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Nike+ FuelBand: Possibly a Big Security Hole For Your Life
MojoKid writes "Nike+ FuelBand is a $149 wristband with LED display that tracks your daily activity, tells you how many calories you've burned, lets you know how much fuel you have left in the tank, and basically keeps track of 'every move you make.' If you think that sounds like a privacy nightmare waiting to happen, it pretty much is. A source directly connected to Nike reported an amusing, albeit startling anecdote about a guy who got caught cheating on his girlfriend because of the Nike+ FuelBand. 'They shared their activity between each other and she noticed he was active at 1-2AM, when he was supposed to be home.' That's just one scenario. What if the wristband gets lost or stolen? How much data is actually stored on these sorts of devices? And remember, you're syncing it to the cloud with an iOS or Android app."
So... people voluntarily do this to themselves? Weird.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
Yes. It keeps track of what you're doing. You know this because you can see the data it captures.
And yes, if you share what you're doing with someone else, they might notice you aren't doing what you're supposed to be doing.
I don't understand the constant alarmism.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Fear the automated Facebook status updating and Tweeting of every step.
You seem to regard science as some kind of dodge... or hustle.
I actually own a Fuelband, unlike to poster and the original story. It is basically a pedometer, sensing motion, nothing else. No or any other thing to guide them to my house. It sends information to the cloud, but has a lot less info than facebook. You can actually sign up for an account its free and see how little is actually stored. I be more worried about the data on my phone or in my wallet, both which will lead someone to my house, than on this thing.
Half of writing history is hiding the truth.
Having the fitbit myself I can say yes, I can share that I'm active in the middle of the night with some torrid affair, or, being slightly aware of my actions, just take it off during said torrid affair. I can then just say I forgot to push the sleep button the night of indiscretion, and nothing more than that would ever be known (assuming I actually were having an affair, or had a girlfriend/wife to have an affair with....geez, when did FUD become so depressing...).
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I'd pay $150 for a wristband that could ONLY tell me accurately how many calories I've burned.
Well, this can't do that. In fact, it can't do much of anything.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If you wear the thing on your wrist and it detects motion then I would have thought that the excuse "I woke up in the middle of the night and was thinking about you" would have been plausible...
Most of these "privacy concern" articles are things that can be handled by simply going home to your wife and kids when you are supposed to. Sounds like a lot of folks with these "privacy concerns" are just trying to hide their marital affairs.
Or, the way law enforcement usually phrase this, "if you are doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide".
While I agree with the original commenter that this story is lame, because people see exactly what is logged, this comment is precisely why privacy matters.
Giving up privacy means pushing people toward conformity. Everyone are pressured to behave the same, because any deviation from what is normal is immediately shown to everyone. This means complete stagnation.
I have never cheated on a partner. Furthermore, I have had a partner cheat on me, and the feeling is horrid. Having said that, a society in which cheating is impossible is not one I would like to live in.
Shachar
facepalm.
It should have been "Ask Slashdot: What do I tell my girlfriend when...".
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Was it Petraeus making it with his wife?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
You cannot even begin to accurately gauge calories burned merely from the available data of movement, gender, age, height and weight. I've seen some heart rate monitor watches that allow you to enter your VO2Max (the measurement of how much oxygen your blood can transport) into it to increase the accuracy, but even then there are still broad assumptions made, making the calories burned a highly inaccurate number. Some of you may be familiar with treadmills, elliptical cross-trainers, and other equipment at your local gym that purport to tell you how many calories you burned while using them; they are so grossly inaccurate as to be utterly useless, and worse, report their inaccurate guesses way on the high side, to keep you motivated to use their machine, thinking you're doing much better at burning off excess fat than you really are. This "technology" from Nike has to be at least as bad at guessing calories burned than even the treadmill at the gym, likely worse. Now, realizing this, you come to understand that all you're doing by wearing this is allowing your activity to be tracked. I assume there is a website you upload the data to? All it needs now is a GPS receiver's data, and you have fairly complete tracking of your activities, 24 hours a day; for arguments' sake, we'll say that your smartphone, which most people have attached to them like an appendage, has a GPS receiver you can't turn off (which in most cases you can't). Why would you do this voluntarily? As described in the featured article someone has already had their life affected in a negative way by this device. My advice to anyone who owns this device right now is to destroy it immediately.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!