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by path2power 1832 days ago
If you’re focusing on a person having access to your pulse data as the threat model, your thinking is out of date. The real play will be combining heart rate data with other signals like which Facebook page you’re viewing in order to inject ads. Basically, know when you’re most vulnerable to influence and catching you with a post that sends whatever message the highest bidder wants for you at that moment.
2 comments

That is the rub with most of this 'data'. Each one by itself it is nearly meaningless. But tossed together it creates a much more interesting thing to use. Like my DOB is borderline useless. But combined with a few other random bits of info and you can target me nearly exactly. The amount of random info is not much at all either. Add in a metric like gets depressed/excited by, and the intrusion gets even deeper.
What heart rate makes me most vulnerable?
When they've learned that your base heart rate is ~70bpm and when you get shown a puppy your heart rate excites by 20bpm they can guess that you like puppies. They could be wrong, and it could be that you're actually terrified of puppies, but they'd be safe in assuming that you're a big fan of them and so they add "Enjoys puppies" to their advertising profile of you.