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Fitbit, why can’t I have my data?

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Re: Fitbit, why can’t I have my data?

#11

Post by jrockway »

vertis wrote: post #9
MichaelApproved wrote: post #7

" I guess it is true, if you aren’t paying for it, you are the product. " But according to the author, even the $50 option doesn't let you download the data so it has nothing to do with you being the product .

More than that, you have to pay for the device in the first place, so on that front you're absolutely the customer.

Indeed. Everyone likes to think missing features are some scam that the company that owns the project is perpetrating upon their users, but in reality they probably want to lock you in for the sake of locking you in. They don't know why, but making the data open would be extra work, would help their competitors, and might hurt their chances of being bought. They can always be more open later, but they can't ever un-open. So they're closed.

Don't buy their products. That's what I did.

Re: Fitbit, why can’t I have my data?

#12

Post by randomchars »

If you live in the EU you can send them a data access request, which means they have to provide you with all your personally identifiable information that they keep, in this case that means pretty much everything.

I hate it when companies think that they can get away with making you pay for your data.

Re: Fitbit, why can’t I have my data?

#13

Post by bloaf »

MichaelApproved wrote: post #6
mavlee wrote: post #3

I actually ran into the same problem recently, when trying to get my minute by minute data. I even emailed their support team, but no luck. I wonder if there's an easy way to scrape their flash charts on the dashboard...

Without using the website, I suspect you can use something like Fiddler to see what HTTP requests are being made. Chances are the charts are making an XML or JSON request to their servers. If you're lucky, the URL requests will be in an easy to reverse engineer format so you could easily dump all the data you need by adjusting the URL.

Why not try to intercept the data as it comes through the USB port instead?

Re: Fitbit, why can’t I have my data?

#14

Post by dawson »

randomchars wrote: post #12

If you live in the EU you can send them a data access request, which means they have to provide you with all your personally identifiable information that they keep, in this case that means pretty much everything. I hate it when companies think that they can get away with making you pay for your data.

I have always been curious about this, from a healthcare perspective. For example, we encrypt PID information one way (the patient has their own unique data access key, which is then encrypted with their password + salt and some 'other stuff'), so we couldn't hand over any information if a data access request was made, even if we wanted to as we don't have access to that information ourselves!

Re: Fitbit, why can’t I have my data?

#15

Post by hayksaakian »

dawson wrote: post #14
randomchars wrote: post #12

If you live in the EU you can send them a data access request, which means they have to provide you with all your personally identifiable information that they keep, in this case that means pretty much everything. I hate it when companies think that they can get away with making you pay for your data.

I have always been curious about this, from a healthcare perspective. For example, we encrypt PID information one way (the patient has their own unique data access key, which is then encrypted with their password + salt and some 'other stuff'), so we couldn't hand over any information if a data access request was made, even if we wanted to as we don't have access to that information ourselves!

You could hand over the encrypted data, the usefulness of such data being low however.

Re: Fitbit, why can’t I have my data?

#17

Post by dawson »

hayksaakian wrote: post #15
dawson wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have always been curious about this, from a healthcare perspective. For example, we encrypt PID information one way (the patient has their own unique data access key, which is then encrypted with their password + salt and some 'other stuff'), so we couldn't hand over any information if a data access request was made, even if we wanted to as we don't have access to that information ourselves!

You could hand over the encrypted data, the usefulness of such data being low however.

The issue is that the PID is all encrypted, I wouldn't know if we have a John Doe on our system, we can't see anything to verify that user exists or that they're the appropriate owner of said data. We do have an email (which is also encrypted at a system level, which in theory we could access), but verifying an access request based on an email address? I don't know. The way we solve the problem is by making all the data available to the user once they have authenticated, as long as you can login to our website, all your data is available to you, but if you made a direct data access request to us, like a FOI to our office by letter (the typical way it's done), not much I think we could do.

Re: Fitbit, why can’t I have my data?

#18

Post by thisone »

dawson wrote: post #17
hayksaakian wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could hand over the encrypted data, the usefulness of such data being low however.

The issue is that the PID is all encrypted, I wouldn't know if we have a John Doe on our system, we can't see anything to verify that user exists or that they're the appropriate owner of said data. We do have an email (which is also encrypted at a system level, which in theory we could access), but verifying an access request based on an email address? I don't know. The way we solve the problem is by making all the d…

Your IG team will know.

From my understanding, from the yearly IG briefings I used to have, you would be able to provide that requester with information on how to obtain their personal access, and point out to them where they can find the information they have requested.

Information needs to be made accessible, you don't necessarily need to actually provide printouts. For example, FOI requests from news agencies often cover the same topics. This information can and often is posted publicly on the organisation's website and the FOI responses refer the requester to those links.

Re: Fitbit, why can’t I have my data?

#19

Post by biturd »

Why do we need an actual hardware device to get to this data? Don't iPhones and Androids and others have all the internals needed to get the same data, and more, such as altitude, so you can check the incline you are against etc.

Re: Fitbit, why can’t I have my data?

#20

Post by thisone »

jrockway wrote: post #10
gregcohn wrote: post #2

Good post. Are are any of the similar devices more open, in terms of both data accessibility and format?

If a FitBit is just a pedometer, I have an Omron HJ-720IT that syncs with my Linux box (uploading a week's worth of hourly step counts). It's $30 on Amazon.

The cheaper one is a pedometer, the expensive one tries to do things like track your sleeping patterns and hooks into their own make of scale.
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