GoKawiilWhen it comes to protecting data collected by smart devices such as smartwatches and fitness bands, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is cautioning that most of the companies aren’t closing their rings on privacy.
In the report, “Most Smart Watches, Rings, and Bands Lack Basic Transparency Reports and Key Privacy Features,” the digital civil liberties group looked at several of the leading companies making smart health devices to see which ones had strong privacy policies over some of customers’ most sensitive data.
The EFF breaks its reporting into two distinct areas: how transparent companies are about law enforcement requests for the information, and whether the data is end-to-end encrypted between the device and the company collecting and processing it.
The results aren’t encouraging. Only a few companies are open about when data is shared, and only one thoroughly secures the data in a way that the company itself would not be able to access it.
Transparency about law enforcement access to your health data
The government can make official demands – through a subpoena or search warrant, for example – or unofficial requests for sensitive data collected by devices. For fitness trackers, that can reveal information such as a person’s location along with their heart rate at a certain point in time.
Just two companies, Apple and Google, publish transparency reports, with a third, Whoop, promising to notify users of such requests in public documentation. Oura has committed to issuing transparency reports in the future.
Thorin Klosowski, the article’s author and a security and privacy activist at the EFF, told CNET in an email, “I was a little surprised that so few companies publish transparency reports, and I hope that changes in the future, since we know a lot of them have data request options for law enforcement.”
One company uses end-to-end encryption of health data
A smart device like a watch or ring constantly collects data, not just when you’re in the middle of a workout. Analyzing information such as heart rate and respiration, particularly at night while you’re sleeping, can surface signs of possible health issues like sleep apnea.
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