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Comment by barbazoo | Hacker News Reader

How does that work here? Say I have that toothbrush, the app, and say I had to sign up to use it. What they know is how long the toothbrush is on. How are they going to monetize that data?

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> What they know is how long the toothbrush is on. How are they going to monetize that data?

"We noticed that brushing takes you X seconds longer than usual. Do you want to buy new bristles for your tooth brush?"

"We noticed you haven't used our tooth brush in a while. Do you want to buy our new tooth brush?"

"We noticed that you started brushing your teeth earlier than usual. This probably means that you started a new job and can afford our new deluxe premium tooth brush."

"We noticed that you brush your teeth later than usual. That probably means that you met with someone who you can recommend our amazing tooth brush to."

"We noticed that your tooth brushing times are all over the place, so you probably had a child. Buy our new baby tooth brush."

And that is just from the time you brush your teeth. However, the app also collections "Health and fitness and Device or other IDs" according to the app description:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pg.oralb.o...

That means that Oral B can link that data with the data harvested from other apps or data brokers, so they probably know everything about you. Health data seems especially creepy to me. I wonder if it is possible to measure the effectiveness of an advertisement from the heart rate data. At least they can definitely tell if you brush longer after seeing their latest Oral B add on TV/YouTube/some website.

Yeah, regarding your first point -- the replacement brushes are also an Oral-B product, so prompting for frequent replacement of the brushes would be a way to make more money.

In my Sonicare, the brush heads have an NFC chip in them that stores the “runtime”. After xx uses an icon starts blinking on the handle and the app will tell you that the brush head needs to be replaced. But at least you’re free to ignore that and continue using it.

For now... Just wait, some bright-eyed underling will undoubtedly see this comment and then pitch their boss: "Man, oh man! I know how we can increase revenue, let's DISABLE brush heads when they hit 90 days and FORCE the user to buy a new one!" You've just doomed us all. >.< hah!

Joke's on them.

> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38752691

I'm surprised they haven't gone down the route of TaaS (Toothbrush as a Service), where they sell a crippled device, and for a monthly fee of a few dollars, it will unlock a premium 'Ultra Fast Brush Speed' a la Tesla.

Sneak a thermometer in there and I bet you could sell me some Tylenol or NyQuil.

From a marketing point of view, they don't even need your data. They just recommend/spam you to buy a new brush every few weeks. Als long as they have a way to get into your attention zone, reminding you of them and to push messages for you to keep consuming.

Having an app on someone's phone is a huge attention and data opportunity.

You get permissions to whatever you ask for. The unsavvy user will click yes.

You get a push notification channel that can interrupt the user ANY time of day or night and get their immediate attention. Suggesting products and "deals".

Use your imagination. Think like an asshole.

Well, say the app requests access to your contacts... so you can link up with friends! Or your files... so it can save your data locally! Or your location... well i don't know. The app doesn't only check your bruhing habits, it's 300mb! At any point it could be updated to do any amount of spying and you'll never be able to tell

> link up with friends!

Competitive brushing!

That is the first thing I see in this thread that has a remote chance of being a legitimate feature! There are people who have trouble brushing regularly, and perhaps it could help some of them.

(You know what? Great point, actually ...)

Oral Peloton

A group of cyclists is known as a Peloton. Do with that what you will with regards to "Oral Peloton".

We need a motto. Let's A/B "Where the only teeth inlvolved are in gears!".-

I can think of a few things at least:

* Collect data on brushing frequency and thoroughness, and sell that data to dental insurance companies. Perhaps not even anonymized, so they can raise your premiums if you don't brush as often or as well as they'd like.

* Nag you to buy brush replacements after a certain amount of time or certain number of uses.

* Use dark patterns to trick you into giving access to other, unrelated data on your phone, and sell this data to third parties.

* Market their other products to you, or even perhaps suggest other things (sold by marketing partners) to buy, like different kinds of toothpaste, floss, mouthwash, etc.

That's why most apps exist, which is why I try to install as few apps as possible.

so they can raise your premiums if you don't brush as often or as well as they'd like.

Shit's already fucking happening with car insurance. Install their app to reduce your premium! It's only a matter of time before it's the other way around.

    sell that data to dental insurance companies

I know of at least one startup that tried this the other way - started with a networked toothbrush and created a dental insurer that tracked how much you used it.

They've pivoted away from that to general benefits management (basically every flavor of job-connected insurance that isn't major medical), FWIW...

You know the underpants gnomes, it's like that:

Step 1: collect data

Step 2: ???

Step 3: Profit

Hopefully you sell the company between Step 1 and 2.

Sell it to dental insurance companies who charge different amounts depending on how frequently you brush your teeth and for how long?

This is what Beam Dental did. They used to make a toothbrush and I'm betting they now license their tech to toothbrush makers and act as the middle man for dental insurance companies.

The app probably makes you enter personal information like age and location, which is already very valuable.

But honestly I'd say that it's probably more about them being able to market their own products to you by displaying ads and sending you push notifications on new deals on brushes, rather than selling your data to third parties.

That sort of data can be extremely useful to pattern someone. Most people brush their teeth either in the morning, or before bedtime (or both ideally.) So just knowing _when_ they're brushing their teeth you can determine their sleep pattern, and thus match that up somewhat to a timezone. On it's own this isn't incredibly useful, but combined with some other data it becomes a lot more useful to identify someone.

China pays big bucks for the data so they know exactly when everyone is brushing their teeth and know exactly what time to attack.

They want you to buy new head and they will annoy, I mean notify you, until you do so via the app.

I'd always thought that it was about any other data they can slurp from your phone. Presumably knowing your hygiene habits is valuable when correlated with your facebook activty. Just having a list of people that overspend on this type of tech and have the app installed is probably valuable.

tl;dr IDK but they don't do it without a profit motive.

Like if the average user uses it for 15 seconds, it might signal them that the existing brushes need to be wider/longer/arced, so users can clean their teeth efficiently in that timeframe.

And yeah, the usual electric toothbrushes are terrible slow since the brush heads are in the size of one teeth, instead of 3-4.

What permissions does the app ask for? Most likely location for some bullshit Bluetooth feature, and no doubt they request other permissions like contacts and media so you can share with friends that you clean your teeth.

Hey, now oral b know where you are all the time, who you know etc

Looking at my android...notifications and nearby BT devices. Thats it.

"Here's a list of consumers who were gullible enough to install our app!"

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