In
a world where electronics seem to drive our entertainment, it’s not
uncommon to find numerous electronics and robots all over North American
households. From cell phones to computers to smart TVs, they’re
everywhere, and a lot of them are collecting very specific data about
you, your home, and your personal preferences.
So, which of your electronics are collecting data about you, and who has access to your personal, and perhaps sensitive information? Let’s take a look at a few of the common household or personal electronics that are spying on you.
Roomba (Electric Vacuum Cleaner)
Do you own one of these electric vacuum
cleaners? Well, as it turns out, they’ve been collecting a little more
than just dust. These little robot vacuums use advanced mapping technology
to learn and collect data on the floor plans of consumers’ homes, which
can then be sold or shared with companies such as Apple, Google, and
Amazon. More specifically, it’s anticipated that this data could be very
helpful as smart homes become more common.
Given the current user terms, it’s
likely all of this information ends up being sold to a third party, and
consumers don’t even need to be notified.
“There’s an entire ecosystem of things
and services that the smart home can deliver once you have a rich map of
the home that the user has allowed to be shared,” Colin Angle, Chief
Executive of iRobot, the producer of the Roomba, explained to Reuters.
If this type of information were sold to
a third party, it would have enormous implications, especially when it
comes to consumerism. For example, let’s say your Roomba takes note that
your living room doesn’t have a side table or a sofa — you could see
ads for these products popping up all over your social media and web
browsers because the Roomba has shared this information with a third party. This type of data exchange could seriously fuel consumerism.
Could insurance companies wrongfully use
this data to get out of reimbursing people with content insurance?
Could future home buyers lose control over who knows the specific layout
of their homes? Could people use this information to hack into systems
in order to rob houses more efficiently? The possibilities are endless,
and although there could be advantages to sharing this information,
there are some significant risks as well.
Albert Gidari, Director of Privacy at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, explained:
“[The Supreme Court has held that Americans have] a reasonable
expectation of privacy in your home. Once your home is turned inside
out, does that reasonable expectation of privacy dissipate?”
Smart TVs
Smart TVs are pretty great; they’re
super convenient because they connect to your Wifi instantaneously,
allowing you to watch Netflix or connect to the internet via your
television immediately. However, they can also be used to collect data
on you in some fairly unexpected ways.
For example, a new technology called TVision Insights was
recently launched, allowing companies to monitor TV watchers’ viewing
habits. This means that they can literally watch you as you watch TV,
and the technology even records data on where your eyes are looking,
when you’re distracted, and what emotions you’re conveying.
The device’s sensors can record minute
shifts in all of the people in the room. The company then matches those
viewing patterns to shows and commercials using technology that listens
to what is being broadcast on the TV. This technology is very new and is
only being used in about 7,500 homes in a test run, which you can read
more about in our CE article here.
This isn’t the first example of
surveillance through TVs, and it probably won’t be the last. In early
2015, Samsung released a statement warning customers that their Smart
TVs were capable of listening to and recording conversations.
These TVs have voice recognition
software, but this fancy piece of technology comes at a price, and that
price is a complete and utter violation of privacy. Samsung actually
warned its customers not to have important conversations or disclose
personal information in front of their Smart TVs because the audio can
be recorded and then transmitted to unidentified third parties.
Samsung’s privacy policy in regards to
the TV actually reads: “Please be aware that if your spoken words
include personal or other sensitive information, that information will
be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party.”
You can read more about the Samsung controversy in our CE article here.
Vizio TVs were
also found to record people, but the company had to pay $2.2 million to
settle charges for collecting and selling footage from millions of TVs
without the knowledge or consent of its viewers. This is a pretty fair
settlement given the fact that they had sold 11 million of these smart
TVs. One can only imagine how many people were directly affected by
this.
Although Vizio never publicly identified the companies they sold their data to, the FTC claimed
that it included personal information like “sex, age, income, marital
status, household size, education, homeownership and household value.”
This may not come as a surprise given
the scope of the company, but Google is secretly recording pretty much
everything you do if you keep a cell phone on you, from the
conversations you have using your phones to the texts/videos you send.
Plus, Google is literally tracking your every move.
So, how is one company collecting all of this data?
First of all, all of your search history
is stored. Can you imagine looking through every single thing you’ve
ever looked up on Google? Well, it’s a possibility! Google also takes
note of where you look up all of this information. So, if
you’re Googling something on your phone or laptop, Google knows where
you are. Likewise, it can then use this information to understand how
your interests relate to where you are at a given moment. However,
Google probably knows where you are anyways if you use Google Maps.
You could literally read all of the
texts you sent years ago, and even listen to the conversations you’ve
had. Not only is that creepy in general, but it’s also a huge violation
of privacy if this information is ever actually viewed by anyone else
but you.
You can read more about that in our CE article here.
Playstation
Playstation represents yet another Sony
product that can record what you’re doing. While using your device,
Playstation records and monitors all of your activity while using it.
People will often converse over these machines and Playstation can
collect data and generate information on your personal preferences.
Although this is not as concerning as
many of the other electronics that monitor your activity, people have
still raised some concerns over privacy. These concerns mainly stem from
the fact that Playstation 4 uses voice commands, so they are literally listening to you even when you’re not using your headset to speak to other players.
Snapchat
In all honesty, I love Snapchat. I
actually run CE’s snapchat account, so give us a follow (@cevolution)!
However, Snapchat now has location settings that allow you to share your
location with friends at all times. This of course
means that Snapchat knows your location as long as you have your phone
on you, although your location is updated only when you have your
Snapchat open.
Your “Snap Map” is enabled at all times,
unless you’ve turned it off (which is called Ghost Mode). It allows all
of your Snapchat friends to see where exactly you are located, even if
that means your precise home address. It’s so advanced that it can even tell when you’re driving in a car or in an airplane.
For example, your Snap Map could look like this, allowing you to see where all of your friends are:
Pokémon Go
Last summer, this smartphone game took
the world by storm, and it was pretty creepy. I remember walking through
a park and seeing at least 50 people on their phones playing Pokémon Go
because the park had a high amount of Pokémons these players were
intent on finding. Instead of looking at their beautiful surroundings of
gardens and trees, they had their heads buried in their phones; it was
almost eery.
The goal of the game is to track and
find Pokémon, but ironically, the game actually tracks you as well. In
the fine print people usually skip over prior to using an app, Pokémon
Go specifically states that users are sharing their locations, storage,
photos, and cameras with the company and that they reserve the right to
collect and share that data with third parties, including potential
buyers and the government.
If iOS users log in through their Google
account, they’re sharing that information with the creators of Pokémon
Go, essentially handing over pretty much all information related to your
Google account, including your Gmail, Google Drive, Google Maps, and
more. If you sign in using your Facebook account, the app can collect
information from that, too.
It’s easy to imagine how this app could completely violate users’ privacy, and how easy it is for people to blindly trust
companies. Is one game really worth sacrificing your privacy? Obviously
that’s up for interpretation based on each individual, but it’s
certainly something to consider.
Final Thoughts
In many ways, collecting this data could
benefit us. There’s no debating the convenience of Google Maps or Happy
Cow — sometimes it’s best that our electronics know our locations and
understand our preferences. However, there’s clearly a line that can be
crossed here, and it’s our jobs to define where exactly the divide
between right and wrong lies.
When is it okay to share this
information with others, and when does it become an invasion of privacy?
We need to determine this ourselves, rather than allowing corporations
to do so for us.
No comments:
Post a Comment