91–100 of 168 posts
This is why although I don't love my Apple Watch, I'm not using anything else. It's very sensitive data and Apple is the only company worth trusting with it. They're not perfect but compared to others there's no competition.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/apple-israel-unit-8200-hiring/...
What will the government even do with my heart rate and blood oxygen data? "Mr Smith has been running again, we better bring him in for questioning!" Edit: to be clear, the government is requesting the data, so clearly they're doing something with it... But what? I don't see it!
Location and time
Oura doesn't even have GPS does it? Government can already get ALL your celltower locations without a warrant AND read all your emails and text messages that are over 6 months old, without a warrant
The ring doesn't have gps but its app requires location permission so it gets it from your phone. It continually asks me to turn on background sync, which would presumably upload my location regularly as well. I decline and only allow location when the app is open to sync.
Oura doesn't even have GPS does it? Government can already get ALL your celltower locations without a warrant AND read all your emails and text messages that are over 6 months old, without a warrant
The ring doesn't have gps but its app requires location permission so it gets it from your phone. It continually asks me to turn on background sync, which would presumably upload my location regularly as well. I decline and only allow location when the app is open to sync.
So, why are we seeing articles like this, which raise suspcision that maybe a wearable smart-device company _might_ be sharing _some_ data, _sometimes_? Or expectations of voluntary transparency?
Yes, the government spies on you. Not because you're important, but because they spy on everybody. It's cheap, convenient and has no negative political consequences (so far).
References:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter
* https://www.pcmag.com/news/the-10-most-disturbing-snowden-re...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Garmin can be used completely offline? AFAIK, they even have some watches with no radio hardware so that they can be used in sensible environments.
Yup. It’s a bit of a pain, but you don’t have to use the connect app. Devices and data can be accessed with direct USB connection as standard storage. You will lose some features and I think firmware updates become difficult (or impossible?)
I wish Casio, Polar, Suunto and others provided this functionality.
There is some community software for Polar that enables offline data exchange, but it is a bit hacky, and OFC no firmware updates.
Suunto used to have a really good offline solution, but they discontinued that and moved to the cloud.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Things might change in the future" is a perfectly general statement which applies to any state of affairs which is not restricted by natural law. That makes it very nearly meaningless.
Maybe, weren't it for the fact that we're having age verification and IDV ("protect the kids"), hardware attestation, removal of 3rd party APKs, etc. heaved upon us. We've never had so many threats to our privacy and liberties heaved upon us, and the rate is accelerating.
> Cook conveyed to lawmakers that device-level age assurance proposals should not require the collection of sensitive data like birth certificate or social security number, and that parents should be trusted to provide the age of a child when creating a child's account. Any data used for determining age should not be kept by app stores or developers, according to Apple.
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/12/10/tim-cook-age-verificati...
What will the government even do with my heart rate and blood oxygen data? "Mr Smith has been running again, we better bring him in for questioning!" Edit: to be clear, the government is requesting the data, so clearly they're doing something with it... But what? I don't see it!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does encryption at rest actually do much? The percentage of attacks that were perpetrated by people getting physical access to a drive must approach zero.
I think it's also meant to protect from potential mistakes in handling of hard disk decommissioning which presumably is a common thing with data centers.