I argued for data privacy but then my own smartwatch sold my running route.

I always told people to turn off location sharing, but I left mine on for my fitness tracker. Last month, a targeted ad showed a map of my exact 5-mile loop through Grant Park. Anyone else have a tech rule they broke with weird results?

4 comments

4 Comments

the_troy2mo ago

Classic case of do as I say, not as I do. You were the privacy preacher and your own gadget snitched on you. That's honestly pretty funny. The ad showing your exact loop is a perfect slap in the face. Serves you right for leaving that setting on. Now you're just another data point they sold.

the_iris2mo ago

Hold up, that's not really fair. Most of us have to pick between privacy and using the stuff we paid for. Turning off location kills half the features on a fitness watch. The creepy part isn't that you left it on, it's that some company took your personal run and turned it into an ad without asking. That's just sneaky.

jakejones5d ago

Gotta connect this to something I notice all the time now. You buy a smart device or sign up for some service, and the tradeoff is always "give us your data or we'll break the thing you paid for." I had a smart speaker for like a week before I realized it was logging every conversation in my living room, and the only way to stop it was to basically brick the device. Same thing with my car's app. It tracks everywhere I drive, but if I turn it off, I can't remote start or check the battery. It's not just a fitness watch problem. It's this quiet shift where companies have decided they own the stuff we bought because they wrote the software that runs it. And yeah, the run being used as an ad without a heads up is the gross part. It's like the terms of service are written so nobody actually reads them, and then they act surprised when people feel used.

marywilson2mo ago

Look at it from the company's side. They need location data to make the maps and fitness features work right. That ad probably came from a different part of their system they think is helpful, like showing local deals. You agreed to their terms when you set up the watch, so they didn't really do anything wrong. It's just how the tech works now.