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by mcross 2843 days ago
See https://homesupport.irobot.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/964/~... for clarifications the company posted on data privacy.
1 comments

Thanks for the effort in sharing this.

Like most other "privacy" policies, this was written up by lawyers.

Note that they make no clarifications as to what is defined as "customer's" data, only that "Clean Map Reports" are not shared with 3rd parties. i.e. once the map data is stored on their servers, does it still belong to the customer or to Roomba? Technically if it becomes Roomba's data they are not violating their privacy policy. Additionally, my reading of it suggests the latter, because the policy says they will honor requests to delete it. A better policy would be to automatically delete it after 90 days, for example.

A good argument could be made to use that dataset for improving the product, but IMO the risks of de-anonymizing it and exposing that data far outweigh the benefits.