8 ms·

> logs include: Your precise GPS locations (which are also sent to their servers). Your WiFi network name. The IDs of nearby cell towers (even with no SIM card

> logs include: Your precise GPS locations (which are also sent to their servers). Your WiFi network name. The IDs of nearby cell towers (even with no SIM card inserted, also sent to their servers). Your internet-facing IP address. The user token used by the device to authenticate with Rabbit's back-end API. Base64-encoded MP3s of everything the Rabbit has ever spoken to you (and the text transcript thereof). Nasty :0

nicce 2y ago
Nobody would collect all this by accident, especially when considering the purpose of the product…
- freedomben 2y ago
  Certainly not by accident. It takes intentional effort to collect any data, let alone data like this where you have to really scrape. This is in my opinion exactly what the tech industry is all about these days. I generally favor a light touch with regulation, but the US desperately needs some privacy laws because this industry is absolutely out of control
  - ghayes 2y ago
    I'd generally say that disclosure should be enough (and is currently insufficient in the US outside of California), but I am weary that much of your life now involves "Pay us with Venmo" or "Customer service via Twitter," such that one cannot really opt-out without paying a significant cost.
    - DaiPlusPlus 2y ago
      It’s not all bad: Venmo gives you payment/fraud protection; Twitter is a public forum so at least if anything goes wrong you’ll be a viral star of some kind. I draw the line at companies/orgs using Discord for anything.
      - YurgenJurgensen 2y ago
        Have you tried reading Tweets while not signed-in in the last year? Twitter is not a public forum any more. And it shows that these companies will alter the deal whenever it happens to serve their interests.
        freedomben 2y ago
        "pray I don't alter it further"
  - bilbo0s 2y ago
    Problem is if our congress were to make laws they would make tough on terrorist laws to compel collection and storage of data for the good guys to get the bad guys easier. We all seem to forget that the patriot act passed 99 to 1. Whereupon… We promptly got rid of the 1. We have bad leaders. Look at our Presidential candidates. We won’t get better outcomes until that condition changes.
- Aurornis 2y ago
  Those are local log files on the device. The post says the subset of information sent to the server is smaller. Uploading location data with requests is a feature of the device. It's supposed to take your location into account so you can ask it questions like "What's the weather forecast?" The article is sparse on when the information is sent to the servers. If location data is being sent with requests, that's hardly a surprise.
  - nicce 2y ago
    > Uploading location data with requests is a feature of the device. It's supposed to take your location into account so you can ask it questions like "What's the weather forecast?" No. The whole product is an abstraction to different software interfaces. If it sends data, it should sent it to the weather API, not to Rabbit servers nor even log it, because the information is relevant only at that moment. Even if they route all traffic through their backend, their should log only errors. There is really no reason to store the location history on OS level.
    - Aurornis 2y ago
      > If it sends data, it should sent it to the weather API, That's not how the device works. The weather and location data are both context inputs to an LLM. The LLM produces the response and sends it to the device. The LLM runs on the server, not the device. You can't have the device connect to a separate weather API unless you send keys to the device, which would require per-user access credentials (good luck finding a 3rd party provider happy to do that). It would also increase the number of round trips, which increases response delay, which is one of the primary complaints about the device.
      - freedomben 2y ago
        I am far from an expert on LLMs and have never used the Rabbit, but wouldn't it be silly to have the llm produce the weather? Wouldn't that mean it must have the information in either the context window (or the training set, but that seems pretty unlikely to be current), meaning it already had to be gathered from an external source and wouldn't need to be sent to the LLM anyway? What can/does the Rabbit add to it above what a simple string concatenation would?
- ummonk 2y ago
  Most likely they were collecting it all to make debugging easier.
Aurornis 2y ago
> Your precise GPS locations (which are also sent to their servers). ... The IDs of nearby cell towers (even with no SIM card inserted, also sent to their servers). Is this sent to the server all the time? Or just with requests? It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that a device designed to respond to questions like "What's a good restaurant near me?" is also sending location context with requests. If they're sending a constant stream of location all the time for no reason, that would be concerning. > Your WiFi network name. ... Your internet-facing IP address. The user token used by the device to authenticate with Rabbit's back-end API. A device must store WiFi network names to reconnect to them. An IP address showing up in local logs isn't really surprising either. Storing the user access token on the device is also a necessity for reconnecting without logging back in every time you turn it on. The fact that it's stored directly in logs isn't a good practice, but when those logs are stored on the same storage as the db or config file that contains them, it's also not really a new issue by itself. If they were uploading logs directly to their servers, that would be an issue of course.
- echoangle 2y ago
  Regarding storage of WiFi names: That’s a weak excuse IMO. Firstly, the WiFi logic is probably entirely handled by Android, so the app doesn’t have to do anything with that. And that also doesn’t explain the WiFi names in logs. Or are they parsing their own logs to determine which WiFi to connect to? If it’s some structured data or a database, I would get it, but they surely aren’t logging something to reconnect to the mentioned WiFi names later.
  - Aurornis 2y ago
    > Firstly, the WiFi logic is probably entirely handled by Android, so the app doesn’t have to do anything with that. The app handles the process of connecting to a WiFi network. It doesn't have a standard Android interface. The only interface is through the Rabbit app, so by definition the app must also handle WiFi at some point. The already released an update to reduce logging before this blog was posted. I'm not defending their initial over-logging as a good security choice, but I do think it's being greatly exaggerated in this comment section. If you could access the device's storage, you could access the WiFi network name, period. The fact that it's in the logs, not just the config files/db, doesn't raise the severity of any vulnerabilities.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
underdeserver 2y ago
Base64 encoded MP3s? That's just ridiculous. All you get by base64 encoding them is 33% more data used.
- progbits 2y ago
  Welcome to the world where everyone is wasting time and space on JSON encoding rather than using some sensible serialization protocol that can handle raw bytes.
  - mikenew 2y ago
    Without any explicit admission of guilt on my part; what are some good options here? Protobuf is cool but I really don't want to mess with a special compiler and all that.
    - LeoPanthera 2y ago
      Common alternatives are Apache Avro, MessagePack, FlatBuffers, and Thrift. I have no idea which is best. Frankly it seems like there are too many choices. Probably MessagePack, since it is JSON-like and I've actually heard of it.
      - ForHackernews 2y ago
        Avro has some really cool features like inbuilt schemas, schema versioning and migration (e.g. deprecating or renaming fields) but you pay for them with more overhead than MessagePack.
        unscaled 2y ago
        Protocol Buffers have schemas too (though versioning and ensuring compatibility is quite messy and requires understanding internals). And it has less overhead than MesssagePack. I'm not sure what Avro is doing, but as a rule schema enables you to have less overhead, rather than more. The main advantage of MessagePack over schema-based formats is that it's dead-simple and mostly compatible with JSON. Schema-based formats usually need either a code generator or maintaining an annotated version of your data classes and making sure they match the schema. (Of course, with JSON or MessagePack you might still end up using a serialization library and something like JSON Schema).
moffkalast 2y ago
It wouldn't surprise me if Google is doing the exact same for every Android phone in existence already... but more discretely.
- arcanemachiner 2y ago
  How else would they be able to tell you how busy a location is when you pull it up in Google Maps?
  - polotics 2y ago
    This one works with Wifi SSID lists I believe. No need for audio.
- prmoustache 2y ago
  My partner knows french but never speaks french on a regular basis because we met and started dating in another spanish, so spanish tends to be our default language. Whenever for some reason we speak french for a significant amount of time she starts seeing ads in french about french brands on the web and social media apps while all her devices are in spanish and we are living in Spain. Same when we talk a lot about a particular subject. We found out she starts seeing ads quickly on related stuff. I am not sure if it comes from android directly, her social media apps or both but something is definitely listening and analysing audio. Which leads me to think that all FAANG and social medias companies should be sued to death because they actually ask permission to the owner of the device to get and treat personal data, but never to the people who meet them. Especially in the case of amazon echos and google home devices. A number of times when people invited me at home I raised the subject that they never warned me they had a privacy aspiring device set up at home before letting me in and I was met with puzzled looks.
  - moffkalast 2y ago
    https://xkcd.com/1807/ https://xkcd.com/1807/
  - baegi 2y ago
shmatt 2y ago
Most of these dont seem like a big deal 1) IF you wanted a device like this to work seamlessly and magically, it needs to constantly be listening/seeing/sending location. Local inference is where this will actually work, and I don't understand who'd want to give this company money to buy something Apple will make a much better version of in 5 years, but if you do - this is the way to do it 2) We can't hate megacorps and then expect startups to make good products without data. Rabbit would need this data for any chance of creating something better in the future
- xmprt 2y ago
  On one hand I agree. Big corporations are doing this too. On the other hand: 1. This is just a tiny fraction of the violations they've done. 2. I trust big corporations to have better data categorization and secure storage. 3. If big corporations misuse data, they are liable to a pretty large class action lawsuit. There's not much recourse in the case of Rabbit. 4. There's no good reason to collect and send cell tower data back to their servers for their use case.
  - llm_trw 2y ago
    >2. I trust big corporations to have better data categorization and secure storage. I've worked at mega corps and I do not. >3. If big corporations misuse data, they are liable to a pretty large class action lawsuit. There's not much recourse in the case of Rabbit. Not in the US. >4. There's no good reason to collect and send cell tower data back to their servers for their use case. There is no reason to collect most of the data mega corps do either.
- inhumantsar 2y ago
  I'm doing the classic comment before reading the article thing, but I have to say there's a big difference between it sending that information when a request is made and hoovering it all continuously. especially if the data being collected isn't detailed anywhere.
- vagrantJin 2y ago
  Apple will make a much better version? On what evidence?
chuckadams 2y ago
I would expect logs to include your IP address. Logging every single utterance as an mp3 seems rather excessive, and logging the access token is just lousy security.
ForHackernews 2y ago
Aren't most of these collected by normal mobile phones anyway?
- niutech 2y ago
  No, my Ubuntu Touch device doesn't send my location anywhere and it's a normal smartphone.
  - Bayko 2y ago
    Bruh you installed a niche OS on your phone and are now claiming that it is "normal". Normal when it comes to cell phones is android, iOS. Hell even BlackBerry is more normal than Ubuntu touch
  - endofreach 2y ago
    Having to specify the very niche OS that you had to install using your technical knowledge, an OS most people on the planet have never heard about or most likely will ever hear about, didn't make you question if this would be considered "normal"? I'd guess that to 90% of the people on the planet, any linux desktop distro would not even be a "normal" computer ("operating system", if they even know what that means).
Suppafly 2y ago
A lot of these seems to be "device you trust to use your information to provide services also logs that information for troubleshooting purposes." If you're going to pretend that's troubling you should at least articulate why it's troubling because most of this isn't troubling.
- DyslexicAtheist 2y ago
  or maybe the burden of proof is on you to articulate why is isn't troubling. it helps to read the article too.
  - Suppafly 2y ago
    nah, you can't just claim something is troubling without saying why. asking someone to prove a negative has never been a part of logical thinking.
- yard2010 2y ago
  Hey so - they made a shitty half baked product (the first paragraph of the article has the sources), spent a lot of money on PR, and harvested any data they could - so it's troubling. With all these circumstances it's you who have to defend it - as I see it the real product here is your data. It's just sad that people can get away with such schemes and it's more sad that law enforcement will let them do it as long as they get access to the data, see recent changes to Google Timeline.
  - Suppafly 2y ago
    >so it's troubling. How so?
- 7bit 2y ago
  As per GDPR it is the data collector who has to reason why he needs that data, not the user who has to defend his privacy. The collector has to clearly articulate what is collected, how it is used and who processes said data. And the user has to accept that s before the collector can do anything. While I understand that the US is not the EU and there is no GDPR, I firmly believe the GDPR enforces good rules in favour of the consumer. Hence, any company that does differently - albeit legal - acts morally despicable. Americans should follow that thought more, than very often put that burden of defense unto the people.
8jef 2y ago
How is this different from average smartphone telemetry sent back to ... ?
- niutech 2y ago
  Both Ubuntu Touch nor Sailfish OS doesn't send this kind of private data by default.
rty32 2y ago
My first thought when reading this wasn't even about privacy concerns, but that the battery drain is partially explained by GPS being on all the time, especially on such a small device with a small battery.
nebulous1 2y ago
I saw this first thing in the morning and was wondering why you were giving them a nastiness score of zero

nicce 2y ago

Nobody would collect all this by accident, especially when considering the purpose of the product…

freedomben 2y ago
Certainly not by accident. It takes intentional effort to collect any data, let alone data like this where you have to really scrape. This is in my opinion exactly what the tech industry is all about these days. I generally favor a light touch with regulation, but the US desperately needs some privacy laws because this industry is absolutely out of control
- ghayes 2y ago
  I'd generally say that disclosure should be enough (and is currently insufficient in the US outside of California), but I am weary that much of your life now involves "Pay us with Venmo" or "Customer service via Twitter," such that one cannot really opt-out without paying a significant cost.
  - DaiPlusPlus 2y ago
    It’s not all bad: Venmo gives you payment/fraud protection; Twitter is a public forum so at least if anything goes wrong you’ll be a viral star of some kind. I draw the line at companies/orgs using Discord for anything.
    - YurgenJurgensen 2y ago
      Have you tried reading Tweets while not signed-in in the last year? Twitter is not a public forum any more. And it shows that these companies will alter the deal whenever it happens to serve their interests.
      - freedomben 2y ago
        "pray I don't alter it further"
- bilbo0s 2y ago
  Problem is if our congress were to make laws they would make tough on terrorist laws to compel collection and storage of data for the good guys to get the bad guys easier. We all seem to forget that the patriot act passed 99 to 1. Whereupon… We promptly got rid of the 1. We have bad leaders. Look at our Presidential candidates. We won’t get better outcomes until that condition changes.
Aurornis 2y ago
Those are local log files on the device. The post says the subset of information sent to the server is smaller. Uploading location data with requests is a feature of the device. It's supposed to take your location into account so you can ask it questions like "What's the weather forecast?" The article is sparse on when the information is sent to the servers. If location data is being sent with requests, that's hardly a surprise.
- nicce 2y ago
  > Uploading location data with requests is a feature of the device. It's supposed to take your location into account so you can ask it questions like "What's the weather forecast?" No. The whole product is an abstraction to different software interfaces. If it sends data, it should sent it to the weather API, not to Rabbit servers nor even log it, because the information is relevant only at that moment. Even if they route all traffic through their backend, their should log only errors. There is really no reason to store the location history on OS level.
  - Aurornis 2y ago
    > If it sends data, it should sent it to the weather API, That's not how the device works. The weather and location data are both context inputs to an LLM. The LLM produces the response and sends it to the device. The LLM runs on the server, not the device. You can't have the device connect to a separate weather API unless you send keys to the device, which would require per-user access credentials (good luck finding a 3rd party provider happy to do that). It would also increase the number of round trips, which increases response delay, which is one of the primary complaints about the device.
    - freedomben 2y ago
      I am far from an expert on LLMs and have never used the Rabbit, but wouldn't it be silly to have the llm produce the weather? Wouldn't that mean it must have the information in either the context window (or the training set, but that seems pretty unlikely to be current), meaning it already had to be gathered from an external source and wouldn't need to be sent to the LLM anyway? What can/does the Rabbit add to it above what a simple string concatenation would?
ummonk 2y ago
Most likely they were collecting it all to make debugging easier.

Aurornis 2y ago

> Your precise GPS locations (which are also sent to their servers). ... The IDs of nearby cell towers (even with no SIM card inserted, also sent to their servers). Is this sent to the server all the time? Or just with requests? It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that a device designed to respond to questions like "What's a good restaurant near me?" is also sending location context with requests. If they're sending a constant stream of location all the time for no reason, that would be concerning. > Your WiFi network name. ... Your internet-facing IP address. The user token used by the device to authenticate with Rabbit's back-end API. A device must store WiFi network names to reconnect to them. An IP address showing up in local logs isn't really surprising either. Storing the user access token on the device is also a necessity for reconnecting without logging back in every time you turn it on. The fact that it's stored directly in logs isn't a good practice, but when those logs are stored on the same storage as the db or config file that contains them, it's also not really a new issue by itself. If they were uploading logs directly to their servers, that would be an issue of course.

echoangle 2y ago
Regarding storage of WiFi names: That’s a weak excuse IMO. Firstly, the WiFi logic is probably entirely handled by Android, so the app doesn’t have to do anything with that. And that also doesn’t explain the WiFi names in logs. Or are they parsing their own logs to determine which WiFi to connect to? If it’s some structured data or a database, I would get it, but they surely aren’t logging something to reconnect to the mentioned WiFi names later.
- Aurornis 2y ago
  > Firstly, the WiFi logic is probably entirely handled by Android, so the app doesn’t have to do anything with that. The app handles the process of connecting to a WiFi network. It doesn't have a standard Android interface. The only interface is through the Rabbit app, so by definition the app must also handle WiFi at some point. The already released an update to reduce logging before this blog was posted. I'm not defending their initial over-logging as a good security choice, but I do think it's being greatly exaggerated in this comment section. If you could access the device's storage, you could access the WiFi network name, period. The fact that it's in the logs, not just the config files/db, doesn't raise the severity of any vulnerabilities.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

underdeserver 2y ago

Base64 encoded MP3s? That's just ridiculous. All you get by base64 encoding them is 33% more data used.

progbits 2y ago
Welcome to the world where everyone is wasting time and space on JSON encoding rather than using some sensible serialization protocol that can handle raw bytes.
- mikenew 2y ago
  Without any explicit admission of guilt on my part; what are some good options here? Protobuf is cool but I really don't want to mess with a special compiler and all that.
  - LeoPanthera 2y ago
    Common alternatives are Apache Avro, MessagePack, FlatBuffers, and Thrift. I have no idea which is best. Frankly it seems like there are too many choices. Probably MessagePack, since it is JSON-like and I've actually heard of it.
    - ForHackernews 2y ago
      Avro has some really cool features like inbuilt schemas, schema versioning and migration (e.g. deprecating or renaming fields) but you pay for them with more overhead than MessagePack.
      - unscaled 2y ago
        Protocol Buffers have schemas too (though versioning and ensuring compatibility is quite messy and requires understanding internals). And it has less overhead than MesssagePack. I'm not sure what Avro is doing, but as a rule schema enables you to have less overhead, rather than more. The main advantage of MessagePack over schema-based formats is that it's dead-simple and mostly compatible with JSON. Schema-based formats usually need either a code generator or maintaining an annotated version of your data classes and making sure they match the schema. (Of course, with JSON or MessagePack you might still end up using a serialization library and something like JSON Schema).

moffkalast 2y ago

It wouldn't surprise me if Google is doing the exact same for every Android phone in existence already... but more discretely.

arcanemachiner 2y ago
How else would they be able to tell you how busy a location is when you pull it up in Google Maps?
- polotics 2y ago
  This one works with Wifi SSID lists I believe. No need for audio.
prmoustache 2y ago
My partner knows french but never speaks french on a regular basis because we met and started dating in another spanish, so spanish tends to be our default language. Whenever for some reason we speak french for a significant amount of time she starts seeing ads in french about french brands on the web and social media apps while all her devices are in spanish and we are living in Spain. Same when we talk a lot about a particular subject. We found out she starts seeing ads quickly on related stuff. I am not sure if it comes from android directly, her social media apps or both but something is definitely listening and analysing audio. Which leads me to think that all FAANG and social medias companies should be sued to death because they actually ask permission to the owner of the device to get and treat personal data, but never to the people who meet them. Especially in the case of amazon echos and google home devices. A number of times when people invited me at home I raised the subject that they never warned me they had a privacy aspiring device set up at home before letting me in and I was met with puzzled looks.
- moffkalast 2y ago
  https://xkcd.com/1807/ https://xkcd.com/1807/
- baegi 2y ago

shmatt 2y ago

Most of these dont seem like a big deal 1) IF you wanted a device like this to work seamlessly and magically, it needs to constantly be listening/seeing/sending location. Local inference is where this will actually work, and I don't understand who'd want to give this company money to buy something Apple will make a much better version of in 5 years, but if you do - this is the way to do it 2) We can't hate megacorps and then expect startups to make good products without data. Rabbit would need this data for any chance of creating something better in the future

xmprt 2y ago
On one hand I agree. Big corporations are doing this too. On the other hand: 1. This is just a tiny fraction of the violations they've done. 2. I trust big corporations to have better data categorization and secure storage. 3. If big corporations misuse data, they are liable to a pretty large class action lawsuit. There's not much recourse in the case of Rabbit. 4. There's no good reason to collect and send cell tower data back to their servers for their use case.
- llm_trw 2y ago
  >2. I trust big corporations to have better data categorization and secure storage. I've worked at mega corps and I do not. >3. If big corporations misuse data, they are liable to a pretty large class action lawsuit. There's not much recourse in the case of Rabbit. Not in the US. >4. There's no good reason to collect and send cell tower data back to their servers for their use case. There is no reason to collect most of the data mega corps do either.
inhumantsar 2y ago
I'm doing the classic comment before reading the article thing, but I have to say there's a big difference between it sending that information when a request is made and hoovering it all continuously. especially if the data being collected isn't detailed anywhere.
vagrantJin 2y ago
Apple will make a much better version? On what evidence?

chuckadams 2y ago

I would expect logs to include your IP address. Logging every single utterance as an mp3 seems rather excessive, and logging the access token is just lousy security.

ForHackernews 2y ago

Aren't most of these collected by normal mobile phones anyway?

niutech 2y ago
No, my Ubuntu Touch device doesn't send my location anywhere and it's a normal smartphone.
- Bayko 2y ago
  Bruh you installed a niche OS on your phone and are now claiming that it is "normal". Normal when it comes to cell phones is android, iOS. Hell even BlackBerry is more normal than Ubuntu touch
- endofreach 2y ago
  Having to specify the very niche OS that you had to install using your technical knowledge, an OS most people on the planet have never heard about or most likely will ever hear about, didn't make you question if this would be considered "normal"? I'd guess that to 90% of the people on the planet, any linux desktop distro would not even be a "normal" computer ("operating system", if they even know what that means).

Suppafly 2y ago

A lot of these seems to be "device you trust to use your information to provide services also logs that information for troubleshooting purposes." If you're going to pretend that's troubling you should at least articulate why it's troubling because most of this isn't troubling.

DyslexicAtheist 2y ago
or maybe the burden of proof is on you to articulate why is isn't troubling. it helps to read the article too.
- Suppafly 2y ago
  nah, you can't just claim something is troubling without saying why. asking someone to prove a negative has never been a part of logical thinking.
yard2010 2y ago
Hey so - they made a shitty half baked product (the first paragraph of the article has the sources), spent a lot of money on PR, and harvested any data they could - so it's troubling. With all these circumstances it's you who have to defend it - as I see it the real product here is your data. It's just sad that people can get away with such schemes and it's more sad that law enforcement will let them do it as long as they get access to the data, see recent changes to Google Timeline.
- Suppafly 2y ago
  >so it's troubling. How so?
7bit 2y ago
As per GDPR it is the data collector who has to reason why he needs that data, not the user who has to defend his privacy. The collector has to clearly articulate what is collected, how it is used and who processes said data. And the user has to accept that s before the collector can do anything. While I understand that the US is not the EU and there is no GDPR, I firmly believe the GDPR enforces good rules in favour of the consumer. Hence, any company that does differently - albeit legal - acts morally despicable. Americans should follow that thought more, than very often put that burden of defense unto the people.

8jef 2y ago

How is this different from average smartphone telemetry sent back to ... ?

niutech 2y ago
Both Ubuntu Touch nor Sailfish OS doesn't send this kind of private data by default.

rty32 2y ago

My first thought when reading this wasn't even about privacy concerns, but that the battery drain is partially explained by GPS being on all the time, especially on such a small device with a small battery.

nebulous1 2y ago

I saw this first thing in the morning and was wondering why you were giving them a nastiness score of zero