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Fitbit users are unwittingly sharing details of their sex lives with the world
- inportb 15y agoThe real question is: what can we do with the data?
- dholowiski 15y agoSurely google can use this as a search signal?
- inportb 15y ago... or integrate it into Google+ recommendations.
- dholowiski 15y agoHm. If two people were fitbit users, google could automatically +1 depending on the duration. I predict a new saying: "I'd +1 that".
- raheemm 15y agoCollect dataset of low sexual activity people, connect with Facebook, analyze users Like and Commenting patterns and then build a Facebook dating app that suggests local deals, and activities with other low sexual activity folks.
- MatthewPhillips 15y agoOr: collect dataset of short sexual duration people, spam with virility supplements.
- jmaygarden 15y agoInstead of the normal find any email address and spam with virility supplements?
- blantonl 15y agoSo are you suggesting a startup called Groupsexon?
- LaGrange 15y agoCorrelate all data with foursquare too, and on the morning after, send an email with the subject like "Know what Robert really likes? Chocolate. Here's where to get a brand that's like his favorite but he never had it."
- nametoremember 15y agoThat's not the real question at all. If the website didn't explicitly state that this information would be private then it is a privacy issue.
- qdot76367 15y agoIt's pretty easy to just inject activity and other data for other people too. Fitbit doesn't really seem to give a damn about any sort of privacy or authentication. http://www.openyou.org/2011/04/18/fitbit-and-security-or-lack-thereof/ http://www.openyou.org/2011/04/18/fitbit-and-security-or-lac...
- abeppu 15y agoI think it's crazy that they by default share when you have sex, for how long, and how hard, but that they decided that weight and bmi information should be private.
- tommi 15y agoWeight and bmi are information about you. Sex and other activies are information of your activies. It's simply grouped as it should be.
- msy 15y agoAnd that comment right there is why programmers shouldn't design social networks.
- omouse 15y agoIndeed, it's why they should grow an ethical/moral portion in their brain as well -_-' Being a professional doesn't mean you should ignore ethical or moral concerns.
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- blader 15y agoYes, with the notable exceptions of the designers of like, every successful social network ever.
- pohl 15y ago"To be is to do" - Socrates "To do is to be" - Sartre "Do Be Do Be Do" - Sinatra
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- aj700 15y agoIs it only Americans that see this as a problem? Let me be the first European to redundantly point out that sex is natural and nothing to be ashamed of. So what's the big deal? How many more years will it take the moral (majority?) to get over the way our bodies work.
- _delirium 15y agoI can't say for sure, but as a Greek-American living in Denmark, I don't think any of the three nationalities I have contact with would be particularly happy about a publicly broadcast log of every time they have sex, especially if they didn't realize it was happening. Sex might be natural, but publicly posting a sex-diary is unusual at best.
- exit 15y agosex has more social implications than other body functions. e.g., someone notices their partner logs sexual activity shortly after "meeting with friends from work" every thursday. there are less dramatic examples any adult should be able to imagine. actually, i suspect you just jumped at the opportunity to parade how "progressive" you are.
- tommi 15y agoI don't see the problem of this. It's something you decided to share. Your example is pretty odd. Why would you log entries of your sexual activities which are not considered ok in your relationship? Sure, it can have social implications but I don't feel going overprotective on this. You should know where you log stuff which you consider sensitive.
- aj700 15y agoI think the graying out is a bit harsh for anything that gets negative points, but okay. The negative points, well, that seems to happen any time the state of the union (it's not so good) ie the state of the US, is mentioned by me. What % of users are American? Probably higher than I realised. In future I'll work on the theory that comments that work from a position of superiority don't get anywhere. They seem to make even leftcoasters and NY-ers leap to the defence of Alabamians' values. Surprising. Or do users just dislike any discussion of politics here? I was a libertarian uber-capitalist and totally pro-US, until, like most people, I noticed that the entire political class of most rich nations are working for the financial sector, which is not, by the way, the same as working for the technology sector. Now, I'm at least a leveller and pro a quite equal OUTCOME of income in a society. Way to go Dick Fuld (et al.) Who needs fascism when you've got an oligarchy of Wall St.
- extension 15y agoIt can tell that you're hugging and kissing with just an accelerometer? And it doesn't matter where it's attached to you?
- delinka 15y agoI don't know if the author intended to imply that, but I don't read that any place in the article. It does mention entering data for times when wearing your device is inappropriate. That said, I don't think the thing could possibly tell the difference between jostling around on a ladder and hugs-n-kisses.
- wastedbrains 15y agoTo be fair, the only reason this info is public is the person is 'tagging' the activity. By default all tagged links in delicious are public and that makes sense. If you tag an activity like this on fitbit, you should mark it private. I have a fitbit and I can't for the life of me figure out why people would start tagging every activity they do and start and end times... but if they are adding tags, comments, and other personal details they should mark it all private.
- frobozz 15y agoWhen I saw the headline, I wondered how the machine determined that you were having sex, rather than just doing (for example) pressups, squat thrusts and crunches (possibly in close proximity to another user doing similar exercise). It would have to be an exceptionally subtle piece of accelerometer/resistance meter interpretation to distinguish the difference. wastedbrains' reply told me exactly what I needed to know. Fitbit users are not "unwittingly sharing details of their sex lives", but deliberately marking their exercise sessions with their very personal trainer as games of hide-the-sausage; using a tool that is designed to publicly share information about ones exercise sessions.
- taylorbuley 15y agoSort of reminds me of Blippy sharing credit card numbers, except that was by accident not design http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2010/apr/26/blippy-creditcard-socialnetworking http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2010/apr/26/blippy-credi...
- martey 15y agoI think it was the intention of the author to remind you of Blippy, since they specifically mentioned them in the next to last paragraph by linking to an article about them.
- ddw 15y agoOn a public account on Daytum.com I once came across a chart in which a couple seemed to be logging their sexual positions, including "what what in the butt." Daytum is pretty much anonymous are far as the end user goes, there's no name or "social" information to an account, but it was pretty funny and doubt they knew other people could see that data.
- matthewsimon 15y agoRipe for data-driven visualization. http://daytum.com/robynt/categories/191024 http://daytum.com/robynt/categories/191024
- sethco 15y agoActually it isn't very anonymous at all. From a few minutes of looking at that account I know both of their first names and their address (also the name of their cat).
- yaix 15y agoSeriously: who cares? If I'd had the exhibitionist inclination to publish my jogging and TV watching habits, I would not mind having the duration of my sexual activity published as well. Who cares? It's not like having sex is something top secret nobody else does. But since I would not want to publish all my questionable efforts to stay in shape, it would probably be a good idea to make the public/private setting a little more obvious.
- yaix 15y agoReally, again? When I have an own opinion here that does not follow the mainstream, I just get downvoted without any arguments. Why is it so bad to have your sex duration published but its okay that your jogging performance visible to the world?
- Hawramani 15y agoThe question is how the users feel about it. How the users should feel about it is irrelevant.
- thehotdon 15y agoAnimals have very strict rules and regulations about the sacred act of rubbing genitals together.
- yaix 15y agoAnd humans have been endowed with brains to get around instinct controlled behavior that is not useful.
- nametoremember 15y ago"Why is it so bad to have your sex duration published but its okay that your jogging performance visible to the world?" They are completely different. Maybe not to you but if you can't see how it would bother some people then you're not thinking very hard.
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- endian 15y agoSince they will probably block this soon and get Google to flush its public cache, here's are some examples (with user tokens redacted): Google results: https://img.skitch.com/20110703-r79t4swrjt3e2akwh3xdfbcrsg.png https://img.skitch.com/20110703-r79t4swrjt3e2akwh3xdfbcrsg.p... Part of a profile: https://img.skitch.com/20110703-cwmhwiicewy6hh5xw67ctwrq7m.png https://img.skitch.com/20110703-cwmhwiicewy6hh5xw67ctwrq7m.p...
- muzz 15y agoAppears to be blocked now
- ruby_on_rails 15y agoThough still available in google's cached pages. Still for the dozen or so I have looked at, most of the users who chose to share their sex lives only did so under an alias with no picture or a pictures that you could not see the face. You really have to give these users a little more credit.
- Mz 15y agoI will note that a lot of people aren't all that savvy/don't really think about the consequences. People have been fired for posting remarks on their Facebook account that their employer then read. People seem to routinely underestimate just how public stuff on the internet is and both users of a site and administrators commit big errors in that regard. In online forums, I have seen someone post a thread that from the get go was obvious to me was trouble and would likely attract negative attention from the folks it was trashing. Did any of the moderators step in up front and do something about it? Nope. They stepped in only after trouble had come to their door to crab at the person who started the thread. I think the person who started the thread genuinely did not expect the outcome that resulted -- they posted as if among friends/talking with a group of friends, apparently oblivious to the fact that anyone with an internet connection could find these public remarks, join the forum, and reply. I'm aware of this issue and still sometimes run into friction over it. The internet allows us to belong to many more social groupings than in the past and it gets complicated trying to determine what info and how much to share where/with whom...etc.
- droob 15y agoI don't think users think their data is secret. I think they assume nobody will care enough, or be malicious enough, to seek it out and exploit it. There's an expectation of courtesy that (mistakenly, sadly) gets ported over from meatspace. I mean, I leave my shades up all day, with the assumption that the neighbors won't have their faces up to the glass to track my movements around the house.