Smart Vibrator Company To Pay $3.75 Million For Private Data Collection

Failures

from the masturbatory-metadata dept

Given the often-comedic “security” featured on “smart” tea kettles, televisions, refrigerators and light bulbs — was there any question that your sex toys would suffer from the same problems plaguing other Internet of Things devices?

Last fall, a company named Standard Innovation was sued because its We-Vibe vibrator collected sensitive data about customer usage. Specifically, the device and its corresponding Bluetooth-tethered smartphone app collected data on how frequently (and for how long) users enjoyed the toy, the “selected vibration settings,” the device’s battery life, and even the vibrator’s “temperature.” All of this rather personal data was collected and sent off to the company’s Canadian servers, where the company claims it’s used to conduct research for future products and product updates.

Unlike many IoT products, Standard Innovation does fortunately encrypt this data in transit, but like most IoT companies, it failed to fully and clearly disclose the scope of data collection to customers, what was being done with that data, and how to opt out (or preferably, opt in).

The end result was a lawsuit by one of the device’s users (pdf) claiming this improperly-disclosed data collection violated Illinois privacy laws. This week, Standard Innovation struck a $3.75 million settlement (pdf). Under the terms of the deal, Standard Innovation will designate $3 million of the total for customers who downloaded the app and used it with the We-Vibe device, each individual receiving about $10,000 each. The remaining $750,000 is then destined to be divided between customers who purchased the devices alone, with each individual in that instance receiving roughly $200 each.

The company tells the Chicago Tribune it had learned its lesson about the collection of masturbatory metadata:

“Standard Innovation denied any wrongdoing in the settlement, which spokesman Denny Alexander called “fair and reasonable.” Some changes agreed to in the settlement have been in place since We-Vibe updated its We-Connect app and privacy notice in September, he said.

“At Standard Innovation we take customer privacy and data security seriously. We have enhanced our privacy notice, increased app security, provided customers more choice in the data they share, and we continue to work with leading privacy and security experts to improve the app,” he said.”

Of course the real lesson here continues to be: if you want to be smart about device security in the internet of broken things era, you’re almost always better off with the dumb alternative.

Filed Under: iot, privacy, security, smart vibrators
Companies: standard innovation