced. And the general retention rule is a vague 'as long as needed,' with no stated time limits anywhere in the policy.
"Information that has already been de-identified and/or aggregated, including aggregated genomic information, may not be retrievable or traced back for correction or removal from any database." The general retention policy states only: "Illumina retains your personal information only for so long as it is needed to achieve the purpose for which it was originally collected" — no fixed timelines are given.
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Illumina ignores your browser's Do-Not-Track setting entirely. And if you share genomic data through BaseSpace with a collaborator, Illumina washes its hands the moment you do — what the recipient does with your DNA data afterward is not their problem.
"Some mobile and web browsers transmit 'do-not-track' signals... We currently do not take action in response to these signals." Separately, in the BioInsight Platform Agreement's BaseSpace addendum: "Customer acknowledges that once it has shared Data it is no longer under Customer's control and the Sharee of that Data is free to use that shared Data" — and Illumina disclaims all liability for what happens after sharing.
How these were found
Documents actually read via browser_open on 2026-10-01: (1) Illumina Privacy Policy at https://www.illumina.com/company/legal/privacy.html, updated February 11, 2026; (2) Illumina BioInsight Platform Agreement (successor to the Software Subscription Agreement) at the EMEA-hosted PDF URL above, 'Last Updated: June 15, 2026' — all quotes verified from rendered document text; (3) Onsite Training Courses T&Cs (EU-English) PDF at the supportassets.prd-web.illumina.com.cn URL — note this document's internal version stamp is 'Jan 2018' but it is still live in Illumina's current terms library. No mirror sites (OpenTermsArchive etc.) were needed; illumina.com was fetchable directly. No auto-renewal or cancellation-trap language was found in the documents reviewed (searched the full BioInsight agreement for 'renew'/'automatic'), so the autorenew score is low — that category may warrant a recheck if Illumina publishes consumer-facing subscription terms elsewhere.
These notes come from the original draft and are not independent verification.