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Comment by sliken | Hacker News Reader

A good example of privacy issues. Next time someone shrugs when you mention privacy issues ask if they care about random 3rd parties knowing when they are wanking because of accelerometer in their watch.

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I got a free gym membership by winning a "health and activity" competition at work. I kept the fitbit on while jerking off and had almost double the amount of points than the 2nd person once the competition was over.

I'm not ashame at all.

Now I'm not sure if your username really is about shells...

True definition of ‘hacker’.

I have tried many things with people, and through my experience I believe people would continue to shrug. So they know when I am wanking? Who cares? What are they gonna do with that information? (I’m not saying I’m supporting this view, merely what I guess people would answer)

True. Although given the effort going into beacons, always on bluetooth (LE) and tracking other bluetooth and wifi clients phones are getting pretty good at telling what other devices (and their owners) are in close physical promixity. Apparently it's not uncommon for phones to be able to make sounds outside of the range of normal hearing to use the microphone to detect other phones in proximity.

So not only might a watch figure out who is wanking, but also who else is in their immediate proximity.

Phones, Chromecasts, SmartTVs, Nest I believe - all ultrasonic.

We still buy their shit. Why?

Hmm. So maybe a potential use as a warning system to women that they might want to check their curtains are closed properly.

They already know I’m wanking from the traffic to the Pornhub CDN

Perhaps google/apple, from looking at the traffic. But the random app from a close-to-anonymous publisher don't see the traffic (unless they VPN your device), but they may see the accelerometer data.

Or just take your watch off. Not rocket science.

Took watch off for N minutes during the day? Detected: probably wanking.

Next they'll have "Sleep (Or Wank) Quality" graphs.

If that one lady did that a few years ago, around my area, she wouldn’t have been convicted of murdering he husband. The Fitbit is how they caught her.

That doesn't work, because next time instead of the watch it will be some other "smart" device (maybe a heating system that measures your body temperature), and you won't have read the article describing the problem.

Researchers doing something using smartwatches =/= every smartwatch manufacturer already does this.

If they're not doing this already, they'll be doing it in <5 years. There's currently no downside to dragnet data collection of anything and everything you can get your hands on.

Physics.

Battery life, operating temperature, limited bandwidth, limited storage...

The big thing stopping these from turning into persistent capture and transmit devices is duty cycle optimization for product performance. A device that broadly spies on users won't be successful enough to have enough users to make broad spying worth it.

(Given current technology...)

Do Americans recognise the term "wank"?

Yes.

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