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Roomba Is No Spy: CEO Says iRobot Will Never Sell Your Data (zdnet.com)
It's been a challenging week for iRobot, the company behind the popular Roomba robotic vacuums. From a report: It started with an interview in Reuters, in which the company's chief executive Colin Angle gave the clear impression that iRobot was selling consumers' home mapping data (Editor's note: the chief executive said the company intended to explore the opportunity). Last night, Angle and iRobot got back to me on this issue. They provided the following response to the concerns I and others shared. "First things first, iRobot will never sell your data. Our mission is to help you keep a cleaner home and, in time, to help the smart home and the devices in it work better. There's no doubt that a robot can help your home be smarter. It's the data it collects to do its job, and the trusted relationship between you, your robot and iRobot, that is critical for that to happen. Information that is shared needs to be controlled by the customer and not as a data asset of a corporation to exploit. That is how data is handled by iRobot today. Customers have control over sharing it. I want to make very clear that this is how data will be handled in the future."
Keeping it local is all that's needed for effective room vacuuming.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Even if he is sincere, which is certainly possible and even likely, the data collected will potentially be out there forever. It means not only are you trusting this CEO, you are trusting every possible future CEO and every company that may one day buy iRobot and every situation that may develop when the company is someday having financial stress and so on. Furthermore you are trusting that no hacker ever penetrates the systems holding the aggregated data.
This is the same problem with every IOT device. Deciding that you trust the current data collector is only a small piece of the large situation.
As we've seen before, all it takes is to have a merger or a sale. And then the new owners will milk it like the golden cow. We've seen that over, and over, and over again. That's what half the buy-outs do, they're just a clearing house, to carve up the company assets and sell them piecemeal for more than they paid for the lot. That's why we see so many companies get sold twice in rapid succession - they get bought out, the valuable IP etc they have gets distributed around, and the husk of the company gets resold.
So when they say "We PROMISE!", I say it doesn't matter if you keep your word or not, it's not going to be UP to you when it matters.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
This is not an off the cuff comment:
"Customers have control over sharing it. I want to make very clear that this is how data will be handled in the future."
That is a carefully worded statement. I would be interested in seeing their actual policy - my cynical mind reads statements like the above as: "we'll do whatever we damn well please with your data . . . unless you tell us not to . . . in writing . . . on the back of an original copy of the Magne Carte . . . notarized . . . delivered by passenger pigeon . . . within 3 days of purchase"
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Of course not. Unless you get an email saying that the ToS has changed. Then, well, maybe, your private data may be sold as part of the bounty that the company purchasing Roomba gets to acquire. How many people have gotten The Email that states "we've been bought. Your data no longer belongs to you."?
Is the acquiring company buying Roomba because of the thing that maps out your house, or is the company buying Roomba because of the database of house layouts?
It's not like all those devices actually need internet connections. They are simply data gathering devices that send all that data home to their true masters who will collect, analyze and sell all that data to the highest bidder. THAT is the business model. Any talk of "giving users better control" is just talk.