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Woman Sues Sex Toy App For Secretly Capturing Sensitive Information (ctvnews.ca)
A woman in Chicago filed a class action lawsuit against the makers of a smartphone-enabled vibrator, alleging their devices "secretly collect and transmit 'highly sensitive' information." CTV News reports:
The lawsuit, which was filed earlier this month in an Illinois court, explains that to fully operate the device, users download the We-Connect app on a smartphone, allowing them and their partners remote control over the Bluetooth-equipped vibrator's settings... The suit alleges that unbeknownst to its customers, Standard Innovation designed the We-Connect app to collect and record intimate and sensitive data on use of the vibrator, including the date and time of each use as well as vibration settings...
It also alleges the usage data and the user's personal email address was transmitted to the company's servers in Canada. The statement of claim alleges the company's conduct demonstrates "a wholesale disregard" for consumer privacy rights and violated a number of state and federal laws.
Slashdot reader BarbaraHudson argues that "It kind of has to share that information if it's going to be remotely controlled by someone else." But the woman's lawsuit claims she wouldn't have bought the device if she'd known that while using it, the manufacturer "would monitor, collect and transmit her usage information."
It also alleges the usage data and the user's personal email address was transmitted to the company's servers in Canada. The statement of claim alleges the company's conduct demonstrates "a wholesale disregard" for consumer privacy rights and violated a number of state and federal laws.
Slashdot reader BarbaraHudson argues that "It kind of has to share that information if it's going to be remotely controlled by someone else." But the woman's lawsuit claims she wouldn't have bought the device if she'd known that while using it, the manufacturer "would monitor, collect and transmit her usage information."
So she's afraid of her vibrator setting being saved, but not afraid of national exposure via her lawsuit.
This is their web site legal.. which says they collect information.
I'm betting their apps have a similar eula but I couldn't locate them (they may only be available while installing the app). I checked the user manuals and the eula is not in the manuals.
http://we-vibe.com/legal
Standard Innovation® Corporation intends to build the user's trust and confidence in Internet and App use by promoting the use of fair information practices. Our privacy statement covers we-vibe.com, standardinnovation.com and the We-Vibe® mobile app.
If you have questions or concerns regarding this statement, you should first contact us at our mailing address found on the Contact Us page or by emailing Customer Service at: customerservice@we-vibe.com.
Privacy is Paramount to Us
Standard Innovation Corporation understands the need for and is committed to all reasonable protection of our customersâ(TM) privacy. We will not share information about you with any third party other than the shipper you choose to deliver your goods ordered on our ecommerce site.
Information Collection
Distributor Orders and RMA's
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Any any case, this case will shake up the legal situation and set things vibrating!
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Fear? No. This is anger.
In the connected world, everybody that produces any software at all uses it to collect every bit of data they can get their grubby mitts on. Many people don't care, which is why it continues.
They will never stop out of politeness or respect. The only way to retain one's privacy is to fight for it, as this lady is doing.
If that was the case, then at least something good had come out of this idiocy.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
In the event of a traffic accident, they will demand the records from the server to see if the driver was having an orgasm at the time.
Have gnu, will travel.
is such a dick move.
The old American dream was to work hard, climb the ladder, and one day you can be rich too.######
I've heard this a million times, and I wonder how valid this view of the
past really is. People were just as corrupt 100 years ago as they are now,
only now it's much more difficult to hide because of the ease of getting
information now vs back then. It seems like there more
corruption these days because of the flow of information.
(The good old days were not good. In the US, you could be lynched
just because of your skin color, and the perps, who often included
the local sherrif, would get away scot free. This is just one example)
They will never stop out of politeness or respect
They will only stop when people stop buying devices that phone home, and it becomes clear that doing it is a death sentence in the marketplace, while companies that respect privacy are rewarded in the marketplace. Right now, we do that exactly the other way around, so it's no surprise that's what we get. We reward privacy violations and punish devices that are not "web-enabled".
Internet connected TV? No.
Internet connected vibrator? No.
Internet connected automobile? No.
Internet connected heart rate monitor? No.
Internet connected refrigerator? No.
The message from the buying public is that we will buy the shiny, no matter how privacy-hostile it is. We simply don't care! With that message being sent, there is no reason for vendors not to harvest every bit of day they possibly can from our devices.
You want to make a difference? Stop buying devices that phone home.
It never worked. In a winner-takes-all society like the US, just working hard is never enough. Lots of people work hard, they don't get rich.
Good parents and luck, that's how you get rich in America.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
We've talked about this before. On its face, collecting information about settings changes, time of use, and duration of use are not inherently sensitive.
However, the issue (for me) is that it was later learned that these reports tie back to a username. Now, obviously a username is arguably non-PII by itself, but there are enough people putting in real information about themselves that it becomes a problem.
Is it worth a lawsuit? Or more accurately, is this an instance where popular opinion of a manufacturer's "should have known better" will override their own stated ToS/Privacy policies?
[DISCLAIMER: This post is a work of satire and should not be misconstrued as a holy text upon which to base a religion.]
No pair of communications devices "has to share that information".
Data passed between my wireless mouse and my PC hopefully isn't sent to Logitech or Dell.
Data passed between my phone and my bluetooth speaker hopefully isn't sent to Bose or Verizon.
This data is sensitive enough that it should not be shared.
It's only a matter of degree, and depending on the protocol used that allows the other person to control it over the internet, there's probably going to be server logs, same as any other internet thingee that involves communication between 2 parties via a server.
Check your web server log files. Date, time, your ip address, the url you accessed, and all the data in a GET request, they're all in there. If they're using a simple http GET, this is all normal.
This is a good way to keep someone from using it and then trying to return it as "unused." You really don't want to accept returns in such cases, or get an "unused" one..
After all, you don't know everywhere it's been, but your imagination can do a pretty good job of coming up with gross scenarios.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
"Apples, oranges, etc."
It must be oranges. The iDick is not on the market yet.
I know a SJW like you hates America, but that isn't what America is about. The American dream is not to get rich, but to have a good life. But you are right, working hard is not the key, the key is working SMART. The difference between low/middle/upper class isn't how hard you work. In fact, the lower classes work much harder than the upper ones.
It's not laziness. There's no way that you want to have to walk customers through the process - and imagine if their isp blocks inbound http requests? I'd say they're pretty much cock-blocked.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Any nerd should know that if it's not under BSD, GPL, or another free license, and unless you can see the source code for everything, it's probably phoning home constantly. This is what Stallman and EFF warned us about with Treacherous Computing, and anyone who uses a so-called "smart" anything is a willing enabler. Dump these parasites now.
This requires having a career that carries you through your life, which no longer exists. I know many people in the generation before me that went to work for one company, got on a defined benefit plan, worked there for their whole career and now have a great retirement. That won't be in the cards for many of my generation.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
What you talkin' 'bout willis!?
The iBrator has been around for some time!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
And what's your fucking claim to fame, Mr. Know It All?
You pull yourself up by your bootstraps or are you straight out of the suburban cul de sac? It's easy to buckle down and study hard when Mama and Dada wipe your ass until you're 25, but some don't have that opportunity and I guess it's their fault for being born to irresponsible parents?
Trying working two jobs, going to school full time and raising two siblings and see how far you get in life, but then again a self-made-man like yourself would have probably just let your sibs get put in foster care so they couldn't compete with you later on (Now That's What I Call Capitalism Vol. 4)
I just wish I could be there to see the look of despair on your face when (not if) your nest egg gets poached by the system you're currently jerking off.
I apologize if my point was unclear. Please let me clarify:
You had written:
The fact that you transitioned from talking about "the good life" to talking about "low/middle/upper class", makes me think that you were implicitly equating living the "good life" with attaining membership in one of those [economic] classes. That was my main point.
But I see also that I thought you were directly equating one's level of effort with which economic class one attains. I realize now that that was not your point at all. My apologies.
How do you think two arbitrary mobile machines connect to each other on the internet (not just locally)? To connect two machines via the internet, you need to have known IP addresses to talk to, and these phones and devices can't act as internet servers, for a variety of technical reasons, listening for these connections. Anytime you communicate with anyone else in an apparent "peer to peer" fashion using smartphone apps, some central authority is needed to at least make the initial connection.
The problem is that these companies often can't resist collecting all sorts of personal information, and don't know how to properly secure the data and communications channel (security is hard), and so it ultimately ends up as a privacy nightmare. IoT is a security disaster, but the public still hasn't caught on. There are going to be many cases such as this one over the next few years.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
The difference probably being that the Harvard grad who is a dud would not even have gotten the chance to be a CEO if he hadn't been a Harvard grad.
And yes, I would love to hear your cases, because I currently cannot think of one where some poor idiot with community college education managed to become the CEO of some multinational corporation because someone noticed him being so incredibly awesome working the assembly line night shift.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
No. Being moderately well-off has usually been based on merit...with some race thrown in. Being rich has *almost* always been based on rich parents and good social connections. There are exceptions, but they are exceptions.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Sorry, but that's a part of the rush into the Singularity. Techno-optimists can paint it as an entirely rosy scenario, but they're only looking at one side of the coin as it flips in the air. (Actually there's a lot more than two ways that it could turn out.)
If I thought we had or could get sane governments, I'd be utterly opposed to the Singularity as too dangerous. But we've already been within 30 seconds of nuclear war, the military is not working on hypersonic missiles, and if we don't hit the Singularity first, I expect everyone to end up dead at the same time. Unfortunately, there's no guarantee that the Singularity won't be just as bad...but it *might* be everything people have hoped for.
One result of this plunge into the Singularity, however, is that jobs that take a long time and a lot of effort to acquire the skills to perform properly are likely to be automated away just as you are polishing your skills. And I see no way to predict what jobs won't be automated. Laughing at current implementations of, say, film editor doesn't mean you are far-sighted, it means the current implementations need to be significantly improved...but that's happening every day.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Contracting may be an option, but the places in North America where you can have enough jobs to support you on it have shrunk big time. So yes you can contract, but then you don't have a choice of where to live. And you had better be healthy too, and preferably not have a family. And the hours.. when I was contracting, I was expected to work full time and on top of that there was all kinds of paperwork to do; and that was a dedicated gig. I didn't need to take people out and network in order to keep those jobs.
If there is a place n the world where you can have a relatively inexpensive house and general cost of living, no long commute so you can spend it with kids, and yet have a plethora of gigs to choose from so there is no worry of what the next one is I would like to know where that is.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
> The good old days were not good. In the US, you could be lynched just
> because of your skin color, and the perps, which often included the
> local sheriff, would get away scot free. This is just one example out of scores.
In 2015 or 2016...
s/lynched/killed during a traffic stop/
http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/21/...
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/po...
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
In the connected world, everybody that produces any software at all uses it to collect every bit of data they can get their grubby mitts on.
Ask yourself why. This company isn't selling on data for advertising revenue, they are selling it purely to improve the product. If this leads to creating the perfect sex toy then keep on collecting.
Not all data collection can be lumped into the same category.
The Internet of Things was my dreams ever since I got on the internet in the late 90s. I dreamed of the possibility to connect everything with open protocols and giving users amazing options to control their electronic gear.
Finally, the Internet of Things came and it's a mess of proprietary protocols where all devices are not connected with each other, but with centralized databases of the manufacturers. Fail!
Reasons for this failure:
- IPv4 address shortage and NAT (intermediate server needed)
- Silicon Valley greed (big data=big $$$ and everyone trying to get monopoly on their proprietary shit)
- user ignorance (would not buy if knowing how it works)
We, consumers, have to demand products that puts the user in control, not the company you bought it from.
It's called the American dream because it has never, ever been reality.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Consider this - if the labour market was actually a *free* market then the supply for any job would be inversely proportional to how pleasant the job is - and sewage workers would be the best paid people in the country - because nobody would wade through shit every day for less than a billionaire's lifestyle at night.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *