We have all become cyborgs already. Whether you're putting on your glasses, feeling the dimensions of a car while parked, or “feeling” the texture of food when you skewer it with a fork, you're stretching and intertwining yourself. You are directly experiencing the capabilities of the mind. Use technology – no cyberpunk implants required. Because we are cyborgs, we have a natural tendency to draw tools and technology closer to us, and that's reflected in the rise of everything from Walkmans to wearable fitness trackers and, most recently, his Apple Vision Pro. Masu.
But today's smart devices do more than just augment our thinking. Situated at the intersection of the physical and digital worlds, they combine and produce data that describes nearly every aspect of a person's online and offline life, providing the very best for hungry advertisers, governments, and even career cybercriminals. Create comprehensive assets that criminals only dream of. of. Wearable technology has great potential, but it also comes with unprecedented risks to our privacy. Only by understanding the magnitude of those risks can we preserve the benefits of wearables while promoting safety and transparency.
Wearable smart devices make us vulnerable because they collect health-related information, biometric data, location data, and more, but often those data points include contact information, purchase history, browsing behavior, and more. Mixed with general digital information. The hybrid nature of data and devices makes the risks they pose equally multifaceted, but they can be broken down into three broad categories.
1. Technical
When assessing the potential dangers of a new technology, the first thing most people usually think of is the technology's vulnerabilities. This is a good instinct. In many ways, hardware and software security constitutes the first and last line of defense for user data. Therefore, the attack surface in which wearables exist is larger and more complex than expected and requires extreme caution.
First, the device itself can be vulnerable to proximity-based attacks when communicating with the outside world. From there, the wearable sends the data to an intermediate device, such as a smartphone, which is itself vulnerable, and then the data goes to persistent, centralized storage on its own servers. Each step in this process can be attacked in creative ways through hardware and software, and the richness of the targets makes it increasingly likely that malicious actors will attempt to attack. Masu. Thankfully, standards like Bluetooth and WiFi have robust security mechanisms that prevent most such attacks, but they aren't perfect. Healthcare data breaches have more than doubled from 2013 to 2023, and this trend is likely to be reflected in healthcare-related data as well.
2. Regulation
As is often the case, privacy protections have not kept up with technological advances, and those that do exist are fragmented and surprisingly narrow. Most Americans have a vague sense that their health data is protected (and that's somehow true), but a savvy few have a vague sense that their health data is protected. We know that the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) exists in . What is not commonly understood is that HIPAA applies only to health care providers and insurance companies, and only to personally identifiable records used by those entities. This means there is a potential regulatory distinction between healthcare data and biometric data generated by fitness trackers, even though the data points tracked are the same.
Generalized privacy regulations attempt to fill this gap, but mostly on a case-by-case basis. The EU has one standard (GDPR) and Canada (PIPEDA) as well, but the US has uneven regulations from state to state that are still difficult to navigate. The Federal Trade Commission is also trying to block medical data privacy, citing both GoodRx and BetterHelp in 2023 alone. However, in the absence of more specific privacy protections, this type of enforcement will inevitably occur after a privacy breach, and in most cases will not result from inherent biometric data protection measures, but rather from “deceptive commercial practices.” This is done based on customary practices.
3. Educational
Just as regulators keep up with technology, consumers need to give informed consent about what is being tracked, how their data will be used, and by whom. The same goes for understanding. First and foremost, people need to get into the habit of thinking of everything on their wearables as potentially valuable data. All of the fun and helpful insights that wearables generate, such as your daily steps, heart rate, and sleep quality, start to paint a complete picture of you that can seriously violate your personal privacy, but it's all ideal. .
The impact of this type of data tracking is even greater when you consider today's most powerful devices. By default, Apple Vision Pro recognizes where you are, what you're looking at, features of your environment, and even where you look and how you move your body. Aggregating so much data allows for deep and profound inferences about individuals, which can be used in a variety of ways, from disgusting to alarming (and we hope not). Increased premiums due to lifestyle choices and poor treatment adherence. A group of hackers reveals in real time that someone's house is empty. The list goes on.
Data rollup
Data rollups aren't limited to powerful devices like Apple Vision Pro. Consumers need to be aware of how big tech companies can connect the dots across multiple devices and services. For example, while it's common knowledge among consumers that Google retains location data and search and browsing history on Android smartphones, Google acquired Fitbit in 2021, which means that all the data Fitbit generates will be Few people know that data has effectively become part of the Google ecosystem. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, but consumers need an ecosystem-level understanding of the entities that control their data in order to make informed choices.
None of this is to say that the situation is beyond repair. In fact, we need to fix it so we can safely reap the benefits of life-changing technology. This requires a solution that is as comprehensive as the problem. After all, privacy is a team sport.
Total security
First, we need more comprehensive security and default encryption for all data, at every stage, and on every device. Blockchain offers many benefits in terms of restricting device access, securing data, and leveraging decentralized infrastructure to reduce the honeypot effect of huge data troves.
Second, as mentioned above, visibility of information is a strict prerequisite for informed consent, so consumers need to know what data is being collected, how (and by whom) ) must demand absolute transparency about what data is used and collected, and companies that value privacy must accept this. Other data may be mixed in. It's also possible to imagine a world where companies can disclose the information they're trying to derive based on the data points they're collecting, and consumers can choose to accept or reject the offer.
That brings us to the final part: subtle control over your data. Among its many flaws, the standard model for extracting data from users typically presents users with a binary choice: consent and participate, or opt out entirely. Rather than being rigidly embedded in an all-or-nothing model, consumers need more control over the data they share and how it is used. Once again, companies need to demand it, and companies that value privacy can do a huge amount of goodwill by providing it.
After all, there's nothing to be gained by assuming that privacy is destined to become an archaic concept from a bygone era. Rather, we should hope to find a balance between the unprecedented benefits of wearable technology and the risks it poses to privacy, but we cannot afford to wait for regulators to act. Instead, it is up to the public to educate themselves about threats to privacy and speak up not only to support better regulation but also to protect their right to own and control the data they are creating. It is imposed on people. If enough people say that, the industry needs to listen.
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