Thermometer Tells Your Temperature, Then Tells Firms Where to Advertise
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
The irony.
> It has promoted the usefulness of its “illness data,” which it says is aggregated and contains no identifying personal information before being passed along to other companies.
I’m OK to anonymously share my car’s position and speed of in return I get live traffic data from others doing the same. I’m less cool about people collecting my data without me knowing (or burying it deep in unreadable T&Cs) and then selling that for uses that I’m not aware of or didn’t approve.
When you visit a free website or use a free service I get the “your the product” mantra, but for products I buy and put in my home... no.
I hope not. Knowing what data is collected and when is rarely argued against by anyone. Requiring the ability to provide it, provide services without it, large penalty maximums, explicit opt-in requirement, vagueness, non-enforceability, etc (etc, etc, etc) are often what people complain about wrt overreach.
This is needed, otherwise there is no real reason to actually protect personal data. Equifax losing the personal data for 50% of Americans should have resulted in major penalties due to the nature of their security.
The other requirements raise the cost of storing this data closer to the damage that can be done by the loss/theft of that data (from the perspective of the data subject).
- Require companies to register before collecting personally identifying information (what, why, from whom, etc).
- Specify how & when privacy policies are distributed.
- Audit companies to ensure they adhere to their own privacy policies.
People are still dumb enough that they willingly hand over their contact details for a "prize" car or something that no one ever wins in order for some company to sell their details to be nonstop marketed to. And post-Equifax, it's easier than ever to steal a person's identity by opening accounts in their name without them figuring out until collections come calling.
When/if political winds shift far enough, then it might be possible for Americans to gain identity protections as stringent as Germany's. Until then, Americans will continue being screwed and lied to, and it's their fault for being too compliant and not demanding better leadership.
The device discussed in the article also knows our own SSID and surrounding SSIDs (supposedly it has WLAN to communicate) and can therefore also figure out where you live using e.g. Wigle [1].
A way to actually anonymise the data would be to use hashes and only use those instead.
This wouldn't do much good in more rural areas, of course - you could probably zero in on exactly where my parents park their car with a month's worth of data even if you add a mile-wide fuzz to every parked check-in.
Are you old enough to have bought or subscribed to physical newspapers or magazines? We were the product back then too.
But in all of these, one is paying, and then the argument switches to "your paying for access to the service, which is a cesspool of ads, PII exploitation and sentiment manipulation and if you don't like that, the go fuck yourself - you chose to be online"
So, here is a personal RFS: an ISP that gives me a prefiltered pipe which I pay for.
Ads consume data, if I am paying for N gigs of data per month, then I shouldn't be required to pay the data back haul for shit I would want to block at the client anyway.
That's like paying by the pound for ten pounds of steak at the butcher because my 8 ounce steak is sold to me in a 9.5 pound box if trash.
I challenge common networks to be the first to offer a prefiltered connection, where I manage the filter as far upstream to me as possible, so the data consumption on the last mile is purely desired content. And that all inbound ads and outbound trackers are nixed at the ISP. And offer this ideally as a default package option nearly the same price...
People paid for their Vizio TVs, and that didn't (and largely still doesn't) stop them from "being the product" when Vizio decided to collect and sell viewing data.
In the ISP space it similarly goes well beyond them just being a pipe for all the ad-supported tracking garbage you're downloading, they of course want to get directly in on the action as well.
Ironically, I was on the team that helped make that possible at Vizio.... Another reason why I am very opposed to this.
“Today that trade has exploded into a data industrial complex. Our own information, from the everyday to the deeply personal, is being weaponized against us with military efficiency,” he said. “These scraps of data ... each one harmless enough on its own ... are carefully assembled, synthesized, traded, and sold.” He said algorithms, a major tool for competitors, were turning harmless preferences into hardened convictions. “If green is your favorite color, you may find yourself reading a lot of articles — or watching a lot of videos — about the insidious threat from people who like orange,” Cook said.[1]
I love this, almost to the point that I want to move off of the EvilCorp Pixel 2 and onto something that doesn't resell my personal data. It seems Apple is on a higher moral high ground.
1 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-privacy-apple/apple-bo...
I'm not an Apple user and I don't even think the iPhone UI is particularly great (no . and ? keys on the keyboard? No notification drop-down I can quickly, in one-stop-shop fashion, remove notifications without that silly number on the icon remaining?). But we're talking about privacy.
Really glad I don't own one of these things. I don't know if Brave New World or 1984 was right. Looks like the future decided to split the difference.
But people put an always on spy device connected to Amazon (or Google, or Facebook [honest, we won't spy on you, maybe]) into their homes.
To each his own, I guess, but is the exchange of a little bit convenience to a potential privacy nuclear device really worth it?
Besides why have telescreens, when children ratting out their parents are the most effective soln.? That’s what scares me the most of the next twenty years.
Explain, please.
Sometimes the truth they say can get ppl in trouble.
Even just a single fraction of it -- a mandatory (at least where I live) cellphone, with permanent location tracking by the service providers is scary enough right now.
The party keeps an eye on the behaviour of the masses (and will take out possible leaders arising) but there is no individual oversight.
That is the last thing I would ever want, the revulsion I felt at the idea was visceral.
There's probably yet another of Zuck's apology tours coming in 2019.
That said, my friends and family all know my stance on privacy-invasive tech, so none of them were surprised by my requests.
Do you not walk around with one in your pocket most of the time? (I don't have one of these devices either, just playing devil's advocate)
In both cases you aren't really sure it's the case, you wouldn't know if it were suddenly disregarded or circumvented, and you're just trusting in the good behavior of your chosen provider.
In any case having the capability to spy on you is fundamentally different from having the actual on-paper intent of doing so, such as a patent.
To the other point, I'm not entirely sure I'm comfortable with the patents, but it's at least an Echo simply gleaning more from a voluntary engagement with it. I think the general feeling is an Echo is "spying" when it engages itself to listen to your home.
Of course, I have no way to know if my echo is doing that, or if it were to start, and it's out of my hands to prevent it. The same with a smartphone.
If Amazon wanted to spy, probably a smart tactic would be to deliberately "flaw" the wake word recognition such that it could plausibly be a bug, but the result is activating very often randomly. They already kind of do that, it would just need to be more frequent.
However, we all make certain risk tradeoffs based on numerous things, including proxy signals. For instance, I would be intensely surprised to find out my downstairs neighbor was recoding me, based on multiple years of interactions. Likewise, I find the signal Apple sends ("We need a US-based GDPR") about privacy rather more compelling than the signal Amazon sends ("scour the mic for hints about product we can shift").
I mean, sure, while both $huge_bank and your hypothetical deadbeat relative might both steal your money, I bet I know which one you choose to to leave your money with.
Totally tangential, so feel free to disregard:
This statement reminded me of my experience during my brother's TS clearance (Canada). CSIS readily had accurate data (in surprising detail) about my time spent during a short period they must have observed his family members to use during an interview with him. It was pretty fascinating, mildly disconcerting— but in this case didn't bother me (in the context, I understood why. I certainly wasn't interesting at the time). They only could have captured the data they had by a combination of tailing (however brief or otherwise more expensive much more technical means) and bank records. I was of course none the wiser.
Advertisers are another matter. I have a Google Home Mini. It remains unplugged 100% of the time we're not using it. My phone can always go in another room. If we decide to turn it on to play with it (search something benign or play trivia) then we'll have it on. It's good for that kind of thing, and those are useful enough we don't mind letting Google have the little data that might produce.
Still doesn't change the fact that placement of the Alexa is stationary, so your phone (regardless of how low the probabilities are) is still a considerably more "high risk" device in terms of what it could pick up than an Alexa.
To me this just sounds like another person in a whole line of them that screams about privacy unless they have to give up something that's extremely valuable to them. The Alexa isn't valuable to you. Your phone sure is.
At the base of the claim that Amazon is listening to what your echo can hear is the assumption that they're lying, and at the base of the claim that your iphone isn't listening to you is the assumption that Apple is not.
Personally, I wouldn't put it past either company to massively violate my trust if the incentive stars aligned just right, and I think it's silly to pretend otherwise.
The problems of putting a surveillance device in your home and carrying one in your pocket are roughly equivalent, and the rest is a debate about which huge collection of people with a wide array of beliefs and ethics is gooder
A more likely path is law enforcement's habit of putting them in the PR hell of "we could have saved Little Tiny Baby X if these companies weren't so hell bent on protecting perverts and terrorists". Once you have the device, it's only a matter of someone making a sympathetic enough public case that they need access to it.
On that front, I think Apple is taking more proactive steps to keep themselves out of the situation, I'm just not sure it's possible to avoid it completely.
One can check if a device is compromised or not behaving as expected fairly easily by monitoring network traffic.
Disclaimer: I could be completely wrong, and/or the situation could change over time due to improved hardware and software. There was a rumor earlier this year that the Google Assistant might add custom hotword support in the future:
https://9to5google.com/2018/01/29/google-app-7-20-assistant-...
Main source: Apple’s article about “Hey Siri”:
My phone probably doesn't listen to me right now, but what exactly do I know?
Even if you turn Siri off, it is up to Apple whether or not to really stop listening.
Perhaps I have misunderstood you, but I fail to see the difference between my phone and an Echo. Now the difference to me is that Apple claims (claims that appear to be backed by evidence) that they won't sell me out. But as far as listening, I believe they function in similar manners.
As for the distinction, doesn't really matter to me, I'm in the "no way in hell is Amazon getting one of those in my house" camp. :-)
I don't see a conflict if people admit the potential invasion of pirvacy is worth the utility of a phone, but not the utility of an Echo device. But apparently that alone isn't good enough.
So far at least, Apple claims to be privacy focused and makes money hand over fist by selling essentially luxury goods. Aside from selling your data to some third party (which seems unnecessary for a trillion dollar company), there's not much Apple could do with it.
TL;DR Personally, I have more trust in Apple not to "spy" because they seem to have nothing to gain from it. Amazon and Google have plenty to gain from spying.
Google purchasing MasterCard purchase transactions so they can link to their profile of users is a great example of them having zero respect of your privacy.
And filtering out the background conversation is a difficult problem in machine learning, but one that has to be accomplished in order to make the service work correctly.
We don't store the audio, much less the filtered-out noise, but I don't imagine there's any way I can prove that. Maybe an appeal to cost? There's way too much data to do that, even if we wanted to.
The parser output (text) is stored, mind you. You can find that on the Google dashboard.
And I’m not saying Google or Amazon are doing this today. If not then it may be one bad earnings call away for some engineer to say “well....we could...”.
Anything is possible in the pursuit of profits. I’d Google is willing to buy users offline credit card transactions to link to their profiles, it’s clear they will slurp up all data available for them. Why not that listening device in people’s home? “Overheard user X saying they signed up at google-ads-customer.com” “overheard user Y saying google-ad-customers service is fantastic”
You signed the paperwork that gave MasterCard the right to sell your data and your bitching about the company that bought it? For real?
It blows me away just how many people are willing to use services where they are the product (and that's MasterCard and Visa these days too) and then whine when they get sold. Google is just doing what it can to remain competitive. Don't sign anything that means signing away your identity and stop whining.
For Maastercard, hiding “we can sell your data” in a 8+ page contract full of small print legalese that’s designed for people to skip over is hardly fair notice. Should people read and understand it? Yes. But most don’t.
Also, it’s silly to say that “you’re the product” with Visa and MasterCard. Most cards have a fee associated (with the norm for any rewards card being around $80-120 in Canada) and they have a insane 20% interest on purchases. That’s vastly different than using Facebook for free.
The privacy quip was directed to Google. Just because they -can- do something, doesn’t mean they should.
The third most valuable company in the world hardly needed to purchase offline purchases to further profile people who don’t know they’re being profiled “to remain competitive”.
You can buy a non-smart phone right now. It's not hard to live without one, it's a choice that you are now downplaying because it fits your narrative.
This has gone wrong when erroneous connections were made, and IMO, Amazon are overly aggressive about enabling this feature.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...
You make an extremely valid point, though. What I would actually like (and what seems really hard to find) is a dumb phone with a 4G hotspot and which does not run Android in any way, shape or form.
Any suggestions
Does a smartphone make me a hypocrite?
To me, it does. Not to pick on you personally, but 99% of the people freaking out about the Echo own smartphones and carry them around all the time. For the convenience. It makes no sense, unless you realize that the person has just drawn their arbitrary convenience-privacy tradeoff line differently than the Echo owners have.
Further, despite being generally pretty locked down to the average consumer, smartphones are far less of a black box than the echo/home/etc.
Both are a concern, but technically skilled users are at least able to take steps to reduce the potential for their phones to spy on them. The only way to reduce any spying potential with the echo/home/etc, is not to have one at all.
An Echo is just the tiniest subset of a smartphone but with some serious privacy risks, all of a very minuscule benefit in convenience. A gimmick most would probably say, the killer app to this day seems to be a kitchen timer. To compare that with a smartphone where tons of every day things can be quite inconvenient without one.
I get your point and on principle I agree. But the line most definitely isn't arbitrary set (even if you do find some practical use for an Echo). The difference is astronomical. That's not to say the current state of affair is depressing and we ought to really try to improve it.
If you say that the relatively low utility of an Echo means it’s not worth the potential downsides, that’s perfectly reasonable.
If you say that people who buy an Echo are insane for willingly putting a spy device in their house, that’s hypocritical and irrational if you have a smartphone.
I think there’s a useful discussion to have in the former case, but alas most of the conversation involves the latter.
Echo's only feature is listening and reporting. Its a different device in kind
If your phone has a spying feature, are you sure it can be turned off? How do you know?
Echo, like phones, uses low-power, always-on algorithms to listen for a specific phrase. Only when it hears that phrase does it actually start recording and sending your audio back home.
Are you worried about that low-power, always-on part listening to you? If so, then avoiding the Echo while carrying a phone with the feature switched off is sensible. But I don’t see why this would be worth worrying about, since the data stays local and isn’t saved.
If you’re worried about the device secretly recording you and sending that data to someone else, then the two are equivalent in their threats.
That's for you to decide, I think. In terms of privacy, we decide what we're willing to give up. The usefulness of an Echo may be worth sometimes seeing ads for chicken soup to some. Some might even think of it as a feature!
If you don't want to know online advertisers to know when you're sick, you're going to be more mindful of just your cell phone and any nearby Echos. Don't have your friends tag you in posts on social media asking how you're doing (this one is completely out of your control), don't search for drug stores or which medicine you need to combat your symptoms, etc. I get the point is to limit your profile as much as possible, but this case seems unreasonably high on the effort to payoff ratio.
It runs KaiOS, which is a fork of Firefox OS IIRC. It's basically a dumb phone, but with some critical "smart" features like wifi hotspot, contacts/calendar sync, etc. It was a breath of fresh air for me.
Just, thank you!
Edit: Review link: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/aug/16/nokia-811...
https://support.kaiostech.com/support/solutions/articles/350...
Apart from the fact that it seems to be exactly what I'm looking for it's also reasonably cheap at ~90$.
The point was that the vast majority of people, even us techies, are willing to sacrifice some privacy for the benefits these devices bring us.
(And yes, sometimes these benefits are the direct result of spying. When I shop on Amazon, I often look at the section "Customers who looked at X ultimately bought Y." Thank you, Amazon, for spying on those customers, and recommending a better product.)
These in-home "smart speakers" exist only to be agents listening for wake words.
I am not sure why use of a smartphone is painted as hypocrisy when countering the argument that consumers should be cautious about installing smart speakers in their homes. Clearly most people who are cautioning against the use of smart speakers turn off the listening agent features on their smartphones and recommend that others do that as well.
This makes a lot of sense I recently heard a comparison between Orwell and Huxley that stated that they differed mostly on how they believed control would be taken.
In the case of Orwell, he believed that control could be punished into the population and that they'd comply for fear of being punished again. Though, Skinner had evidence that this wasn't really feasible.
In the case of Huxley, he believed that it could be rewarded into the population to the point where the population would crave it and seek it out.
Feels like Huxley had the right idea. People are paying really good money to buy these spy devices to put into their homes.
What's worth discussing, although - is the fact that these two (opposing and heavily developed) points of view both will degenerate the society towards the same authoritarian state.
Imagine a world where the government uses terrorism as a justification for it's surveillance programs and the companies are pushing the surveillance devices for customer satisfaction? Wait a minute...
The solution space is much wider and is thus more probable.
Actually that was true of government workers and perhaps all of the middle classes but not the workers (“proles”). A key plot element of the story is Winston and Julia heading into the parole areas to (in vain) evade the oversight of Big Brother.
The implication is that under such regimes the workers supposedly believe in the regime (and in the idea that they control it, rather than the other way around) so strongly that oversight is unnecessary. It’s related to why trade unions are illegal in China (and were in the Soviet Union): they are “unnecessary” as the whole government is supposedly the worker’s party.
Orwell was a committed socialist (despite/because of) his colonial service and some of his sneers at “sandal-wearing vegetarians in bad suits” in Wigan Pier. But by the end of WWII he had realized that the socialist regimes were in many ways quite similar to the fascist ones and so his last two novels were reactions to that. But all his writing was from a Fabian socialist-idealist perspective.
Also this would apply to basically any entity you make a commercial transaction with. The grocery store, your dentist, car repairs, bank, hair dresser, highway tolls, tooth brush sites, opticians. Is it still relevant to explicitly warn yourself "in the end they won't work in my favor" when that's basically living your life as a consumer.
Likewise, some banks scam customers by charging fees for some things (overdraft, minimum balance etc) and then deliberately structure transactions to make a customer's account enter a fee state. For example, running all withdrawals from a 24 hour period before running all the deposits from that time period so the account is temporarily overdrawn.
Et cetera.
The globally actionable advice might be to keep one's eyes open for signs of scamming, and to keep one's affairs such that damage is minimized + you have alternatives when you confirm that you are being scammed
"Your kids are starving. Carl's Jr. believes no child should go hungry. You are an unfit mother. Your children will be placed in the custody of Carl's Jr."
Or because you're just parroting pop culture? If so, stop and try being more thoughtful instead.
Child services folks have an incredibly difficult, often thankless and woefully under-funded mission. Everybody loves to joke about them... until they need that sort of help.
You will enjoy this debate about that exact question:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31CcclqEiZw
Fantastic oratory, excerpts acted out by famous actors, intriguing ideas. Marvelous production.
I hope this is something we start recognizing more broadly. Even the 'scary' features of these things could be useful and preserve privacy.
I can think of a half-dozen IoT, voice control, or "Smart Home" features I would really like to have. But in practice, not only am I unwilling to make the privacy tradeoff, the existing solutions are made noticeably lower-quality by their monetization and data gathering. As a basic example, IoT products should (obviously!) work offline for all functionality that doesn't actually need an internet connection. But even a Chromecast won't function on a local network unless it's allowed to call home constantly. People sell lightswitches that cease functioning without a nonstop internet connection. That's insane.
Worse, my ideal use cases would all involve heavy integration between devices. When that's available at all, it's based on attempts at ecosystem lock-in. Not only does that give one company extensive data, it destroys any market competition or ability to choose the products and features I want. Even the crudest tools for integrating for this stuff don't work. IFTTT is "user friendly", but half the supported components can't be used as triggers/inputs without joining their developer program.
The monetization and privacy issues with this stuff aren't just a cost for the service, the way TV ads are. They actively destroy value. I would pay a massive premium for no-data-gathered hardware with robust APIs, but without wiring my own devices from scratch, I can't.
Until these devices become mandatory, hard requirement by every government to detect and quarantine people carrying a disease spreading virus during an epidemic.
Or the insurance company insisting you install one at home, to screen you if you are a smoker.
I’m on my phone right now so can’t really give a good overview of it. But. Suffice it to say, it’s eye opening and 100% relevant. Highly recommend reading.
Amazon is probably a bit frustrated with us and other families like us. Even the songs we listen to are generally a bit old and probably don't indicate very many preferences that advertisers would want to target.
[1] https://www.notion.so/The-Bottom-Up-Surveillance-State-8ea9a...
I write everything in a notes app called Notion, and it happens to provide zero-effort publishing in a relatively nice way (although a semi-major pain point for me is that it doesn't really provide nice features for the reader, e.g. RSS subscription, or public comments).
[1] https://www.notion.so/eff0rtfu11-39e0544567de4a1887b2614e84c... (I've also added a link to the bottom of that post.)
I say the EU makes a list of categories that you are allowed to categorize users in:
- Age (only year, no month or day this is not relevant).
- Sex
- City or geographic area with at least 500,000 people.
- 5 items selected from a list of hobbies / preferences..
etc.
Companies should simply not be _allowed_ to target people based on categories like being ill, being poor, being terminal, being depressed etc...
And here's the kicker: if every company is held to these same standards no one company has a disadvantage.
Well, except the entire ads industry scene which is now set in anarchy.
Additionally, even a modest list of attributes can be sufficient to uniquely identify someone.
I think limiting collection is a good thing in general, but to meet your stated goals, we unfortunately have to do more.
But what if they just use good enough proxies for those categories? e.g. "X% of people who chose these 3 hobbies have a household income of..." you are just making it so they can't leave a paper trail that points to them saying some words along those lines. They can still come up with the theory in their head and test it and end up saying "we don't target people based on household income, we just advertise to people who chose these three hobbies."
It doesn't sound like users would experience creepy invasions of privacy like "I took my temperature and then every website I visited had a NyQuil ad." Instead, there would generally be more ads in one city versus another.
"We reserve the right to change the terms of this agreement at any time and only have to provide you notice."
That way, before the product is big, they can make those claims, but as soon as it has an entrenched niche, they can do the privacy bait and switch and collect all they want.
By using this Site or Application, you consent to the use
of information that you provide to us in accordance with
this Privacy Policy. We do update this Privacy Policy from
time to time so please review this Privacy Policy
regularly. If we materially alter our Privacy Policy, we
will notify you of such changes by contacting you through
your user account or by posting a notice on our Site or in
the Application. Your continued use of the Site or
Application will be deemed your agreement that your
information may be used in accordance with the new policy.
If you do not agree with the changes, then you should stop
using the Site or Application, and you should notify us
that you do not want your information used in accordance
with the changes.
I interpret that to mean "If you don't like what we are doing now, your device is a brick, too bad." I wonder if there is a legal way to fight back at that.
Well, if the damn contract changes, don't you need a new contract?
If a landlord and a tenant together sign a contract about leasing a residential space, in almost any Common Law jurisdiction at least, and a landlord puts something to the effect of, "the rental price can change at any time and without notice for the duration of this Agreement," well it's an unenforceable clause. A judge would come down hard on the landlord for this, even if the tenant were being sued for an unrelated reason, because it violates the law.
Now, why can't such laws be passed to squeeze TOCs to the same effect?
Get out of here with, "The Terms of this Agreement can change at any time." Such a set of Terms is completely absurd.
Take Apple https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/en-ww/
"Apple may update its Privacy Policy from time to time. When we change the policy in a material way, a notice will be posted on our website along with the updated Privacy Policy."
> Now, why can't such laws be passed to squeeze TOCs to the same effect?
I implied it in another comment, but I would love to see a law that "freezes" a term of agreement and makes it impossible for one side to say "agree or be locked out".
Really? What if someone who bought this "smart thermometer" no longer wants to share this information? What if this data concerns a child? What if, somewhere in the future, this business gets into financial problems, or gets bought, and decides to stretch its morals a bit and sell this data non-anonymously?
I think this is a very slippery slope. It seems reasonable now, until it's not.
It's much worse: it's health data. It shows how often and when you were ill. Employers may want to check that before hiring you. Insurers might want to use this data to decide on eligibility and calculate your premium. Or that, but in the future for your child, who never had a choice...
The data contains: Full legal name, address, phone#, email, and Drivers license OR last 4 of SSN.
This would be a breach notification anywhere else.
https://www.reddit.com/r/bloomington/comments/9qqvmz/tilin_i...
Edit: seriously, why the downvotes? We're talking about a legal breach that leaks PII if you choose to exert your right to vote.
Buying listening posts is voluntary. Voting shouldn't leak your PII.
Feels more like you are starting a fire next to another one rather than talking about the currently one ablaze. (To expand on your analogy)
Though, realistically the damage has already been done. It no longer matters if your SSN is stolen. A very sizable percentage of adults above a certain age already have this data purchasable for $10 a pop.
A credit freeze is your best option against identity theft.
I think we need to rethink SSNs being used in the way they are today. They were never designed to be your national identity number. We can do better.
Elmo, a close relative of Joe Camel.
> The company said that most app users opt to share their location and that Kinsa does not link the information to phone numbers or email addresses.
For now. The'll either do it later, or they'll be acquired by BigCo, or if they simply fold then that data will be an asset to sell during liquidation.
Whether one or more will succeed, wether they need blockchains and cryptocurrencies: the future will tell.
I don't use a Kinsa thermometer anymore having discovered the hardware was crap anyway and moved on to a Withings one, but I did not realise, despite probably agreeing to it in the T&Cs, that they were selling my data. I naively had assumed me paying for the thermometer was the business model.
I must say it doesn't feel good.
I can't wait for the toilette paper that transmits my poop analysis in real time directly to the good and helpful corporation. For my own good. Who wouldn't want such close attention to their well being. And it would only cost 10x more and will be mandated for insurance eligibility.
No, all it did was show you wealthy areas where people buy stupid crap.
These are really stupid devices. I have the thermometer in my hand when I take the reading, I can just glance at it to see the reading, why do I need it to sync to my phone?
"Log in with facebook to see your temperature"
I wonder if there's a "share temperature on Facebook" button in the app?
For persons with an uterus, reading a thermometer can be used both for getting pregnant (=have sex on the day where a slight increase in vaginal temperature indicates that an egg is released) and for preventing pregnancies... and the latter case is where the phone sync comes in handy. The pregnancy-prevention apps work by profiling the dates and volumes of periods, plus sex drive, plus temperature, to determine a window in which unprotected sex is risky (IIRC, it's seven days prior to egg cell release + 1 or 2 days after).
I also really like your point about the data being skewed because of the price!