privacy iRobot wants to sell your floor plan data to Amazon, Apple or Facebook

[captain_to_fire]

I wonder if @LinusTech is still using his iRobot Roomba that he reviewed back in February 2015 or if he'll continue using his.

 

Source: The Next Web

 

Quote

Roomba was the futuristic cleaning bot each of our 12-year-old selves once dreamed of. Today it’s a commodity in a space full of cheaper and (arguably) just-as-good competitors. Luckily for iRobot (Roomba’s parent company), its future is less about the dirt on your floor, and more about the dirt it can sell to Amazon, Apple, and Google.

 

According to a report from Reuters, iRobot plans to begin collecting (and selling) floor plans for its users’ homes. The data collected would detail the distances between furnishings, total floorspace of the dwelling, and could presumably track how often it empties the canister based on your relative floorspace (an indicator of whether you’re dirtier or cleaner than other households of the same size).

 

Purchasing iRobot seems to make more sense than buying its mapping data, at least for the big three. But either way the deal goes down, assuming it actually does, the data is just another piece in a puzzle that’s painting a scarily-accurate picture of our lives.

This is a blatant invasion of privacy. I mean tracking your floor plan and giving off the data to other companies to target you ads? 

Quote

And the security implications are huge.

 

Amazon could, for example, use the data to better target your homepage visits or search results. Cleaner houses, for instance, could get more recommendations for cleaning tools and supplies — since dirty households probably aren’t all that interested. Or, it could completely change which products are marketed to people of different income brackets. Home size as it relates to the median in your area is a direct correlation of wealth, in a lot of cases.

 

Or there’s Facebook, who could add another notch in its belt by giving advertisers even more targeting options. Using map data to shore up income estimates on each user — or the number of people living in the same household — offers a myriad of new options for advertisers to attract upper-middle class parents living in large homes in a suburb of Los Angeles, for example.

I get why Apple or Amazon would be interested with a house floor plan. Apple has their HomeKit API for home automation like telling the Roomba to turn itself on during the weekends to clean rooms and charge itself automatically. With Amazon it's kinda obvious what they would do with it, sell you ads about household cleaning chemicals perhaps or others. But Facebook? Then knowing your floor plan is kinda creepy. I can't really comment on the Roomba itself since I don't own one and I'm perfectly fine with just a 600W vacuum cleaner or even just a broom for under the bed cleaning.

[themctipers]

 

 

 

[ARikozuM]

I don't really see why knowing the floor plan of a house is a big deal when you can get the records from your local office.

[Tech_Dreamer]

Son of a ... Those crazy tinfoil hat people were right!

[Arika]

10 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

I don't really see why knowing the floor plan of a house is a big deal when you can get the records from your local office.

because "Muh Privacy"

 

pretty much everything else is being tracked whether you know it or not. iRobot at least have to common courtesy to inform people that they are planning it

[mr moose]

next they'll be putting gps chips in brooms.

[VitalTech]

13 minutes ago, mr moose said:

next they'll be putting gps chips in brooms.

Or trackers in our bodys during surgery 

[Bcat00]

Oh for goodness sake, take all my data and put a GPS on me because i like tech and advancements.

The future is tailoring everything to each individual person, deal with it, live with it, don't like it?

 

NO PROBLEM, GO LIVE IN THE FOREST LIKE WILD ANIMALS OR THE HIPPIES FOR ALL WE CARE

[mr moose]

4 minutes ago, VitalTech said:

Or trackers in our bodys during surgery 

Shit, I just had my knee operated on.  I wonder if they know I'm talking to you?

[captain_to_fire]

21 minutes ago, mr moose said:

next they'll be putting gps chips in brooms.

GPS doesn't work indoors. It needs a WiFi/cellular modem to do location services while indoors.

 

Also, I don't think adding location services to something as simple as a broom would make it clean better but it can show which part of the house is not yet cleaned.

[ScratchCat]

58 minutes ago, Bcat00 said:

Oh for goodness sake, take all my data and put a GPS on me because i like tech and advancements.

The future is tailoring everything to each individual person, deal with it, live with it, don't like it?

 

NO PROBLEM, GO LIVE IN THE FOREST LIKE WILD ANIMALS OR THE HIPPIES FOR ALL WE CARE

They always say it'll "provide a more personalised individual experience " but yet all the ads I get served are crap and irrelevant, not to mention the "reccommended articles ".

All in all you are trusting hundreds of companies not to sell your data to false third parties and not use awful encryption and default passwords.

Theoretically iRobot could ask for images "to improve their cleaning services".

would you be ok with that?

 

[mach]

2 hours ago, ARikozuM said:

I don't really see why knowing the floor plan of a house is a big deal when you can get the records from your local office.

I think what they plan to collect is your floor plan with all your furniture. So advertisers can, for example push a target ad to you about a sofa that will actually fit in your home, so you're more likely to be interested. 

[Taf the Ghost]

Have we mentioned IoT is evil and an utter OpSec disaster for every end-user? Because IoT is evil in the home-space and completely compromises your OpSec online while making you a huge target for everyone.

[jaggysnake57]

 

 

3 hours ago, Sierra Fox said:

because "Muh Privacy"

 

pretty much everything else is being tracked whether you know it or not. iRobot at least have to common courtesy to inform people that they are planning it

it always strikes me how people jump on the privacy bandwagon and yet still youse google and facebook.......some of the worst companies out there for selling data.

1 hour ago, ScratchCat said:

They always say it'll "provide a more personalised individual experience " but yet all the ads I get served are crap and irrelevant, not to mention the "reccommended articles ".

All in all you are trusting hundreds of companies not to sell your data to false third parties and not use awful encryption and default passwords.

Theoretically iRobot could ask for images "to improve their cleaning services".

would you be ok with that?

 

1 id worry more about eh government than big companies

2 but there not so...........

 

i stopped caring about things like this years ago.......id rather see ads tailored to me than some random shit i dont care about

[mr moose]

The answer is simple, don't buy any appliance that connects to the internet when there is no need.  Find the antennae and cut it off.

 

EDIT: duckduckgo could make a killing if it wants to get into the appliance market.

[captain_to_fire]

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

The answer is simple, don't buy any appliance that connects to the internet when there is no need.  Find the antennae and cut it off.

My computer is actually an appliance and so is my smartphone. 

 

Should I not connect them to the internet? Just saying, semantics matter. 

 

Edited July 25, 2017 by hey_yo_

[rn8686]

4 minutes ago, hey_yo_ said:

My computer is actually an appliance and so is my smartphone. 

Should I not connect them to the internet? Just saying, semantics matter. 

 

42 minutes ago, mr moose said:

The answer is simple, don't buy any appliance that connects to the internet when there is no need.  Find the antennae and cut it off.

There is a need for you phone or PC to connect, not relevant. 

[Lurick]

20 minutes ago, huilun02 said:

Why do these things even need internet access? 

Plenty of perfectly normal reasons like:

Firmware updates.

Remote communication with the cloud for remote control.

To sell your data and bring about Skynet.

Remote assistance and push notifications to your phone.

Burn down freedom and the human race.

 

All reasons that shouldn't concern anybody. Now go about your day  

[HarryNyquist]

On one hand, ew. 

 

On the other hand, maybe this will drive the price of robo vacuums down so I can actually buy one.

[mr moose]

41 minutes ago, hey_yo_ said:

My computer is actually an appliance and so is my smartphone. 

Should I not connect them to the internet? Just saying, semantics matter. 

Yes, semantics do matter a lot. Better re-read my post. 

[SomeCallMeJo]

Ok so I own a roomba, should I be worried or not? 

[captain_to_fire]

2 minutes ago, SomeCallMeJo said:

Ok so I own a roomba, should I be worried or not? 

No, not at the moment.

[goodtofufriday]

Your floor plans are already public record. Why is this any sort of concern.

[SomeCallMeJo]

2 minutes ago, goodtofufriday said:

Your floor plans are already public record. Why is this any sort of concern.

Well I live in a condo, so all the top floors all have the same layout. It isn't connected to the internet anyway so I'm not worried at all. ?

[suicidalfranco]

1 hour ago, HarryNyquist said:

maybe this will drive the price of robo vacuums down so I can actually buy one.