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Google/Fitbit will monetise health data and harm consumers
- xenihn 6y agoFor anyone who didn't see the Reuters article from yesterday: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-fitbit-m-a-alphabet-eu-exclusive/exclusive-google-fitbit-deal-set-to-win-eu-okay-after-fresh-concessions-sources-idUKKBN26K1PH https://www.reuters.com/article/us-fitbit-m-a-alphabet-eu-ex...
- echelon 6y agoWhat about Amazon and Apple? Why is Google the only recipient with scrutiny? Especially since the merger hasn't happened yet. You should be frightened about all of them.
- jolux 6y agoApple makes money from people buying their hardware and services. They don’t make a significant amount of money from selling targeted advertisements. Amazon and Google do.
- anotherman554 6y agoApple will never have "enough" money and will do practically anything do get more money.
- OskarS 6y agoYou're missing the point. Apple makes money by people buying their products, and Apple sells more products when people trust them. Therefore, they have a strong financial incentive to be trustworthy and at least appear to care about user privacy. The best way to appear to care about user privacy is to actually care about it: they make no money selling private information to 3rd parties, so there's no point in doing it. Google, on the other hand, makes some money selling stuff to consumers, but they make a lot more money selling your data to whoever wants to buy ads. That's the business they're in. No one is saying "Apple is inherently good and Google is inherently evil". They're both amoral massive corporations that care about profits above all else. It just happens to be the case that Apple makes more money when they protect user privacy, and Google makes more money when they violate user privacy.
- ksk 6y ago> and Apple sells more products when people trust them. I am interested to know how you have estimated/measured this increase. Is it 1%? 20%? What does your data show?
- anotherman554 6y agoJust like Apple keeps changing the App store rules when they decide they can get more money by taxing developers, Apple will reduce privacy when they decide they can get more money, because they never have enough money. And it won't hurt Apple sales, because their competition is no better. You claim Apple sells more because people trust them. Unless people are going to stop using smart phones they have no choice to use Google or Apple devices, privacy violations and all.
- lern_too_spel 6y agoI agree that they have an incentive to care about privacy because they have so far been incompetent at using data for the benefit of their users. However, they still collect a lot of data in order to try to get better at providing user benefit. Consider that on iOS you cannot get your location without also giving your location to Apple or install an app without telling Apple. Competing platforms do not suffer from these privacy invading issues.
- mattigames 6y agoOnly because they have margins of more than 20 times the cost of manufacturing, the day they stop having success selling iphones and more at such huge margins is the same day they will use all that data to make money from targeted advertisement, some think that day will never come because they have loyal buyers but only time will tell.
- actuator 6y agoMaybe that's what Google has been trying to do here with diversifying their revenue sources, similar to what they are attempting to do with GCP. Look at the amount of control they have been adding on Pixel phones on what apps and services can access, even Google's.
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoThe difference is Google doesn't stop monetizing your data when they start selling premium hardware.
- actuator 6y agoHow do you know this to be true? Are they using Nest data to monetize something? Apple also tried their hands at iAds, in the end companies will do whatever works best for them. Considering Apple has made privacy a marketing feature for their devices, I am quite sure Google would want to have that playbook as well for their premium devices.
- SquareWheel 6y agoThey don't monetize your data when you pay them (GSuite).
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- yokaze 6y agoThe scrutiny happens due to the merger upcoming merger. It requires permission of the European Commission, which raises those questions.
- onion2k 6y agoWhy is Google the only recipient with scrutiny? They're not. The EU is investigating Amazon[1] and Apple[2] as well. Your complaint is really "Why isn't every article written to be a general point about all big companies?" as if there's no value in writing about specific examples. What's wrong with writing about Google in particular? A focused article is just as useful and interesting as a more generic one. [1] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_19_4291 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_19_... [2] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_1073 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_...
- Daniel_sk 6y agoApple doesn't have your health data. They are on device, and any work with the data (statistics) is also done on the device and not somewhere in the Cloud. They don't want your data, it's not their business model. Sure - Health data is backed up over iCloud, but this is encrypted and again Apple doesn't have a way to view the data outside of an Apple device.
- itsoktocry 6y ago>Apple doesn't have a way to view the data outside of an Apple device. >Apple doesn't have your health data. I don't believe that any of this is true. iPhone or no, your data is "out there", and you don't own it.
- jannes 6y agoDo you have a source for iCloud backups being end-to-end encrypted?? As far as I know, everything in iCloud is just encrypted (i.e. Apple has the decryption key). In fact, law enforcement often asks for data from iCloud because unlocking the physical phone is harder.
- scarface74 6y agoHealth data in particular https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204351 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204351 Back up your Health data Health information is stored in iCloud and gets encrypted as it goes between iCloud and your device, and while it's stored in iCloud. End-to-end encryption requires iOS 12 and two-factor authentication. To stop storing your Health data in iCloud, go to Settings > [your name] > iCloud and turn off Health. If you aren't using iCloud, you can back up your information in Health by encrypting your iTunes backup. The information that you create or gather about yourself is under your control, and it's encrypted with your passcode when you lock your iPhone
- alquemist 6y agoFirst line of the abstract: "The European Commission is conducting an in-depth investigation of the Google/Fitbit deal.". They are perusing a specific legal angle to investigate Google/Fitbit.
- ntsplnkv2 6y agoI don't understand this whataboutism. Google is under scrutiny here doesn't exclude others from being under scrutiny.
- therobot24 6y agoif a ml algorithm could influence me to work out more, i would accept the consistent nonsense ads about weight watchers
- alex_duf 6y agoI think the point is more that your insurance will become more expensive because you haven't walked enough between the age of 20 and 40, and therefore you're more prone to a heart attack. Or maybe your mortgage is more likely to be denied
- shadowgovt 6y agoHow did the mortgage and insurance companies get my private data in my Google account?
- meroes 6y agogoogle bought the insurance startup
- shadowgovt 6y agoWhat insurance startup? Are we talking hypotheticals here or concrete action Google is undertaking? I agree that Google + FitBit + Google owning a health insurance company would be suspect, but I'm unaware of them buying a health insurance company. Certainly, if the concern is government intervention, the intervention should hold off until an insurance startup is actually on the table?
- alex_duf 6y agoIs there any brand of wrist sensor that doesn't require you to upload your data to their servers by any chance? I love the fitbit sensor, but I wish I could opt out of the server side of the things
- jannes 6y agoTry Apple Watch. You can disable the iCloud backup of Health data: https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/back-up-your-health-data-iph11f1eb698/ios https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/back-up-your-health-d...
- 52-6F-62 6y agoThat's what I do. It'll sync with my phone locally over bluetooth once I'm back in range, but that's it.
- 0xWTF 6y agoThere's an SDK that can be used to pull the data from a Garmin to a server you control.
- bluGill 6y agopine64. Of course their smart watch currently is a dev kit and doesn't do anything at all unless you write software to do something. Some good progress is being made - expect a first release "soon" where the watch will do something - though probably not something very smart. Still today if you don't want to write all the code yourself you shouldn't bother.
- ysleepy 6y agoThere are alternative apps for the Mi Band that work purely on-device. Mi Band Master is one of them. The setup is a bit more involved with newer bands, but a one-time thing. Works really well.
- dublinben 6y agoThere's a fantastic piece of free software for Android called Gadgetbridge[0] that allows you to use many of these "smart watches" without the first party app or servers. It supports Pebble, Mi Band, Amazfit Bip and HPlus and more. [0] https://gadgetbridge.org/ https://gadgetbridge.org/
- kache_ 6y agoIt's crazy to me that people will run non-free software on something that is designed to capture biometrics... but then again I've been looking for a decent open source alternative and there is nothing out there.
- smolder 6y agoI would be happy with a commercial product that simply stored data in a place of your choosing, like to a PC, in a parseable format. I don't think a product that was completely self-managed (no cloud) could be competitive anymore, so that's pretty much left up to OSS. I really miss software that didn't require internet connectivity being the norm.
- jschwartzi 6y agoYou can do that with the data/charging cable that comes with Garmin watches. It exports the data on a USB-MSD. I don't recall whether it's a CSV or some other format but they make no effort to obscure it.
- smolder 6y agoGood to know, thanks!
- jakear 6y agoAn "open data store" as a standardized service could be interesting... a good chunk of backends are just "add this item", "get all items since X", etc. If there was a service that gave you an endpoint that you could distribute to other services to do just that (one endpoint per service, keep things isolated), or alternatively host your own and give that endpoint to services... it'd be cool. The tricky part is getting other companies to agree to use your common API.
- thinkharderdev 6y agoIn this case I think the multi-device syncing capability is the thing that adds value. Or at least being able to sync the data gathered by the device to the cloud so you can access it through a separate interface. If that is the case then whether you prefer a Google solution to a open source solution depends very much on your threat model. Google may use that data to target ads but running your own solution you risk losing the raw data to a security flaw in the open source code or infrastructure. At least with Google you get world class infosec to protect your data (from everyone except Google...)
- _dibly 6y agoIs it ignorant of me to wonder if the majority of the issues raised in this piece are either portrayed/worded poorly or just not very compelling? >First, Google has the incentive and ability to favour the adoption of Fitbit over rival wearables on the user side, and to simultaneously undermine the ability of others to offer competing products to insurers and health providers. I guess the argument is that Google buying Fitbit would mean other non-Apple wearables would be at a disadvantage by nature of there being a first-party alternative, but is that inherently monopolistic or anti-competitive? Isn't that essentially what Google has been attempting to do with Nest or the Pixel phone line? After multiple reads, I fail to understand what blocking this merger does other than temporarily delay Google from doing what the tech industry is going to continue to do, exploit the ignorance of policy-makers and the general public to harvest and sell our personal information. Does blocking this merger even accomplish anything other than delaying what will be inevitable without legislative action? E: forgot some words
- rStar 6y ago> Is it ignorant of me to wonder if the majority of the issues raised in this piece are either portrayed/worded poorly or just not very compelling? I think you’re just missing the overarching point that googles position becomes stronger in a nonlinear way when you plug persistently updated pollable health data into what they already have. without resorting to name calling your argument seems to be: “we’re going to hell anyway so why shouldn’t we let google take us there as fast as possible?” my naive response would be that we should slow our descent into hell by any of the few means possible, while we wait for more humans to understand the danger to them that google, amazon, microsoft, apple ... are.
- shadowgovt 6y agoIt becomes stronger in a nonlinear way, but not in any fashion that American antitrust would block. European antitrust is a different story, and if the concern that FitBit being a "blessed" device on Android pushes out other biomonitors has teeth, so be it. I personally find that flavor of reasoning too conservative (by that model, GMail bundled with the Android OS is a faux pas because it makes it harder for other email providers to compete), but there are differing theories of what antitrust is for.
- walterbell 6y agoYou can sync Garmin (many devices) health tracker data locally via USB cable or wireless receiver, then parse/graph with OSS scripts: Code: https://github.com/tcgoetz/GarminDB https://github.com/tcgoetz/GarminDB & https://github.com/mrihtar/Garmin-FIT https://github.com/mrihtar/Garmin-FIT Wireless receiver: https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/p/10997 https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/p/10997 & https://www.thisisant.com/ https://www.thisisant.com/
- wavefunction 6y agoImagine trying to explain this to your elderly mother... She doesn't want to learn software development (even basic levels) just to use a wearable health monitoring device
- walterbell 6y agoBusiness opportunity for home device for use by mere mortals, e.g. smartphone UI to data on local NAS. ANT can sync automatically when within range.
- krick 6y agoThanks, I guess I can make use of one. I was thinking there might be no more devices left that don't store your data on some shitty website you have to log into.
- walterbell 6y agoGarmin has a user-data website too :) But their devices have been around long enough to enable self-managed biometric data.
- shadowgovt 6y agoThe argument they're making here is a little subtle, but it tracks. They're not claiming Google will hand out a user's biometrics to insurance companies or other parties. They're claiming Google will offer biometrically-based signal as an ad discrimination channel. At that point, they don't have to hand out the data to allow insurance companies to discriminate; insurance companies could set up targeted ads for Cadillac insurance programs on users having XYZ biometrics and those ads only run for users that are showing they're low health risks. So it's soft market discrimination; only the extra-healthy get explicitly told about new insurance plan A, and the self-select group signs up, possibly making A cheaper for the insurer to implement even if they don't do any additional screening. I think the theory has holes, but it's not nonsense. And it's unclear to me that it demands government regulation (but my bias is American-style law; I don't know how European legal eyes see the story I just laid out).
- tehjoker 6y agoWhen the user clicks on specially targeted ads, they reveal themselves to be part of the group and are individually identifiable.
- shadowgovt 6y agoTo a first approximation, yes. There isn't any authentication around following an ad link, so technically anyone could click the ad. But practically, no; nobody's going to randomly click an ad link someone else handed them for funsies. In the common case, the ad company will be able to do conversions on the target demo (and make strong assumptions about the target demo, even if Google doesn't explicitly leak that data).
- eptcyka 6y agoI wonder if it'd make sense to have a plugin that'd share ad links in a p2p network just to screw with these people.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
- bmh100 6y agoDoes anyone have recommendations for a privacy-conscious alternative to the Aria scale and mobile app?
- tehjoker 6y agoWhy don't people just count their steps or breaths and use pencil and paper? I don't see these products doing anything exceptionally useful and now they are harming people. Unless you a training to a specification (e.g. exert this many ft-lbs of force) it's just motivation.
- guerrilla 6y agoMost people aren't mindful enough or free enough to do those things. By the latter, I mean they're multitasking. And then some people have ADHD and other things.
- notatoad 6y agothis article appears to be an opinion piece, speculating what a combined google/fitbit could do, not an official announcement of what they will do. but the headline is written in the tone of an official announcement from google. seems a bit misleading.
- mchusma 6y agoHealth privacy, while kind of important Ina vacuum, is maybe the most overrated issue of our day. Not only do I not care if my health data is out there but I wish it were. Right now healthcare is barely using data, it's absurd. Let's focus on making good diagnostic AI preventative medicine to let people live forever.
- Avicebron 6y agoAnd when you can't get insurance coverage because said AI says you have a disqualifying condition?
- darkwizard42 6y agoThen solve the real underlying problem...insurance... NOT the segmentation of valuable health information that could help advance medical discoveries (with that data being handled properly)
- jlokier 6y agoWe haven't solved that underlying problem yet, and the problem isn't insurance. It's that many kinds of actor have motivations to misuse individual, detailed health data in ways that can be seriously harmful to the individual. I don't know if there's a way to solve that problem, even in principle. It seems like an intrinsic conflict of interest thing. Until that's solved, that will remain a major and rational reason why people care about health data privacy. There's no point saying "ignore health data privacy and fix the real problem" until people can fix the real problem. Which as I've said, might not be possible even in principle. Meanwhile, the thing people can do for themselve is focus on privacy of their healthcare records and demanding that be maintained. Institutions and companies can incrementally develop improvements to aggregating data that don't simply discard that privacy, like differential privacy for smart data aggregation, and zero-knowledge systems like the Google/Apple coronavirus alert system. Perhaps eventually we'll and up with a way to aggregate health data in ways that are more helpful for diagnostics and population-level understanding of diseases, while safeguarding individuals from harmful consequences.
- alienfilesystem 6y agoI'm going to come across here as an odd outlier, and that's OK. I accept it. Being in IT for 20 years has shown me that none of these companies can be trusted. Since I have to have a mobile phone, I chose Apple. I don't believe that there are "lesser evils". You're evil or you're not. Full stop. I do my best to use open source tools (save iPhone) in my house. Granted, there are no open source TVs, Roku's, etc, but they are not tracking me. My TV is set to be dumb, I don't use "real" information when I sign up for transient things. I use email aliases for everything with Fastmail. I have no apps save the ones that ship with the phone and I don't use the health app. I use the phone, texting, and camera. That's it. I don't have an iCloud account. The field of companies is narrowing with FAANG buying up everything of value or anything that may threaten them. I get it. It's all about money. While I don't agree with everything that Richard Stallman says, he's right more often than not. We are increasingly giving our lives to FAANG. The tracking is insidious. The sharing of information is insidious. We can fight back should we wish. But how many people are willing to give up their conveniences for their freedoms? I'd wager not too many. I'll admit I bought a flip phone for the purposes of avoiding any virus apps that may be required in future should that happen. I just want to stay off the radar and I have a right to do so.
- throwaway_pdp09 6y agoMine is to be an opinion-only post but... > You're evil or you're not. Full stop. ... I'm afraid I can't agree.
- alienfilesystem 6y agoI appreciate your comment, but let's be honest, good and evil are binary like night and day. I don't cotton to the idea that one's morals can be suspended in "twilight". There are ways to make tons of money and be completely moral.
- read_if_gay_ 6y agoIn a philosophical sense yes, but there’s degrees to both of them, and once you consider practical issues your options will often be a mix of good and evil.
- fitbitq 6y agoIf someone here works for Google fitbit please drop me a line at www.koalasleeve.com
- jariel 6y agoWait until their AI enables customers to target people grieving from the death of a loved one. This is borderline sickening. I think they could feasibly make the case for selling data to drug and research companies for the purposes of medical advancement ... but beyond that it's ridiculous. I'm generally realpolitik about these kinds of issues, but even this to me feels evil.