6 ms·

... Why? What's so confidential about your floor plan?

taneq 9y ago
Ah, the good ol' "if you have nothing to hide" stance.
Washuu 9y ago
More that iRobot disclosed plans to sell the floor plans to the homes of their product users without telling them. https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/nation-now/2017/07/25/roomba-plans-sell-maps-users-homes/508578001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/nation-now/2017/07/25/ro... I do not count a clause buried in a terms of service as informed consent.
- valesco 9y ago
  4% of global revenue under the upcoming GDPR. Can't wait.
  - ancarda 9y ago
    rubs hands together I really can't wait for GDPR
- pluma 9y ago
  > I do not count a clause buried in a terms of service as informed consent. Neither do EU courts. I guess this "feature" is only available in the US?
ancarda 9y ago
Could you send me a detailed copy of your floor plan? Ideally, SVG? Thanks! Oh, and anything else the robot sends too, like your IP address and maybe GPS coordinates? If you're willing to send, great -- thank you. I'd love to know, for undisclosed reasons. My email is in my profile, and you can even encrypt the files you send me using PGP. Although note that I'll be putting it on my Azure account and leaving it there for eternity. If you're not willing to send me that, then please don't even try the "you've got nothing to hide" line, because you clearly do! I'm going to start challenging this every time I hear this excuse because it's demonstrably nonsense when challenged. You won't send me that SVG because you know I have no fucking business knowing what your house looks like. Neither does the robot cleaning company. The files could be kept on the device without any real loss of functionality. As Washuu posted below, they are now selling these floor plans. Should I make money off the floor plan you send me?
- JustSomeNobody 9y ago
  But couldn't this all be found out in public records? Look up the neighborhood, then who built the homes. Most builders don't have more than a few dozen floor plans.
  - ancarda 9y ago
    In that case, why don't the companies just access those public files? Why build their own floor plans and send them back to the cloud to be sold? Why is there even a market for buying floor plans from people who didn't realize they were being mapped from their fucking vacuum cleaner. You can't even trust a vacuum cleaner. I'm really coming to despise technology companies.
    - megaman22 9y ago
      Because real houses almost never match the plans? This seems a little paranoid. Everybody does this kind of mapping. Call Home Depot to get an estimate for flooring, and the person they send out laser measures everything and sends you floor plans back accurate to the quarter inch.
- Benjamin_Dobell 9y ago
  I agree with most of what you said, except this bit... > I have no f---ing business knowing what your house looks like. Neither does the robot cleaning company. The files could be kept on the device without any real loss of functionality. As Washuu posted below, they are now selling these floor plans. Should I make money off the floor plan you send me? They quite literally do have a business that requires them to know your floor plan, or at least to do a good job. Whether or not they upload it anywhere may be a different matter. I have a robot that maps my floor plan - admittedly poorly, as we don't let it into every room and it's lidar, so a bit rough and contains no information about doors, windows, or anything I own in my home - but them sending me a push notification to my mobile phone when the robot either completes the cleaning or gets stuck is great. I just open the mobile app and I can see a rough map showing where the robot has been or where they are (if it's stuck), it is actually incredibly useful. I don't at all question your right to not want a company having that information, I totally get it, but honestly myself and a lot of other people use Google services frequently, so in terms of privacy invasion this is so far down the list it doesn't even register. Yes I've made the choice to use Google services, just as I've made the choice to use a robot vacuum that connect to wi-fi and tells me information I believe is useful. I do however dislike you suggesting that my robot vacuum should have it's functionality limited because you don't like the company collecting information. Particularly when there's already a super simple solution... just don't setup wi-fi on the robot vac. Problem solved.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

Ah, the good ol' "if you have nothing to hide" stance.

More that iRobot disclosed plans to sell the floor plans to the homes of their product users without telling them. https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/nation-now/2017/07/25/roomba-plans-sell-maps-users-homes/508578001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/nation-now/2017/07/25/ro... I do not count a clause buried in a terms of service as informed consent.

valesco 9y ago
4% of global revenue under the upcoming GDPR. Can't wait.
- ancarda 9y ago
  rubs hands together I really can't wait for GDPR
pluma 9y ago
> I do not count a clause buried in a terms of service as informed consent. Neither do EU courts. I guess this "feature" is only available in the US?

ancarda 9y ago

Could you send me a detailed copy of your floor plan? Ideally, SVG? Thanks! Oh, and anything else the robot sends too, like your IP address and maybe GPS coordinates? If you're willing to send, great -- thank you. I'd love to know, for undisclosed reasons. My email is in my profile, and you can even encrypt the files you send me using PGP. Although note that I'll be putting it on my Azure account and leaving it there for eternity. If you're not willing to send me that, then please don't even try the "you've got nothing to hide" line, because you clearly do! I'm going to start challenging this every time I hear this excuse because it's demonstrably nonsense when challenged. You won't send me that SVG because you know I have no fucking business knowing what your house looks like. Neither does the robot cleaning company. The files could be kept on the device without any real loss of functionality. As Washuu posted below, they are now selling these floor plans. Should I make money off the floor plan you send me?

JustSomeNobody 9y ago
But couldn't this all be found out in public records? Look up the neighborhood, then who built the homes. Most builders don't have more than a few dozen floor plans.
- ancarda 9y ago
  In that case, why don't the companies just access those public files? Why build their own floor plans and send them back to the cloud to be sold? Why is there even a market for buying floor plans from people who didn't realize they were being mapped from their fucking vacuum cleaner. You can't even trust a vacuum cleaner. I'm really coming to despise technology companies.
  - megaman22 9y ago
    Because real houses almost never match the plans? This seems a little paranoid. Everybody does this kind of mapping. Call Home Depot to get an estimate for flooring, and the person they send out laser measures everything and sends you floor plans back accurate to the quarter inch.
Benjamin_Dobell 9y ago
I agree with most of what you said, except this bit... > I have no f---ing business knowing what your house looks like. Neither does the robot cleaning company. The files could be kept on the device without any real loss of functionality. As Washuu posted below, they are now selling these floor plans. Should I make money off the floor plan you send me? They quite literally do have a business that requires them to know your floor plan, or at least to do a good job. Whether or not they upload it anywhere may be a different matter. I have a robot that maps my floor plan - admittedly poorly, as we don't let it into every room and it's lidar, so a bit rough and contains no information about doors, windows, or anything I own in my home - but them sending me a push notification to my mobile phone when the robot either completes the cleaning or gets stuck is great. I just open the mobile app and I can see a rough map showing where the robot has been or where they are (if it's stuck), it is actually incredibly useful. I don't at all question your right to not want a company having that information, I totally get it, but honestly myself and a lot of other people use Google services frequently, so in terms of privacy invasion this is so far down the list it doesn't even register. Yes I've made the choice to use Google services, just as I've made the choice to use a robot vacuum that connect to wi-fi and tells me information I believe is useful. I do however dislike you suggesting that my robot vacuum should have it's functionality limited because you don't like the company collecting information. Particularly when there's already a super simple solution... just don't setup wi-fi on the robot vac. Problem solved.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]