Your sex toy might be spying on you
thewalrus.ca
thewalrus.ca
Don’t want your sex toys connecting to the internet? Don’t buy the one with a wifi connection. But really, the end of the article says this best:
“Despite the risks, many continue to use networked sex toys because they feel, correctly or not, that these devices—like social media platforms—give them more than they take.”
There have been 20 years of exploding ubiquitous spyware, online and offline. We can't walk on the street without an array of spy cameras recoding every word, move, facial expression. The excuse "don't buy x / don't use x" is beyond stale.
https://www.amazon.com/Reynolds-Wrap-Aluminum-Foil-Square/dp...
I'm not certain that the problem is that they connect to the Internet, I think the problem is that bad actors are fucking with improperly secured internet-connected devices. I'm not an expert or anything but I think it's probably possible to make a wifi-connected sex toy, hell, a wifi connected anything, without turning it into a standard IoT-future-botnet-participant. Kinda strikes me like saying "don't want to have someone take over your car through the satellite radio? Buy a pre-1990 ICE car!" or "don't want to be spied on by your smartphone? Don't carry a smartphone!" or even "don't want to get shot? Don't leave the house!". While these are all entirely practicable solutions that indeed solve the problem, they blame the individual for a predatory situation. Wouldn't it be nicer to try to improve the situation, rather than blame the insufficiently techy victim? Pretty much everybody is driving a modern car, using a smartphone, and lacking a bulletproof vest. Are they all to blame?
>“Despite the risks, many continue to use networked sex toys because they feel, correctly or not, that these devices—like social media platforms—give them more than they take.”
This line seems included to help the reader blame the ig'nant sex-toy user -- don't they know that everybody's lying about the safety of everything?!
Years of being in ecommerce and web development has taught me that there's no getting around buyer beware, it is the price for living in a consumer-focused society. There's always a greater fool, and the people building solutions will always prioritize sales and revenue over virtually all else. Attempting to circumvent this means going bankrupt faster.
On the other hand, 150 years ago educated gentlemen were surely saying this about then-common poisonous, noxious food additives. Somehow, society managed to turn that particular law of the financial universe around [0][1]. I fear we no longer have the strength.
Do you still feel the need to check for formaldehyde and Borax in your milk and meat? How do you accomplish this? I'm fascinated! Is that a bit facetious? Sure, but the point is that there's wary and then there's wary. "Having to weigh cost, reputation, and performance" is not "having to guess which product won't hurt you because there's no disincentive to hurt you".
>Society has to live with an evil for long enough to become aware of the downsides
IMO "society" already is. Nobody's thinking "hey, lying about whether this chat app is end-to-end encrypted is totally cool and good" after they put their trust in the product and the lie is revealed. I suspect poor IoT security is just going to have to somehow kill and cripple a lot of photogenic people until someone can score political points by writing some laws.
My understanding is that those are mostly used in long distance relationship. Get a matching pair so that you and your significant other can still enjoy intercourse several kilometers apart. With that use case, you can't escape the need for an internet connection.
Another reason why buying a "smart" device isn't a smart thing to do.
If I agree to have sex with you, I'm not agreeing to have sex with anyone else who happens to come along too, right?
(Yes, I'll show myself out)
On another note regarding the non-social offline sex toy market, I've found that it is unnecessarily gendered that female sex toys are accepted in more circles than male sex toys. ie a single female with a dildo is almost an expected or fun thing maybe initially received by their female friends in a fun way, whereas a single or coupled male with a fleshlight is not seen as a positive thing in any context. I can perceive the supporting toxic culture that reinforces this standard, it is still unnecessarily gendered, and I think that angle at this point in time can help deconstruct a lot of these standards.
> I can perceive the supporting toxic culture that reinforces this standard, it is still unnecessarily gendered, and I think that angle at this point in time can help deconstruct a lot of these standards.
Right now, men wouldn't choose one because of the perception of failure. It's not exactly settled about which one feels better or would be the objective choice to men.
To me that’s besides the point though
Any man with a synthetix orifice or solo penis pleasure device around is getting vilified right now
If you browse a male sex toy store you're likely to see a lot of stuff which is advertised as actual 1:1 replicas of specific porn stars' orifices. A lot of it has a pretty pathetic, creepy vibe for me. But a good share seems as normal as female vibrators.
"What makes ours different?"
It would be weirder to find a skin toned realistic dick dildo in a woman's room than it would be to find a silicon vibrator ring or wand or tube in a man's room.
Note that the opposite exist where you can get phalluses signed and molded after porn stars.
"Jenny Sundén insists that this “sex in public, as it were, can be made safe.” She proposes detaching the idea of intimacy from privacy altogether..."
"...what would happen if, “rather than pushing for a privacy that is no privacy—a security that fosters insecurity . . . we fought for the right to be exposed—to take risks and to be in public—and not be attacked?” Perhaps, with everyone’s data always on the brink of going public, a new front in the long fight of LGBTQ2+ people for the right to safe private sex outside the home is the demand for freedom from harm if intimacies are exposed."
I'm all in support of this attitude. I don't think ending privacy is a true solution to the problem of privacy, but it can help reduce the size of the problem.