The Internet of Things is vast and ever-growing, and like any digital frontier, there will be experiments that don’t quite work, or are well-meaning but poorly conceived. Like, for example, a pregnancy test that connects to your phone for, uh, no explicable reason, it looks like.
First Response, one of many over-the-counter medical care providers causing heartbreak and joy in bathrooms everywhere, has rolled out a Bluetooth-enabled pregnancy test called the Pregnancy Pro. For just $15, you can sync your pregnancy test to your smartphone, where a First Response app will have “assurances,” “wait-time support” and various other widgets to kill time and keep you distracted from the fact that you might be knocked up.
This is, apparently, to appeal to the Millennial mom, because as we all know, Millennials keep their phone in a death grip even when urinating on a medical appliance. But you do have to wonder how secure this device is, something the official site doesn’t make clear. A quick browse of the app’s permissions on the Android store finds that it wants access to all accounts on your phone and to be able to browse anything it finds on there. What information does the app store on your phone? Can anybody add the pregnancy test to their phones and see the results? What happens if the app suddenly decides it wants to share your pregnancy status with, say, your insurer or local department stores? It’s bad enough your Fitbit can figure out when you’re pregnant, does your phone need to know, too?
Fortunately, this version of the test is optional. And perhaps there’s an untapped market of people who want their medical tests tied directly to their phone. We’ll find out Monday, as that’s when the Pregnancy Pro hits shelves.
(Via Fox19)