Page 6 - January_Newsletter_2023
P. 6

Here is the second part of the article that Barry forwarded to me last month.




            Halo band










            A health-tracking bracelet with a microphone and
            an app that tells you everything that’s wrong with
            you.

            What  it  knows: Your activity and movement; heart rate; weight; sleep patterns; your voice (for
            tone  analysis);  images  of  your  body  for  estimating  body  fat;  food  consumption,  preferences  and
            shopping lists.

            Why  that  matters: Amazon wants to be your artificial-intelligence doctor, or, at least, life coach.
            But the Halo band can be invasive. Amazon says it doesn’t sell your body data, share it without your
            permission or use it to target you with sales pitches — but that still leaves plenty of other ways for the
            company to mine your information.




            Echo Show









            An Alexa smart speaker with a camera and screen for
            video calls, recipes and sharing family information.

            What  it  knows:  Collects  most  of  the  data  from
            standard  microphone-equipped  Echo  speakers,
            along with facial recognition maps for individual us-
            ers  (stored  and  processed  locally);  records  video  of
            areas  in  view  of  the  camera;  logs  how  you  interact
            with on-screen widgets and skills; detects smoke alarms, glass-breaking or other activities.
            Why  that  matters: The addition of a camera gives Amazon another view into your home. On some
            Echo Show models, the camera is always passively scanning for movement or faces, and Amazon
            could retain records about the faces it sees.

            Echo devices also use your life to feed advertising. Researchers recently discovered Amazon uses da-
            ta from how you interact with Alexa to target ads you see on Amazon and other sites where Amazon
            places ads. (You can opt out of Amazon ad profiling at this link if you log in.)

            “We don’t sell customer data to third parties or use customer data for purposes that haven’t been
            disclosed to customers,” Schmidt says.
   1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10