Yep. Location at 3am tells you where they live, and you're basically done already.
Disclaimer: I work for Fitbit, but don't speak for Fitbit.
EDIT: Actually there's an additional assumption here, one which I also make, that any app with location permissions has all my GPS location data. But that assumption may be false here. It sounds like where I'm sleeping at 3am isn't recorded according to https://help.fitbit.com/articles/en_US/Help_article/2134
I think this is a dangerous mindset to have, assuming that just because someone's bought a product, that gives the manufacturer license to collect data on my health habits. I would be much more receptive to an opt-in study.
Yes... and no. Don't folks get insurance premium discounts for using one of these things? If you are poor and having trouble putting food on the table, it isn't much of an actual choice.
Sure, now that's there, it could be useful. But why can't we ever go about collecting such data the right way? Opt-in, and for the right purpose?
Sure, but that's application. Great things usually can do terrible things depending on application.
At some point we have to take a leap of faith and acknowledge that some things, like heart data ingestion, is an amazing advancement for humanity. Lets not try and stop it, lets try to move it in the right direction. Ie, not private, etc.
Judging from previous performance of using statistical analysis to study health, I don't see it solving anything major.
Health is mostly a combinations of genetics and healthy routines.
People already have a good idea of how they could improve their routines/diets--they choose not to. Healthy routines are hard. So unless the massive data sets are related to genetics, I don't see them contributing much.
Also good luck "anonymizing" genetic data!
Edit: Also, turn ALL of this into a single step, and make it easier to find: https://blog.fitbit.com/go-incognito/
If they want true anonymity, then remove at least location part of this (or say with 50km precision). Make it all optional with clear description what user opt for. And have independent yearly audit that confirms this on their core databases.
Anything less that that, and their motives are dirty as stale sewage waters. Why it seems that every company out there is only after as-much-data-as-possible from our lives, ideally all lives on the planet, to somehow monetize them in future? And ideally get bought by some big corp for few billions for owners.
Yet another useless thing I am happy to pass (and I am fitness nerd, but never saw any appeal in these measuring devices - work out hard, have fun, keep doing it often and you will be exceptionally healthy)
Because otherwise, that data has no business leaving my personal watch<->phone network.
I've already done this. But that doesn't mean I can't call out potential privacy violations in other products.
> Also I'd rather have my data harvested for science and medicine than for selling advertisements or whatnot
Can you prove this? Even if Fitbit isn't doing this now, what if they're acquired tomorrow by a company with more relaxed morals on what is permissible to do with health data?
And all the "science and medicine" done by FitBit according to this article has resulted only in confirming things that are already known. I was actually curious what insights they discovered and there are none.
"Fitbit’s data confirms a lot of what cardiologists already know. But because the Fitbit data set is ridiculously huge, it unearthed some surprises, too."
From there the article goes on to list a number of new insights and potential research areas to pursue.
From a screenshot at https://www.cnet.com/how-to/count-steps-with-apple-watch/ the Apple Watch privacy settings let you turn step count and heart rate tracking on and off, but don't let you choose whether or not to upload them.
iCloud sync can be turned off completely on any iPhone. Anyway, I believe the health data is encrypted with some device-specific secret, but I'm not 100% sure.
Not trying to argue, just pointing out that it's not quite so simple.
> If you choose to delete your account, please note that while most of your information will be deleted within 30 days, it may take up to 90 days to delete all of your information, like the data recorded by your Fitbit device and other data stored in our backup systems. This is due to the size and complexity of the systems we use to store data.
[1] https://www.fitbit.com/legal/privacy-policy#your-rights-to-a...
I don't see any claims to anonymize unshared data. I just see "We may share non-personal information that is aggregated or de-identified so that it cannot reasonably be used to identify an individual."
https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/pre-existing-condition/
>A health problem, like asthma, diabetes, or cancer, you had before the date that new health coverage starts. Insurance companies can't refuse to cover treatment for your pre-existing condition or charge you more.
In the US at least, insurance companies can charge:
Up to 4x the standard rate, based on age, so that an 18 year old working a minimum wage job has lower premiums than a 55 year old.
Up to 1.5x the standard rate for smokers.
Everyone's nightmare scenario about insurance companies using Fitbit data to screw customers is only possible if the Affordable Care Act is allowed to die.
Everyone else worrying about genetic data should also know that it has been illegal for insurance companies to use genetic data to set rates for years now.
If you have some sort of genetic condition, you're going to have to pay a premium. So while presumably you have some agency over how you drive, with health insurance you may be penalized for something that you have no control over.
For instance maybe insurance rates increase in a region showing a higher percentage of heart palpitations. I live there and now my rates increased even though I don't even own a bitfit.
Do you have any proof about FitBit selling to insurance companies? Not all companies are selling data to 3rd parties.
I don't agree and don't use their products. Doesn't mean I can't call them out when they do something I don't agree with.
That goes against any progress that was ever achieved in medicine. Or do you have some way of reconciling that man sticking a finger up another man's rectum is good and private but keeping records of something like a heartrate throughout the day is ... im-private? ... and bad?
So either fitbit gathers this data or noone does. What will it do with the data? I hope it will anonimise it reasonably and puts it up on the internet for free but that's a bit unrealistic. I think it will pass the data to researchers, similar way other companies did in the past. That's beneficial in my book and I much prefer that scenario to the scenario where they just discard the data.
Granted it's not the same dataset as you'd get from a "Collect everything and figure out what to do with it later" approach, but I think it strikes a better balance.
For all we know, Fitbit's eventual plan is to sell their heart data to your insurance company so they can say "It looks like you have a higher than average resting heart rate and don't exercise much, we're going to double your premiums." Heck, maybe Fitbit isn't planning that, but they'll go out of business in 20 years and auction your heartrate history to someone else who does that. We have no idea.
[1] https://9to5mac.com/2018/09/01/apple-heart-study-survey/
Unhealthy people pay more (kinda fair don't you think?). Healthy pay less. Some have additional motivation to get healthier, because "screw the old me, I don't care about that looser... but if I move a little I can pay less now? Tell me more!"
Average society healthiness increases. Even worst scenario is great.
Depends. You can be unhealthy through no fault of your own (genetics, environment). From social utility POV, insurance is about pooling risk. Taking your scenario to the limit, if insurance company is able to compute an accurate risk factor for everyone and adjust premiums accordingly, then the risk pool evaporates. But then again, maybe health insurance shouldn't really be a private industry.
Risk is still pooled because payouts come from fees of the people that didn't (and won't) experience costly events themselves.
More information just makes the business more just and less random for insurer.
Hospitals are allowed to anonymize protected health information in their medical records to mine the data (they can distribute it too) without the patient's consent. PHI is way more protected than consumer health information, which is what Fitbit has.
In the privacy arm's race, deanonymization will always win in the long run.
The best we can do is temporary privacy.
Please no. Surely nobody thought collecting health data from all their users was a good idea, right?
> That’s exactly what Fitbit (FIT) has done. It has now logged 150 billion hours’ worth of heart-rate data. From tens of millions of people, all over the world.
Argh…
> Fitbit also knows these people’s ages, sexes, locations, heights, weights, activity levels, and sleep patterns.
Just stop it already.
> Before you freak out: Fitbit’s data is anonymized. Your name is stripped off, and your data is thrown into a huge pool with everybody else’s. (Note, too, that this data comes only from people who own Fitbits — who are affluent enough, and health-conscious enough, to make that purchase. It’s not the whole world.)
"Anonymized". Just with the data posted above, it seems like it'd be pretty easy to correlate the data to a person. And auto-enrolling everyone who buys a health product is not an excuse to mine all their data.