The Internet of Things is increasingly spying on you. Fridges that compromise your email, smart TVs that record your conversations, and of course smartphones are such privacy disasters the President might get in trouble for owning an unsecured one. But the case of We Vibe might be the strangest yet.
Canadian company Standard Innovation put out a vibrator, the We Vibe 4 Plus, that connects with an app via Bluetooth. That’s already something that feels poorly considered, but the app wasn’t secure, allowing anybody in Bluetooth range to take over. If that weren’t creepy enough, it also recorded temperature and vibration intensity without customers’ knowledge, sending it back to home base and essentially revealing sexual habits to Standard Innovation.
If you’re wondering what Standard Innovation was doing with that data, that’s a good question that doesn’t seem to have a particular answer. However, customers were upset, for obvious reasons, and the company was quickly dragged to court. It’s now officially out $3 million in a class-action lawsuit, which works out to $10,000 a buyer before the lawyers take their fees. As for the rest of us, this serves as an important lesson; if something that doesn’t need to be connected to the internet is, buyer beware.
(via The Guardian)