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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?

#41

Post by darklajid »

ig1 wrote: post #39
darklajid wrote: post #38

My pet peeve: I wanted to know what fitbit is, but the site redirects me to fitbit.com/de and I closed that site. How can they be open about data, if they have obviously no clue about open standards, like http accept headers? Worse, there's no way to visit the (official?) fitbit.com site even after that idiotic redirect. I can't access an english version, period. Stupid.

There's a logical flaw in your reasoning "doesn't http accept headers" doesn't imply anything about their understanding of open standards. While it's perfectly understandable that you might be upset that their site for Germany doesn't offer english language as an option, that's clearly a completely separate issue from how they handle user data.

You're correct. I let my anger about ignoring my explicit preferences, which I expressed in a standard way, lead me to believe that the company doesn't care.

Obviously that's annoyance speaking and speculating based on me being tired with the constant 'Hey, I know better what you want' attitude (Looking at you, Google/Blogger) - I don't even know a single thing about their product (which is why I went to the site in the first place).

Sorry about that. I stand by my point about this sort of redirection being a telltale sign of a flawed web site and lack of respect for user preferences. What else they can or cannot do, I have no clue about and cannot judge.

Re: Fitbit, why can’t I have my data?

#42

Post by patrickk »

Fitbit's data policy seems to be in stark constrast to that of Zeo. I bought a Zeo Sleep Manager after reading Gwern's excellent, extremely detailed writeups about his sleep experiments:

http://www.gwern.net/Zeo

These wouldn't be possible without data exports:

http://mysleep.myzeo.com/export/Export%20Data%20Help%20Sheet...

Re: Fitbit, why can’t I have my data?

#43

Post by rmc »

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…

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.

Minor pedantic peeve of mine: Many countries have Freedom of Information (FOI) laws, and Data Protection. Often FOI only refers to government bodies and covers lots of stuff (e.g. "How much per year does my local council spend cleaning the local park?"), however data protection mostly applies to personal data that anyone (government or private enterprise) holds on you. Data Protection laws sometimes make it illegal for the company to tell third parties the personal data about you.

Re: Fitbit, why can’t I have my data?

#44

Post by darklajid »

jessedhillon wrote: post #27

The Bodymedia FIT, in addition to being a superior device overall(1), has an API which let's you access caloric burn and other data up to single minute detail levels. If you Google around, there are some blog posts describing how to dump data from it using standard USB serial port drivers. API webpage: https://developer.bodymedia.com/docs/read/Home 1- The Bodymedia gives you steps taken as well as accurate sleep and…

Repeatedly asks me in which of a list of four places I am (Answer: Neither). Doesn't say 'Because, you know, we won't sell stuff to you if you are not on the list' until you try to check out.

When you reach checkout, you'll see that they are asking you if you're in the US, Canda, Australia or New Zealand, while the shop contains the helpful "Currently BodyMedia FIT only ships within the U.S. and Canada (does not include Quebec)". What happens if I _am_ in Australia or NZ? Weird.

Product looked nice, wanted to impulse buy one right now, but .. guess not.

1: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1194203/bodymedia.png

Re: Fitbit, why can’t I have my data?

#45

Post by ig1 »

darklajid wrote: post #41
ig1 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a logical flaw in your reasoning "doesn't http accept headers" doesn't imply anything about their understanding of open standards. While it's perfectly understandable that you might be upset that their site for Germany doesn't offer english language as an option, that's clearly a completely separate issue from how they handle user data.

You're correct. I let my anger about ignoring my explicit preferences, which I expressed in a standard way, lead me to believe that the company doesn't care. Obviously that's annoyance speaking and speculating based on me being tired with the constant 'Hey, I know better what you want' attitude (Looking at you, Google/Blogger) - I don't even know a single thing about their product (which is why I went to the site in…

Given that you're in Germany and they don't have an english version of their Germany website available their two options would be either to send you to the German language website for Germany (which they do) or alternatively send you to the US or UK website which are in english.

I'm not sure it's obvious that sending someone in Germany to the UK/US website (where presumably they'll be unable to buy the product) just because their browser is set to English is the better solution.

While for sites like Blogger language is obviously more important than country, for companies which are country-localized (i.e they treat different countries differently for shipping, taxes, legal, operations, etc.) I would guess that it makes more sense to send you to local country version.

Imagine you were using say a dating site or a takeaway site, you would find it equally frustrating if you were routed away from a local language site to a US specific site just because that's what your language preferences were set to.

Re: Fitbit, why can’t I have my data?

#46

Post by darklajid »

ig1 wrote: post #45
darklajid wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're correct. I let my anger about ignoring my explicit preferences, which I expressed in a standard way, lead me to believe that the company doesn't care. Obviously that's annoyance speaking and speculating based on me being tired with the constant 'Hey, I know better what you want' attitude (Looking at you, Google/Blogger) - I don't even know a single thing about their product (which is why I went to the site in…

Given that you're in Germany and they don't have an english version of their Germany website available their two options would be either to send you to the German language website for Germany (which they do) or alternatively send you to the US or UK website which are in english. I'm not sure it's obvious that sending someone in Germany to the UK/US website (where presumably they'll be unable to buy the product) just…

I'm not sure why you're conflating

a) content and localization

b) the region I'd like the product to ship to, if at all

Why is the site different for different countries, ignoring 'translation'? I haven't thought it through, maybe, but I cannot come up with any decent reason for a 'German' site that isn't just the 'US' site in a different language.

In that case, please (dear website) listen to what I'm asking for. If I go to fitbit.com I expect to get the very same thing someone in the US receives. I'd like to talk about the very same site. I don't want someone to redirect me to a localized thing. And certainly not without giving me the opportunity to say 'Yeah, no. That was stupid. I really wanted the original version, silly'.

Same thing: If I go to www.google.com, I want to end up at www.google.com, not www.google.de. If I visit a random post on Blogger, chances are everything content is in English. Except for the 'helpful' Blogger toolbar and whatnot, that are coming up in German, because hey that's where we figured out you're coming from.

Lived in Israel for a year, got a Hebrew toolbar, google.il (and I'd like to know what fitbits would've done there). German vs. English is one thing: I can read both, I just explicitly (url, domain, accept headers) ask for the latter. English vs. Hebrew is another: I cannot read the latter, even if I happen to be - yay for geolocation - in the one state that represents the Hebrew language.

  Imagine you were using say a dating site or a takeaway site, you would find it
  equally frustrating if you were routed away from a local language site to a 
  US specific site
Right. Don't send me anywhere if I navigate to example.com, even if I ask for de_DE. Offer a translated version, if you can. Otherwise drop a small (German?) link on your .com, saying 'We noticed you explicitly ask for German content. We got a country specific site right here -> example.de'

A dating site would allow me to register and state my country of origin or interest (which might be Germany, even if I live in Tel Aviv at that time). A takeaway site is really a weird example. www.pizza.de is available in German only for all I can tell and won't redirect me to a random US site because I ask the server to please return en_US or en localized content, _if possible_.

So, for me this whole 'automagic-we-know-it-best' translation/redirection thing is broken by design. It was a constant hassle in the past and just seems to catch on. Which is why I'm pointing it out when I can. I'm sorry for the thread-jacking. Thanks for the exchange so far.

Re: Fitbit, why can’t I have my data?

#47

Post by adanto6840 »

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...

Looks like they are rendering the charts out via JSON data end points - should be pretty easy to grab the data that way.

Re: Fitbit, why can’t I have my data?

#48

Post by angdis »

jrockway wrote: post #11
vertis wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-o…

I agree, there are other reasons for not providing the raw data. For the vast majority of people raw-data just isn't something that is even remotely usable. Even if one is an expert with data analysis, IMHO, it will require a lot of work to process and interpret it correctly. It may even require a deep knowledge about the device and all its quirks-- we're talking about data derived from a cheap accelerometer here. In the end, it is hard to see how opening up the raw data so a few hackers can take a crack at it is advantageous to fitbit or even consumers in general.

Re: Fitbit, why can’t I have my data?

#49

Post by dadro »

I recently wrapped up a 6 month project that entailed extensive Fitbit integration. My client is a fortune 500 company and even with their resources it took them months to become a Fitbit partner. Fitbit also charged a ridiculous amount of money for accessing the 100K devices we were provisioning as compared to the competitors.

If accessing the collector data is important I would consider looking at some of the fitbit competitors, as they have much more open APIs. Fitlinxx (http://www.fitlinxx.net/pebble-activity-monitor.htm) and Fitbug both come to mind.

Re: Fitbit, why can’t I have my data?

#50

Post by jfb »

darklajid wrote: post #44
jessedhillon wrote: post #27

The Bodymedia FIT, in addition to being a superior device overall(1), has an API which let's you access caloric burn and other data up to single minute detail levels. If you Google around, there are some blog posts describing how to dump data from it using standard USB serial port drivers. API webpage: https://developer.bodymedia.com/docs/read/Home 1- The Bodymedia gives you steps taken as well as accurate sleep and…

Repeatedly asks me in which of a list of four places I am (Answer: Neither). Doesn't say 'Because, you know, we won't sell stuff to you if you are not on the list' until you try to check out. When you reach checkout, you'll see that they are asking you if you're in the US, Canda, Australia or New Zealand, while the shop contains the helpful "Currently BodyMedia FIT only ships within the U.S. and Canada (does not incl…

Or Quebec?
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