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>"Anonymized". Just with the data posted above, it seems like it'd be pretty easy to correlate the data to a person.

Yep. Location at 3am tells you where they live, and you're basically done already.

That is a correct logical conclusion if you start with the assumption that the data shared with David Pogue included all the data Fitbit has. But maybe you shouldn't start with that assumption.

Disclaimer: I work for Fitbit, but don't speak for Fitbit.

EDIT: Actually there's an additional assumption here, one which I also make, that any app with location permissions has all my GPS location data. But that assumption may be false here. It sounds like where I'm sleeping at 3am isn't recorded according to https://help.fitbit.com/articles/en_US/Help_article/2134

This large scale data analytics is probable the best (or at least usually fastest) way to solve the worlds big health challenges I would guess. Nobody forced anyone to wear a smart watch or health tracker. I for one thinks the world is slightly better off because of companies like Fitbit!

> Nobody forced anyone to wear a smart watch or health tracker.

I think this is a dangerous mindset to have, assuming that just because someone's bought a product, that gives the manufacturer license to collect data on my health habits. I would be much more receptive to an opt-in study.

The world may be better off, but certainly not because they massively collect biometric data, but because their product encourages exercise.

Both right? You may not like it but which research wouldn’t benefit from a large useful dataset? And to the post above re: assuming consent, sure maybe they should make it crystal clear up front how they’ll use your data.

How would you suggest making it clear up front? Providing a link to a privacy policy and making people check a box saying they've read it?

A list of information shared would go a long way. Assuming it's a short list (hah), it wouldn't be hard to prominently display it aside from the privacy policy.

Edit: Also, turn ALL of this into a single step, and make it easier to find: https://blog.fitbit.com/go-incognito/

Make it opt-in.

> This large scale data analytics is probable the best (or at least usually fastest) way to solve the worlds big health challenges I would guess.

Judging from previous performance of using statistical analysis to study health, I don't see it solving anything major.

Health is mostly a combinations of genetics and healthy routines.

People already have a good idea of how they could improve their routines/diets--they choose not to. Healthy routines are hard. So unless the massive data sets are related to genetics, I don't see them contributing much.

Also good luck "anonymizing" genetic data!

If used by researchers, for research. Not sitting in vaults of private companies, doing God knows what. I don't even know what they need that data for.

Sure, now that's there, it could be useful. But why can't we ever go about collecting such data the right way? Opt-in, and for the right purpose?

> If used by researchers, for research.

Sure, but that's application. Great things usually can do terrible things depending on application.

At some point we have to take a leap of faith and acknowledge that some things, like heart data ingestion, is an amazing advancement for humanity. Lets not try and stop it, lets try to move it in the right direction. Ie, not private, etc.

I can imagine potential good uses. I just don't trust this particular actor.

* Nobody forced anyone to wear a smart watch or health tracker.*

Yes... and no. Don't folks get insurance premium discounts for using one of these things? If you are poor and having trouble putting food on the table, it isn't much of an actual choice.

While I definitely agree that there are large privacy concerns when collecting health related data, I disagree with the sentiment that it's always a bad idea. There is a huge net benefit to modernizing medicine and getting to an AI that is more accurate then doctors. Creating those datasets is a leap towards that direction.

It's not always a bad idea, but collecting data by default in a way that doesn't seem all that anonymized isn't great.

Sorry to be impolite but... f*ck that.

If they want true anonymity, then remove at least location part of this (or say with 50km precision). Make it all optional with clear description what user opt for. And have independent yearly audit that confirms this on their core databases.

Anything less that that, and their motives are dirty as stale sewage waters. Why it seems that every company out there is only after as-much-data-as-possible from our lives, ideally all lives on the planet, to somehow monetize them in future? And ideally get bought by some big corp for few billions for owners.

Yet another useless thing I am happy to pass (and I am fitness nerd, but never saw any appeal in these measuring devices - work out hard, have fun, keep doing it often and you will be exceptionally healthy)

location is a pretty important metric for diagnostics

Sarcasm is lost on text. Unless you were serious in which case just reconsider

It's not a bad idea if done the right way. Like, I am informed beforehand that this device is collecting all those data for use in medical research by those particular parties, and here is where I can follow this research.

Because otherwise, that data has no business leaving my personal watch<->phone network.

I don't really care about Fitbit collecting all that data. If you don't want yours to be used, just buy another tracker from the tons out there. Privacy is all about choice, so it's not as bad as i.e. Google using your search data because the room for choice is smaller (at least for me, having tried out DuckDuckGo and others and switching back). Also I'd rather have my data harvested for science and medicine than for selling advertisements or whatnot

> If you don't want yours to be used, just buy another tracker from the tons out there.

I've already done this. But that doesn't mean I can't call out potential privacy violations in other products.

> Also I'd rather have my data harvested for science and medicine than for selling advertisements or whatnot

Can you prove this? Even if Fitbit isn't doing this now, what if they're acquired tomorrow by a company with more relaxed morals on what is permissible to do with health data?

Privacy is also about "herd immunity" - that geotagged photo posted from a party at my place affect my privacy, as does your fitbit tracking data if purchased cell tower data can be collerated to the point of assuming we went hiking together...

Not trying to argue, just pointing out that it's not quite so simple.

There are no trackers which don't force customers to create an online account and then upload the data. I looked at every possible product last year and the only exception is Apple.

And all the "science and medicine" done by FitBit according to this article has resulted only in confirming things that are already known. I was actually curious what insights they discovered and there are none.

Did you click the "Article Continues" button?

"Fitbit’s data confirms a lot of what cardiologists already know. But because the Fitbit data set is ridiculously huge, it unearthed some surprises, too."

From there the article goes on to list a number of new insights and potential research areas to pursue.

From a screenshot at https://www.cnet.com/how-to/count-steps-with-apple-watch/ the Apple Watch privacy settings let you turn step count and heart rate tracking on and off, but don't let you choose whether or not to upload them.

I did, none of the "surprising things" seem like they could result in any medically actionable info. They're more like medical curiosities, while the truly actionable info was already known.

iCloud sync can be turned off completely on any iPhone. Anyway, I believe the health data is encrypted with some device-specific secret, but I'm not 100% sure.

I wonder to which extent tracking data is really anonymized since users can still request to delete it, as described in the privacy policy [1].

> If you choose to delete your account, please note that while most of your information will be deleted within 30 days, it may take up to 90 days to delete all of your information, like the data recorded by your Fitbit device and other data stored in our backup systems. This is due to the size and complexity of the systems we use to store data.

[1] https://www.fitbit.com/legal/privacy-policy#your-rights-to-a...

If it's anonymised well enough it wouldn't be possible to delete it, which may well be the case.

I work for Fitbit. I don't speak for Fitbit, but the web page you cited does.

I don't see any claims to anonymize unshared data. I just see "We may share non-personal information that is aggregated or de-identified so that it cannot reasonably be used to identify an individual."

I'm currently thinking about buying a fitness tracker, and this article definitely rules out a Fitbit. Does anyone know a fitness tracker that does not share my personal health data with anyone?

I think your best bet might actually be an apple iwatch

Apple Watch? There's a heart study you can participate in by sending your heart data, but it's opt in (and you have o be 23). If you don't have an iPhone I'm sure there are a couple heart rate trackers that don't upload to the cloud, but you may have to drop down to a "dumb" device to ensure this.

Garmin and Polar fo rexample, if you sync the device with self-hosted service.

Heaven forbid a foreign company knew about my heart rate and age.

And then determined that you actually are 80% more likely to have early stage heart disease based on a big data analysis tool, and then sold that information to an insurance company, which correlated it with other data they have (like strava's activity times) to uniquely identify you, and now wants to raise your premiums by 400% because you have a "increased likelihood of a pre-existing condition".

I never actually understood the objection to having people who are putting a greater draw on the insurance system, pay more into it. People who have more accidents also pay higher car insurance premiums. Why shouldn't this be the case for health insurance?

You should draw up some numbers based on real scenarios and see if your theory holds.

> People who have more accidents also pay higher car insurance premiums. Why shouldn't this be the case for health insurance?

If you have some sort of genetic condition, you're going to have to pay a premium. So while presumably you have some agency over how you drive, with health insurance you may be penalized for something that you have no control over.

>and now wants to raise your premiums by 400% because you have a "increased likelihood of a pre-existing condition".

https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/pre-existing-condition/

>A health problem, like asthma, diabetes, or cancer, you had before the date that new health coverage starts. Insurance companies can't refuse to cover treatment for your pre-existing condition or charge you more.

In the US at least, insurance companies can charge:

Up to 4x the standard rate, based on age, so that an 18 year old working a minimum wage job has lower premiums than a 55 year old.

Up to 1.5x the standard rate for smokers.

Everyone's nightmare scenario about insurance companies using Fitbit data to screw customers is only possible if the Affordable Care Act is allowed to die.

Everyone else worrying about genetic data should also know that it has been illegal for insurance companies to use genetic data to set rates for years now.

And let's be honest, in 10 years, some of these insurance companies will decide that they want to use this data for this, and will start lobbying, and eventually there will be made exceptions and new bills passed. And while it's not directly possible now, laws change, especially when giant companies stand to make a ton of money if they change

I live in the UK and enjoy my free health service every time I use it, but thanks for the concern.

Why do you care so much? No one is forcing people to use FitBit. If you don’t agree with their practices or data collection then don’t use their products.

Was FitBit upfront about this when they sold their products though? I don't actually know the answer and I think that's a critical piece of information.

People buy fitbits to track and record their stats.

On a personal basis.

I care because if companies can collect enough data to recognize patterns, and generalize those findings, it becomes everyone's problem. You don't think health insurance providers are dying to buy this data? Or drug manufacturers? You're being double sold and generalized.

For instance maybe insurance rates increase in a region showing a higher percentage of heart palpitations. I live there and now my rates increased even though I don't even own a bitfit.

I don’t use fitness trackers. I also refrain from posting negatively about products I don’t use.

Do you have any proof about FitBit selling to insurance companies? Not all companies are selling data to 3rd parties.

The burden of proof should be the other way, until then we have the right to be worried.

> If you don’t agree with their practices or data collection then don’t use their products.

I don't agree and don't use their products. Doesn't mean I can't call them out when they do something I don't agree with.

Do you really think than having less data about human health is better ... because ... privacy?

That goes against any progress that was ever achieved in medicine. Or do you have some way of reconciling that man sticking a finger up another man's rectum is good and private but keeping records of something like a heartrate throughout the day is ... im-private? ... and bad?

Fitbit is not a medical R&D company. It's a fitness gadget vendor. Is all this data used for furthering medical research? If so, by whom? If not, why does Fitbit need it, and what does it do with it?

There is no medical R&D comapny that could run a test that fitbit runs as a sideshow to their business.

So either fitbit gathers this data or noone does. What will it do with the data? I hope it will anonimise it reasonably and puts it up on the internet for free but that's a bit unrealistic. I think it will pass the data to researchers, similar way other companies did in the past. That's beneficial in my book and I much prefer that scenario to the scenario where they just discard the data.

Personally I trust the recently completed[1] Apple/Stanford heart study with my health data a lot more. It's a company with a record of protecting personal data, and on the Stanford side was presumably approved by an IRB before they collected a single piece of data.

Granted it's not the same dataset as you'd get from a "Collect everything and figure out what to do with it later" approach, but I think it strikes a better balance.

For all we know, Fitbit's eventual plan is to sell their heart data to your insurance company so they can say "It looks like you have a higher than average resting heart rate and don't exercise much, we're going to double your premiums." Heck, maybe Fitbit isn't planning that, but they'll go out of business in 20 years and auction your heartrate history to someone else who does that. We have no idea.

[1] https://9to5mac.com/2018/09/01/apple-heart-study-survey/

Or you know, they pass it on to your insurer who can trivially deanonamize it...

Let's assume your worst case scenario. Data is sold directly to insurers.

Unhealthy people pay more (kinda fair don't you think?). Healthy pay less. Some have additional motivation to get healthier, because "screw the old me, I don't care about that looser... but if I move a little I can pay less now? Tell me more!"

Average society healthiness increases. Even worst scenario is great.

> Unhealthy people pay more (kinda fair don't you think?)

Depends. You can be unhealthy through no fault of your own (genetics, environment). From social utility POV, insurance is about pooling risk. Taking your scenario to the limit, if insurance company is able to compute an accurate risk factor for everyone and adjust premiums accordingly, then the risk pool evaporates. But then again, maybe health insurance shouldn't really be a private industry.

Insurance still works even if insurer knows exactly how probable is given outcome and how much exactly will it cost and adjusts the fee to that. People don't insure themselves because it's a good deal. They do it because they know they won't be able to survive financial burden of some rare event that most likely won't happen but they need to be sure that in the case it happens they'll be covered. And they are willling to pay for that.

Risk is still pooled because payouts come from fees of the people that didn't (and won't) experience costly events themselves.

More information just makes the business more just and less random for insurer.

> "Anonymized". Just with the data posted above, it seems like it'd be pretty easy to correlate the data to a person. And auto-enrolling everyone who buys a health product is not an excuse to mine all their data.

Hospitals are allowed to anonymize protected health information in their medical records to mine the data (they can distribute it too) without the patient's consent. PHI is way more protected than consumer health information, which is what Fitbit has.

I'm guessing here, but I'd say hospitals have much more stringent laws they have to adhere. I doubt someone is auditing Fitbit. It's like another commenter said here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17915986

File under believe but cannot prove:

In the privacy arm's race, deanonymization will always win in the long run.

The best we can do is temporary privacy.