[sanlyx]

I don't really care about Fitbit collecting all that data. If you don't want yours to be used, just buy another tracker from the tons out there. Privacy is all about choice, so it's not as bad as i.e. Google using your search data because the room for choice is smaller (at least for me, having tried out DuckDuckGo and others and switching back). Also I'd rather have my data harvested for science and medicine than for selling advertisements or whatnot

[saagarjha]

> If you don't want yours to be used, just buy another tracker from the tons out there.

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?

[blub]

There are no trackers which don't force customers to create an online account and then upload the data. I looked at every possible product last year and the only exception is Apple.

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.

[brlewis]

Did you click the "Article Continues" button?

"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.

[blub]

I did, none of the "surprising things" seem like they could result in any medically actionable info. They're more like medical curiosities, while the truly actionable info was already known.

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.

[e12e]

Privacy is also about "herd immunity" - that geotagged photo posted from a party at my place affect my privacy, as does your fitbit tracking data if purchased cell tower data can be collerated to the point of assuming we went hiking together...

Not trying to argue, just pointing out that it's not quite so simple.