Is there an alternative to Roomba that doesn't have mandatory telemetry?
iRobot (Roomba) shares customer data with Google and other affiliates
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Re: iRobot (Roomba) shares customer data with Google and other affiliates
#12When did they start doing this? The one I've got doesn't have any form of radio.
Re: iRobot (Roomba) shares customer data with Google and other affiliates
#13Fuckin rich nerds pretending elitistically to be "smart". Suck my average anarchist cock - FUCK HN!
Re: iRobot (Roomba) shares customer data with Google and other affiliates
#14You're being deliberately misleading to stir the pot. It says they use Google Analytics and Ads, just like the other 3/4 of the internet.
Why does a vacuum cleaner need Google Analytics or Ads?
Re: iRobot (Roomba) shares customer data with Google and other affiliates
#15The title is needlessly alarmist. The linked privacy policy covers the various robots as well as irobot.com and their mobile apps.
Most of the comments here are about their robots so let me copy and paste the relevant passage from the policy below:
Information We Collect from Registered Devices Equipped with Smart Technology.
Some of our Robots are equipped with smart technology which allows the Robots to transmit data wirelessly to the Service. When you register your Robot with the online App, we collect information about the Robot, such as a Robot name and device number, and information about the Robot and/or App usage, feature usage, in-App transactions, technical specifications, crashes, and other information about how you use your Robot and the product App. For example, the Robot could collect and transmit information about the Robot’s function and use statistics, such as battery life and health, start and stop times, and number of missions.
Certain Robot models are equipped to collect information about the environment in which the Robot is deployed. For example, the Robot collects information about its movement throughout the environment to create a location ‘map’ of the space accessible to the Robot. The spatial map is a digital representation of the Robot's domain and does not include recognizable images from the location environment. To create the map, the Robot converts computer-vision images to abstract features and landmarks to generate a spatial representation of the Robot’s territory indicating the presence of objects, obstacles, floor coverings like carpet or tile, WiFi signal strength, and dirt detection.
We use this information to collect and analyze statistics and usage data, diagnose and fix technology problems, enhance device performance, and improve user experience. We may use this information to provide you personalized communications, including marketing and promotional messages, such as emails providing product order information when your device indicates a battery needs replacement. We consider location mapping data to be sensitive, confidential information and we do not share this information with third parties for marketing purposes. Please visit our Data Security page to learn more.
Our Robots do not transmit this information unless you register your device online and connect to WiFi, Bluetooth, or connect to the internet via another method. It is possible to use our smart technology Robots without WiFi or Bluetooth data transmission, simply by disconnecting your WiFi or Bluetooth from the device or by never connecting it at all. You can also choose through your settings in the App to not to have location mapping data transmitted to us.
Re: iRobot (Roomba) shares customer data with Google and other affiliates
#16Thanks, I don't need a vacuum that sends data to you, or anyone else. It's not necessary to the function of the product. The convenience does not outweigh the cost of my privacy, and I'm certainly not going to pay you to extract it from me. You should be paying me to use your product if you want the data.
I don't disagree but the attitude in corporate America is simply anything for profit is good and justified. iRobot will happily argue their service will cost more unless they share your data when what they really mean is you'll have to offset this new revenue stream for them if you want them to stop.
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Re: iRobot (Roomba) shares customer data with Google and other affiliates
#17It seems that these days you should assume that any product which needs an Internet connection to function is going to phone home through that. There's certainly a market for "smart, but not too smart" devices; unfortunately I doubt it's very large.
It's another reason why I quite using fitbit. There is no reason at all you need internet connectivity to send the data 3 feet from the device to the phone via bluetooth. They don't need to collect the data at all, and since there is no opt-out, I just quit using it.
When I worked in San Francisco, my employer gave everyone fitbits and held weekly "most steps" competitions. I wore mine for three days before realizing the device was telling my company which hours I was most active.
Needless to say, I never won any of our competitions.
Re: iRobot (Roomba) shares customer data with Google and other affiliates
#18If you scroll up from where the link sends you, you will see a section called “Information We Collect from Registered Devices Equipped with Smart Technology“, which completely negates the premise in the title.
Re: iRobot (Roomba) shares customer data with Google and other affiliates
#19You're being deliberately misleading to stir the pot. It says they use Google Analytics and Ads, just like the other 3/4 of the internet.
Why does a vacuum cleaner need Google Analytics or Ads?
The privacy policy covers irobot.com, their products, and their mobile apps.
Their website, marketing tools, and apps are the ones that connect to third parties. See below:
Information collected automatically.
We and our third party service providers may collect certain types of usage information when you visit our Website or mobile Apps, read our emails, or otherwise engage with us. We use this information to enhance and personalize your user experience, to monitor and improve our websites and services, and for other internal purposes. In some instances, we and our third party service providers may combine this usage information with personal information. If we do combine any usage information with personal information, the combined information will be treated by us as personal information.
We typically collect this information through a variety of tracking technologies, including cookies, web beacons, embedded scripts, location-identifying technologies, file information, and similar technology (collectively, “tracking technologies”). We, and our third party partners, use tracking technologies to automatically collect usage and device information, such as:
Re: iRobot (Roomba) shares customer data with Google and other affiliates
#20I recently learned that there is a name for this phenomenon where our reality is being increasingly digitized and financialized - "surveillance capitalism".
Surveillance capitalism is a novel market form and a specific logic of capitalist accumulation that was first described in a 2014 essay by business theorist and social scientist Shoshana Zuboff. She characterized it as a "radically disembedded and extractive variant of information capitalism" based on the commodification of "reality" and its transformation into behavioral data for analysis and sales.