What. Who is buying a $600 camera to take pictures of your stool?
Not the people spending $12.1m on a gold toilet that's for sure.
You wouldn't want that cheap tat miring up the clean lines of your throne.
Kohler Can Access Pictures from "End-to-End Encrypted" Toilet Camera
61–70 of 227 posts
Re: Kohler Can Access Pictures from "End-to-End Encrypted" Toilet Camera
#62?? I got very confused from the start of this article because it is clear that Kohler is one end of the communication from how the product is described and marketed. They’re just stating the data is encrypted between the device and them.
> it is clear that Kohler is one end of the communication That’s not end-to-end encryption. By that logic HN, and any other website over HTTPS is E2E encrypted.
That is what "end-to-end encryption" has come to mean in marketing. In the same way that every single product is "natural."
Re: Kohler Can Access Pictures from "End-to-End Encrypted" Toilet Camera
#63So basically their marketing-department is abusing a security term in order to sound good, as opposed to a software flaw. They're claiming "end to end" encryption, which usually implies the service is unable to spy on individual users that are communicating to one-another over an individualized channel. However in this case there are no other users, and their server is one of the "ends" doing the communicating, which…
This is exactly what E2EE means. I used to work at a bank, and our data was E2EE, and we had to certify that it was E2EE - from the person paying, through the networks, through the DNS and Load balancers, until it got to the servers. Only at the servers could it be unencrypted and a (authoried) human could look at it. Of course, only authorized users could see the data, but that was a different compliance line item.
Doesn't that just mean HTTPS then?
Re: Kohler Can Access Pictures from "End-to-End Encrypted" Toilet Camera
#64Satire is dead. A toilet company killed it.
Re: Kohler Can Access Pictures from "End-to-End Encrypted" Toilet Camera
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think part of the problem is that prior to WhatsApp's E2EE implementation in like 2014, TLS was very often called "End to End Encryption" as the ends were Client and Server/Service Provider. It got redefined and now the new usage is way more popular than the old one. I can't blame most people for calling TLS "E2EE", even some folks in industry, but it's not great for a company to advertise that you offer X if the m…
The two endpoints of the communication with Kohler's app are the client and the server. In WhatsApp's E2EE implementation the endpoints are two client devices. Both are valid meanings of E2EE. You're defining that "end to end" means the server cannot access it but that's simply not what it means.
The modern usage of E2EE definitely means that "the server cannot access it". That's the meat of this entire discussion.
While you are technically correct in a network topology sense (where the "ends" are the TCP connection points), that definition has been obsolete in consumer privacy contexts for a decade now due to "true" E2EE encryption.
If we use your definition, then Gmail, Facebook, and Amazon are all "End-to-End Encrypted" because the traffic is encrypted between my client and their server. But we don't call them E2EE because the service provider holds the keys and can see the data.
In 2025, when a company claims a camera product is "E2EE", a consumer interprets that to mean "Zero Knowledge". I.e. the provider cannot see the video feeds. If Kohler holds the keys to analyze the data, that is Encryption in Transit, not E2EE. Even though in an older sense (which is what my original comment was saying), it was "End to End Encrypted" because the two ends were defined as Client and Server and not Client to Client (e.g. FB Messenger User1 and FB Messenger User2).
Re: Kohler Can Access Pictures from "End-to-End Encrypted" Toilet Camera
#66I feel End-to-end is over marketed. Yes it protects your data from transmission pipes, but data on both your "ends" can be easily controlled and duplicated. Your picture on your device can be accessed by 3rd party, so does your data on the server.
End-to-end encryption is not a term used for communication between clients and servers, although I saw several marketers trying to do it.
For normal people E2EE means privacy, and that's why some company tries to sneak the term in products where it makes no sense.
Re: Kohler Can Access Pictures from "End-to-End Encrypted" Toilet Camera
#67Sounds like the crappiest data source for AI training yet. But in all seriousness, of course they can access the data. Otherwise who else would process it to give any health results back? I don't think encryption in transit is relevant to privacy concerns because the concerns are about such data being tied to you at all, in any way. At the same time, yes, this could product valuable health information. Their better b…
> But in all seriousness, of course they can access the data. Otherwise who else would process it to give any health results back?
It's "of course" for very knowledgeable people, normal people just assume that it means guaranteed privacy
Re: Kohler Can Access Pictures from "End-to-End Encrypted" Toilet Camera
#68?? I got very confused from the start of this article because it is clear that Kohler is one end of the communication from how the product is described and marketed. They’re just stating the data is encrypted between the device and them.
No, they're just trying to mislead their clients
Re: Kohler Can Access Pictures from "End-to-End Encrypted" Toilet Camera
#69How does one "train" an AI with a flood of random toilet pictures and no corresponding medical data to match it with?
They probably do match it, with data collected from other sources
Re: Kohler Can Access Pictures from "End-to-End Encrypted" Toilet Camera
#70So basically their marketing-department is abusing a security term in order to sound good, as opposed to a software flaw. They're claiming "end to end" encryption, which usually implies the service is unable to spy on individual users that are communicating to one-another over an individualized channel. However in this case there are no other users, and their server is one of the "ends" doing the communicating, which…
This is exactly what E2EE means. I used to work at a bank, and our data was E2EE, and we had to certify that it was E2EE - from the person paying, through the networks, through the DNS and Load balancers, until it got to the servers. Only at the servers could it be unencrypted and a (authoried) human could look at it. Of course, only authorized users could see the data, but that was a different compliance line item.
No, E2EE doesn't mean it's encrypted until the service provider decrypts it. E2EE means the service provider is unable to decrypt it. What you are describing is encryption in transit (and possibly at rest).
Bank data is never E2EE because the bank needs to see it. If banks call it E2EE they are misusing the term. E2EE for financial transactions would look like e.g. ZCash.