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Kohler Can Access Pictures from "End-to-End Encrypted" Toilet Camera
- geraldalewis 10mo agoApotheosis of enshitification.
- codingdave 10mo agoSounds like the crappiest data source for AI training yet. But in all seriousness, of course they can access the data. Otherwise who else would process it to give any health results back? I don't think encryption in transit is relevant to privacy concerns because the concerns are about such data being tied to you at all, in any way. At the same time, yes, this could product valuable health information. Their better bet would be to allow full anonymity, so even if there is a leak (yeah, the puns write themselves), there is never a connection between this data and your person.
- fastball 10mo agoYou could have a classifier running on-device that sends summary data (rather than raw images) back to Kohler.
- karlgkk 10mo agoYeah, it’s kinda like such a reasonable thing too Doing on device compute is probably expensive and would prohibit such a product based on the economics but ITS A GENITAL CAM
- Sanzig 10mo agoWell, this waste analyzing piece of e-waste costs $600, so you could probably cram a lot of inference horsepower in there if you wanted to.
- aerostable_slug 10mo agoAnd the heat from the processor(s) would make for a comfy user experience in the wintertime.
- IncreasePosts 10mo agoOnly for the very well endowed since it points down. Though hopefully they're doing something other than let their bits dangle in the toilet water.
- reaperducer 10mo agoOnly for the very well endowed since it points down. Each day after 50, your line and bobbers get a little closer to the pond.
- xp84 10mo agoIsn’t it more of a poo cam if it’s pointed down?
- tclancy 10mo agoChuck Berry doesn’t see your point but would like to talk more.
- g-b-r 10mo ago> But in all seriousness, of course they can access the data. Otherwise who else would process it to give any health results back? It's "of course" for very knowledgeable people, normal people just assume that it means guaranteed privacy
- duskdozer 10mo ago>Otherwise who else would process it to give any health results back? Well it could be processed on-device.
- tbrownaw 10mo agoThat would only work after they're done training the ai models.
- mindslight 10mo agoSo like after the alpha and beta phases, when they have an actual product worthy of selling?
- Dilettante_ 10mo agoIf there's anything circa five dozen wannabe-techbro blogposts have taught me, it's that if you wait for a product that's worthy of shipping, you're never gonna ship.
- catlover76 10mo ago[dead]
- comradesmith 10mo agoHoly fuck they actually built Smart Pipe[1] 1: https://youtu.be/DJklHwoYgBQ?si=bSRE2lOqwwm1Q_D9 https://youtu.be/DJklHwoYgBQ?si=bSRE2lOqwwm1Q_D9
- jack1243star 10mo agoI'm convinced whatever Torment Nexus we can think of will get built.
- ChrisMarshallNY 10mo agoRule 34(B)?
- anArbitraryOne 10mo agoNow's the time to get on board so that, when they launch the social network, you can be a top influencer just like Scout
- g-b-r 10mo ago#itsmyanus
- Terr_ 10mo agoSo basically their marketing-department is abusing a security term in order to sound good, as opposed to a software flaw. They're claiming "end to end" encryption, which usually implies the service is unable to spy on individual users that are communicating to one-another over an individualized channel. However in this case there are no other users, and their server is one of the "ends" doing the communicating, which is... perhaps not a literal contradiction in terms, but certainly breaking the spirit of the phrase.
- bmandale 10mo agoThis is an incredibly common misuse of the term e2ee. I think at this point we need a new word because you have a coin flip's chance of actually getting what you think when a company describes their product this way.
- tacitusarc 10mo ago“In transit encryption”
- boomboomsubban 10mo agoCreating a new term for the less secure definition doesn't work, as they'll just continue to call it E2EE encrypted.
- calebio 10mo agoI think part of the problem is that prior to WhatsApp's E2EE implementation in like 2014, TLS was very often called "End to End Encryption" as the ends were Client and Server/Service Provider. It got redefined and now the new usage is way more popular than the old one. I can't blame most people for calling TLS "E2EE", even some folks in industry, but it's not great for a company to advertise that you offer X if the meaning of X has shifted so drastically in the last decade.
- 10mo ago
- kstrauser 10mo agoDid they say which ends they meant?
- joezydeco 10mo agoHow does one "train" an AI with a flood of random toilet pictures and no corresponding medical data to match it with?
- imglorp 10mo ago"potty training". Sorry. Anyway a chemical or biological sensor in the bowl might be more useful. Optical could be useful if it's doing spectrographic analysis: the color of poo and urine is sometimes informative.
- hackernudes 10mo agoThey probably do clinical trials (or at least something like that) where they get baseline data from participants through other means.
- joezydeco 10mo agoI'm talking about sold units in the field.
- themafia 10mo agoThe same thing we always do. Pay some citizens of an African nation a pitiful wage to just make up annotations. Then you can incorporate this into a "health care product" and charge insurance companies insane rates on personal toilet cameras.
- hackernudes 10mo agoI meant that they train their system on pictures where they have the underlying medical data. Their system might still be total crap (teehee), but I'm guessing that they at least try to make it predictive/generalized.
- captainkrtek 10mo agoI think the obvious things are: - Deviation in consistency/texture/color/etc. - Obvious signs related to the above (eg: diarrhea, dehydration, blood in stool). Ultimately though, you can get the same results by just looking down yourself and being curious if things look off... tldr: this feels like literal internet-of-shit IoT stuff.
- lotrjohn 10mo agoThey can encrypt data coming out of both ends?!
- fransje26 10mo agoSounds like something they pulled out of their ass..
- Dilettante_ 10mo agoBut their algorithms are number 1 on the market!
- butvacuum 10mo ago#2. There's always somebody better. Sorry, just taking the piss there.
- mystraline 10mo agoSo, end-to-end-encraption? Oh wait, maybe this is what Cory Doctorow is referring to as enshittified? I mean, these jokes make themselves, including whoever buys the hardware, AND buys the marketing pitch.
- bombcar 10mo agoIt would be end-to-end only if it was pee-to-pee.
- Duanemclemore 10mo agoSo they made Google TISP? https://archive.google/tisp/index.html https://archive.google/tisp/index.html
- jchw 10mo agoTo me it reminds me of Smart Pipe. https://youtube.com/watch?v=DJklHwoYgBQ https://youtube.com/watch?v=DJklHwoYgBQ
- crmd 10mo agoI’m sorry the shit had hit the fan at Kohler, but there’s no reason a cloud poop camera even exists.
- patjensen 10mo agoHi, who just joined?
- rglover 10mo agoEven (especially?) for its stated purpose, this is cursed technology.
- m3kw9 10mo agoNo pictures were shown on the website.
- levocardia 10mo agoHuh what could possibly go wrong here? >https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/world/asia/south-korea-cameras-hacked.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/world/asia/south-korea-ca... Oh...
- gowld 10mo agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJklHwoYgBQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJklHwoYgBQ Smart Pipe | Infomercials | Adult Swim Everything in our lives is connected to the internet, so why not our toilets? Take a tour of Smart Pipe, the hot new tech startup that turns your waste into valuable information and fun social connectivity. [Smart Pipe Inc. is a registered sex offender.]
- doctorzook 10mo agoHoly crap. I remember a sign in our dorm bathroom that read, “toilet cam is for research purposes only”. It was a joke, but always got a nice reaction from new people in the building. But they actually sell this?! And want to charge me for it!? Holy crap!
- Sanzig 10mo agoThey want to charge you $600 for it, plus a $7/mo subscription.
- smartbit 10mo agoThe Dekoda should come with this sticker Aus hygienischen Gründen wird diese Toilette videoüberwacht https://shop.digitalcourage.de/digitalcourage-und-ccc-aufkleber/aufkleber-diese-toilette-wird-videouberwacht-10-stuck.html https://shop.digitalcourage.de/digitalcourage-und-ccc-aufkle...
- neilv 10mo ago> Kohler Health’s homepage, the page for the Kohler Health App, and a support page all use the term “end-to-end encryption” to describe the protection the app provides for data. Many media outlets included the claim in their articles covering the launch of the product. When companies first wanted to sell things over the Web, a concern I heard a lot was that consumers would be afraid of getting ripped off somehow. So companies started emphasizing prominently how the customer was protected with n bits of encryption. As if this solved the problem. It did not, but people were confused by confident buzzwords. (I was reminded of this, because I actually saw a modern Web site touting that prominently just last week, like maybe they were working from a 30 year-old Dotcom Marketing for Dummies book, and it was still not very applicable to the concern.) Some marketers lie, or don't care what the truth is. They want success, and bonuses, and promotions. And, really, a toilet company possibly getting class-action sued for a feces camera that behaves in an unexpected way, that attorneys would have to convince a judge was misrepresented, and then quantify the unclear harm, and finally settle, several years later, for lawyers' fees and a $10 off coupon for the latest model Voyeur Toilet 3000... isn't on the radar of the marketers.
- calebio 10mo agoIt was only a decade or so ago that "End-To-End Encryption" began to mean something other than "encrypted in transit". E2EE now means something wildly different in the context of messaging applications and the like (since like 2014) so this is more of an outdated way of saying "no one is getting your poop pictures between your toilet and us". It also feels like it would never make sense for this to be "E2EE encrypted" in the modern sense of the term as the "end user recipient" of the message is the service provider (Kohler) itself. "Encrypted in Transit" and "Encrypted at Rest" is about as good as you're going to get here IMO as the service provider is going to have to have access to the keys, so E2EE in a product like this is kind of impossible if you're not doing the processing on the device. I wonder if they encrypt it and then send it over TLS or if they're just relying on TLS as the client->server encryption. Restated, I wonder how deep in their stack the encrypted blob goes before it's decrypted.
- g-b-r 10mo ago> It was only a decade or so ago that "End-To-End Encryption" began to mean something other than "encrypted in transit". No, before that it was simply not a term, except in some obscure radio protocol (and even there someone competent in cryptography would probably not have chosen that term) > E2EE now means something wildly different in the context of messaging applications and the like (since like 2014) so this is more of an outdated way of saying "no one is getting your poop pictures between your toilet and us". The outdated way was saying "Military-grade 128-bit encryption", no one really used the E2EE term before it got the current meaning > I wonder if they encrypt it and then send it over TLS or if they're just relying on TLS as the client->server encryption. Restated, I wonder how deep in their stack the encrypted blob goes before it's decrypted. Some homemade encryption added on top of TLS is very unlikely to increase the security of the system
- calebio 10mo ago> No, before that it was simply not a term, except in some obscure radio protocol > no one really used the E2EE term before it got the current meaning It most certainly was a term and no it wasn't simply limited to "some obscure radio protocol". 1994: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/363791 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/363791 1984: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/357401.357402 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/357401.357402 1978: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA059221.pdf https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA059221.pdf > Some homemade encryption added on top of TLS is very unlikely to increase the security of the system "Some homemade encryption" is not what I was suggesting at all. E.g. encrypted-at-the-source (client side) AWS files are still sent over TLS as an encrypted blob within an encrypted blob but remain encrypted past the TLS boundary.
- SoftTalker 10mo agoEnshittification has gone too far.
- Mistletoe 10mo agoI honestly cannot believe this device exists. I'm living in the absolute weirdest timeline that I could have never imagined. Imagine being an engineer working on this particular ring of the torment nexus.
- petterroea 10mo agoIt would be naive to assume they couldn't access the data from a technical perspective. I think anyone in here would think so. The problem is regular customers who aren't technical and don't have much choice but to trust claims by the seller - these are the real victims here.
- tracerbulletx 10mo agoThis obsession with personal health data collection is in its self counter productive to health outcomes and insane behavior.
- jamesgill 10mo agoEnshittification.
- schmuckonwheels 10mo agoImagine the collective brainpower that could be used to help solve the world's ills, and instead decided, no, what we need is a camera pointed at your asshole which we feed into an AI-powered SaaS we can then sell to you for a subscription. This industry is finished.
- EdwardDiego 10mo agoThey claim it only points about your doings, but even then...
- IAmBroom 10mo agoIs there a spare 'i' in your post?
- venturecruelty 10mo agoThis is downstream from the notion that companies need to have infinite growth forever. Of course, that's not possible, so this is the end stages of that: wealth trickles up while the, well... you can guess what's trickling down.
- IAmBroom 10mo agoIronically, "Trickle-Down Economics" was phrased in a circa-1900 political cartoon as "The horse eats the grain, and then trickles it down to the sparrow on the barn floor." I'll let you picture the image.
- Aeolun 10mo agoIt’s pretty impressive that that juicero thing wasn’t the most bizarre thing they could come up with.
- mzhaase 10mo agoI watched a teardown of it and the truly bizarre thing was that the build quality was actually amazing. Machined out of a huge block of aluminum, really big bearings, etc.
- handfuloflight 10mo agoI'm so sorry for the people who work on this and have to look at the data.
- adamwong246 10mo agosome poor soul has to do train this AI. Imagine your job is categorizing pictures of poop
- tasty_freeze 10mo agoThe old adage is "garbage in, garbage out". s/garbage/feces/g This sounds like the marketing department came up with this "market opportunity" and then some poor team at Kohler was asked to make it real. No doubt there is health data to be had in waste products (it was used extensively during covid to figure out community-wide infection rates) but that used physical samples that were then analyzed. Trying to figure out if someone has a UTI, or pathogenic poop from a webcam image ... it is hopeless.
- woeirua 10mo agoWhat. Who is buying a $600 camera to take pictures of your stool?
- defrost 10mo agoNot the people spending $12.1m on a gold toilet that's for sure. You wouldn't want that cheap tat miring up the clean lines of your throne. * https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjd07dprln9o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjd07dprln9o
- mingus88 10mo agoPeople who have clinical gut issues need to track this kind of thing And people who are being treated for gut issues can pay for their $600 medical toilet with HSA or insurance Honestly, that this camera toilet exists is not a WTF for me. If my doctor needs to track changes to my stool, I certainly don’t want to have to hover over the bowl with my phone out. Please, just have the toilet take the picture.
- kstrauser 10mo agoYou know, obvious humor potential aside, that’s a great point. Fewer people would laugh about a pee analyzer: “Oh, it can tell if you’re dehydrated, or in ketosis, or whatever? Makes sense!” I can imagine how this could gather similar types of information. And yes, if my doctor wanted me to collect that info, I’d vastly rather buy a smart toilet and let it do the dirty work. That is, assuming it was actually secure.
- mingus88 10mo agoYeah I hate to kill the party but if you can’t imagine a need for this product, consider yourself blessed. GI issues are not pleasant. An ADA toilet at Home Depot is $300 so even the price isn’t that outrageous, honestly. It’s a unique niche product so it’s gonna be a little bit pricey. I don’t know, it just feels a bit gauche to make jokes about a medical device. Nobody’s buying this unless they need it, and if they need it then best of luck to them.
- cowsandmilk 10mo ago?? I got very confused from the start of this article because it is clear that Kohler is one end of the communication from how the product is described and marketed. They’re just stating the data is encrypted between the device and them.
- amingilani 10mo ago> it is clear that Kohler is one end of the communication That’s not end-to-end encryption. By that logic HN, and any other website over HTTPS is E2E encrypted.
- richbell 10mo agoThat is what "end-to-end encryption" has come to mean in marketing. In the same way that every single product is "natural."
- BizarroLand 10mo agoAll natural blends of hydroxyapatite, sodium laureth sulfate, and methylpropanediol, just like grandma used to make
- amelius 10mo agoIs HTTPS really always E2EE? I was under the impression that large companies use proxies so they can do deep packet inspection. PS: you are right of course.
- g-b-r 10mo agoNo, they're just trying to mislead their clients
- est 10mo agoI feel End-to-end is over marketed. Yes it protects your data from transmission pipes, but data on both your "ends" can be easily controlled and duplicated. Your picture on your device can be accessed by 3rd party, so does your data on the server.
- g-b-r 10mo agoEnd-to-end encryption is not a term used for communication between clients and servers, although I saw several marketers trying to do it. For normal people E2EE means privacy, and that's why some company tries to sneak the term in products where it makes no sense.
- est 10mo ago> For normal people E2EE means privacy It's misunderstood. In the begining it's used to describe chat apps, your chat message are delivered in a secure way. But later some marketers try to use it as a "transport channel" for client-server interactions.
- g-b-r 10mo ago> > For normal people E2EE means privacy > > It's misunderstood. Not in my experience, except by very few > But later some marketers try to use it as a "transport channel" for client-server interactions. Some, still few enough to not make the term confusing, for what I can tell
- recursivedoubts 10mo agocongratulations, you have lived to see man made horrors beyond your comprehension
- RockRobotRock 10mo agoKohler is a registered sex offender.
- alexjplant 10mo agoSatire is dead. A toilet company killed it.
- jimt1234 10mo agoYears ago, a friend and I were kicking around startup ideas. We weren't coming up with anything good, so we flipped it and decided to come up with the worst/dumbest idea possible. We landed on a social media site dedicated to poop (this was back when social media sites were all the rage). People could upload pictures of their poop, discuss poop, share "best poop" stories, and so on. We never actually built anything, realizing it was just a joke, a total waste of time. ... Fast forward to 2025: For $600-plus-monthly-subscription, we'll take pictures of your poop! BTW, someone please tell me that there is/was a social media site dedicated to poop, and the founder got rich from it. I need that today.
- venturecruelty 10mo agoLook on the bright side: you can tell people you were simply ahead of your time!
- lisbbb 10mo agoI believe it is called "reddit"
- beej71 10mo agoFeatures fully secure e2mitm2ee.
- jmonty900 10mo agoKohler can "de-identify [the user’s] data for lawful purposes." I mean exactly how would that ever be justified? "Hey, we see a man-sized log in the bowl. There's only supposed to be women there. The perp must be in that house!!!"
- duskdozer 10mo agoIP address, device identifier, mother's maiden name, SSN, etc etc
- venturecruelty 10mo agoYou mean the I-Pee address? Sorry, y'all, I gotta get it out in this thread, it's too easy.
- duskdozer 10mo agooof, how did I miss that?
- tbrownaw 10mo agoThat is very strangely worded, to a degree they I wonder if maybe the wordsmithing was outsourced to either an ai or someone who didn't do English very well. Or if it's meant to be confusing. But the linked privacy policy talks about making anonymous (aka de-identified) bulk data sets and using them for "lawful business purposes" (aka anything they want that's not illegal).
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- adamwong246 10mo agoThe theranos of toilets
- iwontberude 10mo agoWhat I want to know is who is taking pictures of their poop like this? There has to be a better way.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- boxerab 10mo ago"end to end" I see what you did there.
- bvan 10mo agoAI enshitification. Literally.
- nurettin 10mo ago> collects images and data from inside, promising to track and provide insights on gut health, hydration, and more cough bullshit.
- lisbbb 10mo agoWhat exactly is the toilet camera for? Are they taking pictures of your daily bowel movements?
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- andai 10mo agoWe're past The Onion clips coming true, now it's Adult Swim: https://youtu.be/DJklHwoYgBQ https://youtu.be/DJklHwoYgBQ
- Cyphase 10mo agoOur crypto cookies implement end-to-end encryption by creating a digest of the input morsels and securing their transit between the front end and the back end. Be warned, certain failure modes can result in over-encryption or return of partially-encrypted ciphertext to the sender.
- internet_points 10mo agoThe Norwegian term for e2ee is "ende-til-ende-kryptering". And "ende" can also mean 'butt' https://naob.no/ordbok/ende_3#52867988 https://naob.no/ordbok/ende_3#52867988 So I guess it makes some kind of sense.
- xp84 10mo agoRear-end-to-end encryption, if you will.
- BrenBarn 10mo agoLet's think about why we're in a world where someone wants to sell you a camera to put in your toilet.
- amelius 10mo agoAt least it is still optional. Imagine a world where cameras came preinstalled, and your toilet would phone home like your SmartTV and there was no way out of it.
- stevenjgarner 10mo agoHere we are 35 years after the invention of the web browser, and now browser fingerprinting is an exact science. [1] I'm guessing 35 years from now toilet bowl fingerprinting will be an exact science. Claims of "de-identified and/or anonymized data" are reckless and naive. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46016249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46016249
- lambdaone 10mo agoThis brings back memories of Adult Swim's "Smart Pipe" spoof infomercial.
- fragmede 10mo agohttps://youtube.com/watch?v=DJklHwoYgBQ https://youtube.com/watch?v=DJklHwoYgBQ for those who haven't seen it yet. edit: also, what the hell, YouTube? they've got this new link shorter at https://youtu.be/DJklHwoYgBQ https://youtu.be/DJklHwoYgBQ that they really want you to use, that forces you to use the browser to watch it instead of the app? so weird.
- davedx 10mo agoDoes this count as enshittification?
- teekert 10mo ago"Hey man, we didn't specify where the ends are."
- sriram_malhar 10mo agoThis world is upside down. I wake up feeling like I am the man in the middle being attacked from all sides.
- poisonborz 10mo agoThe problem is genuinely the misleading nature of the phrase "end to end" and the lack of a better alternative. HTTPS is "end to end". There should be some new word for "decryptable only by the user".
- lrvick 10mo agoSo basically some idiot company connected toilets with cameras to the internet claiming the media collected of peoples "ends" was end to end encrypted. Except, it wasn't. These compromised toilets could be easily used to exfiltrate compromising videos of exfiltrations. The toilets leak pictures of people taking leaks. The internet really is going to shit.
- stef25 10mo agoFingers crossed they'll pivot to a smart anal probe I can just leave in there
- Artoooooor 10mo agoWords "toilet" and "camera" should never appear in one product's description