Your Exercise Bike Knows a Lot About You—and It Doesn't Keep Every Secret
Your Exercise Bike Knows a Lot About You—and It Doesn't Keep Every Secret
BowFlex, NordicTrack, Peloton, Tonal, and other exercise brands could be sharing health and fitness information that you'd rather keep private, a CR study shows.
If you’re a BowFlex user, however, you might be surprised to learn that the company, in its privacy policy, also grants itself the right to collect and share data on how you smell.
WTF??
Also, data collection like that should be so clear, obvious, and only enabled through an opt-in, so nobody should ever be "surprised" to find out about it!
Tonal, for example, says it stores video recordings of a user’s workout as well as data about the position and movements of their head, arms, hands, feet, legs, and torso.
Broooo???
I absolutely hate how every product is designed as a trojan horse for data collection.
So many of these features can be offloaded to local-only processes, and it kills me that users are paying for equipment, often paying for a subscription to use the platform, and then have their data used as another revenue stream.
Why do exercise bikes need to be connected to the internet…?
Health/performance tracking I imagine using cloud APIs. Ideally, they would support local-only options, too. Perhaps there are some that integrate with home assistant?