That the heartrate can be a predictor for pregnancy was is the “privacy problem”. Rather, there are a whole set of other information that can be inferred from heart rates that most fitbit users are probably not aware.
Sensors in general have a way of producing information of different kinds than they were intended to. I’m reminded of how it’s possible to use a smartphone’s gyroscope as a microphone, which is a privilege escalation because the gyroscope is generally treated as less sensitive by the OS.
Not sure what this has to do with privacy. If you’re wearing a heart rate monitor, isn’t it because you want your heart rate monitored?
That the heartrate can be a predictor for pregnancy was is the “privacy problem”. Rather, there are a whole set of other information that can be inferred from heart rates that most fitbit users are probably not aware.
But aren’t you wearing the monitor because you want to discover this information? Or if you don’t want to know, don’t ask…
And you might want to know without knowing other things could be inferred by external organisations.
I doubt that the monitor was worn to detect pregnancy but rather as an activity tracker.
Sensors in general have a way of producing information of different kinds than they were intended to. I’m reminded of how it’s possible to use a smartphone’s gyroscope as a microphone, which is a privilege escalation because the gyroscope is generally treated as less sensitive by the OS.
Except, Fitbit didn’t predict the pregnancy, the user posted the data on Reddit and another Reddit user guessed.
Reminds me of this story about Target