Care to know who else is keeping an eye on all of your health-related activities?
-LifeZette: They’re on the wish lists of just about everyone this Christmas, including your great-grandmother and your youngest child. Fitness trackers help us count our steps, get more sleep, eat better, and take our medications (if not our phone calls).
It’s amazing how far we’ve come since the pedometer.
Estimated sales for fitness trackers in 2016 alone were $102 million. But before you slap a shiny new device on your wrist going into 2017 — it’s worth understanding what you’re really signing up for with these products.
A new study raises privacy and security risks, showing that advertisers and Big Pharma companies want consumers’ personal health data badly. And it’s so easy for them to get it.
Researchers at American University and at the Center for Digital Democracy, both based in Washington, D.C., found that a “weak and fragmented health-privacy regulatory system fails to provide adequate safeguards.” The report, “Health Wearable Devices in the Big Data Era: Ensuring Privacy, Security, and Consumer Protection,” looks at how much more data will be collected about consumers as the use of personal fitness trackers becomes more widespread — and the technology more sophisticated.
“The extent and nature of data collection will be unprecedented,” the authors note.
How many of you are tracking Mooshell’s fitbits?
Bwhwhahahahahaha!
I wear a fancy device made by BAUME & MERCIER today it was the Capeland 10067
http://www.baume-et-mercier.com/en-us/capeland-collection.html
I wear a 1987 Citizen dive watch, a gift from my dad. Don’t have or want one of those probes.
I have one of those things, I think… Damn thing makes me wobble when I walk. I have the extra large cankle type.
I wear fancy devices too. Today it’s this one.
https://www.lesbaer.com/TRS.html
My old phone had a fitness thing on it, but since I don’t carry my phone with me 95% of the time it was always telling me to be more active. On days where I got up to go somewhere to be active and needed to carry my phone, it would freak out and give me all kinds of awards. It was as if it was surprised my lazy ass really did move.
Everything tracks you, especially if you allow it to ‘notify’ you! Soon we will have CCTV everywhere, like England. Just watch one of their crime shows. First thing they do is get the CCTV to check activity, almost everywhere, it seems.
I watched HINTERLANDS, which was in a remote area and still they looked for CCTV where available, like crossroads and rail crisis points, etc.
Big brother in CA has had CCTV on freeways for years. Next trip to Vegas, watch for the cameras, about every 2 miles. Sure, ‘they are for traffic watch, yea, right. That state wants to tax people based upon their miles driven and I wonder if this isn’t a first step. CA will probably put meters on your toilet paper, next!
Stupid story. More fake news. I should be worried because there isn’t enough regulation? Note there isn’t any accusation of any of this data actually being misused. That would take actual research instead of this “journalist” just writing it while watching TV.
Dave, I’d rather just wear the Selby… I wore a Viper once and it was going 180 mph.
I don’t even own a cell phone. I’m sure as shit not going to buy one of those.
My neighbor has one of these, it keeps coming up with the message: “You seem like a nice bunch of guys.”