
Some users say they're getting rid of Fitbit because they don't trust Google - Classicaldj34
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/17/people-getting-rid-of-fitbits-after-google.html
======
MichaelApproved
Classic example of an article in search of a movement.

Take a handful of tweets that share an opinion and write an article that makes
it seem like there's a mass exodus.

It's ok, you don't need anything more than a handful of tweets to back your
claim.

Yes, _some_ people are privacy conscious and are going to stop using Fitbit
but how many are actually doing it? A lot? A few?

Who knows. I'm sure author has no clue but that won't stop them from writing
this empty article.

~~~
Retric
I don’t know about anyone else, but I just got rid of my Fitbit and never
spoke of it on social media. My guess is it’s limited a few thousand to low
tens of thousands of people which is not economically meaningful on it’s own.
But, it does show another side of the privacy debate.

Many companies are selling data not because it’s significant revenue, but
rather because they have no reason to leave money on the table. This kind of
small scale boycott may actually be meaningful for those internal decisions,
which IMO is interesting.

~~~
pmarreck
I have never felt harmed or threatened by the idea that my anonymized data
(health or otherwise) is being used by large organizations... assuming it is
anonymized.

As far as I can see, there are many good uses of this data (some potentially
profitable, such as selling to health insurance companies so they can better
price their products and evaluate risks) and very few bad uses of this data.

Can someone please clarify for me exactly what the potential harm is here...
using evidence and reason instead of conjecture and belief? Because until
then, this all smells an awful lot like a conspiracy theory
[https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFalla...](https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/74/Conspiracy-
Theory)

Here's an example: Google has had our data for literally _decades_ now. What
is the measurable, significant harm that has resulted? And if there is
nothing, what catastrophes are yet possible where a single or group of rogue
bad actors profit off the suffering of many _and get away with it_?

Please explain to me my naiveté here.

~~~
Erlich_Bachman
Because it is -never - going to be anonymized. They are going to call it
anonymized, and then publicly apologize for it not being so a couple of times,
while keeping business as usual. There is just no incentive for them to
anonymize it.

~~~
mumblemumble
More to the point, I'm not even sure that, in principle, it is possible to
truly anonymize this data without spoiling the data science easter egg hunt.
And the easter egg hunt is arguably the entire point of this kind of data
collection.

You can do something like k-anonymizing the data and then destroying the
original, personally identifiable data. But k-anonymity has its limits, too.

Every other strategy I know of assumes that it's OK to keep a private copy of
the original data, which works well if we're talking about scenario such as a
source that needs to keep the raw data (like a health care provider) providing
the data with a semi-trustworthy external party such as a health researcher.
But it doesn't address what I'm guessing is the main concern here, which is
that, even if you accept for the sake of argument that Google currently has no
intention to do gross things with the data, they can't make any promises that
will hold indefinitely. It's a long-lived organization that whose policies
might change with any change in leadership, market, or even political
conditions, so any promises they might make are simply meaningless in the long
run. As they would be with _any_ organization, regardless of the presence or
absence of any present-day warm fuzzy feelings.

~~~
kazinator
Basically the data, to be useful, has to be capable of uncovering correlations
with all sorts of demographics. Those clues can de-anonymize it. If we take
your name out of a data frame (so that we can call it "anonymous") but leave
all sorts of other properties (those being the payload useful to data
science), you may be nevertheless identifiable from that combination of
properties, together with other info known about you from other tracking
sources.

------
nevir
After having worked at Google, it is the only company I actually do trust with
my data. (But I am also ok with them using it to customize my experience, and
even target ads)

Their internal privacy controls are extensive.

As a human, it is nearly impossible to access someone's data, even when
debugging code/ML models/etc.

And when you do need to, it requires exhaustive oversight/approval, and
_everything_ is audited.

~~~
alleyshack
I'm an Xoogler who worked on the privacy team a few years ago. All of this is
true, and at the time I worked there, I made the conscious, considered
decision to buy in to the Google data collection ecosystem because I trusted
the people I worked with to protect my data.

Several years out, I no longer trust Google - not because I trust my former
(immediate) coworkers less, but because the direction the entire
advertising/data science industry is taking as a whole is deeply concerning to
me. I disagree with almost all of it on principle, and am no longer
comfortable supporting it by allowing unfettered collection of my personal
data, regardless of who is doing the collecting or how much they promise not
to sell my data.

(Companies were never "selling" data anyway - they were using it themselves,
sharing it with their partners without an explicit sale, and otherwise doing
things with it that I don't approve of which do not meet the strict definition
of "sale".)

~~~
devicetray0
> Several years out, I no longer trust Google - not because I trust my former
> (immediate) coworkers less, but because the direction

It makes me uncomfortable that the data is always there, and the direction of
the business just needs to change. Perhaps they're not being profitable enough
for wall street? And on a time scale of 10 more years, I'm sure there will be
a number of "incidents" in which teams were given approval to use the data in
unsavory ways.

~~~
alleyshack
This is exactly why I'm one of the (probably many) silent switchers away from
Fitbit now that this acquisition has happened. Whatever Google says now, in
one or two or ten years, that could change, and my data will still be there.

> I'm sure there will be a number of "incidents" in which teams were given
> approval to use the data in unsavory ways.

This is my other concern, closely related to the first. Data companies (Google
included) have a very different idea of what is "savory" w.r.t data usage. Not
from a place of malice, necessarily, but innocence/privilege/not thinking
about the consequences.

Let's say the engineers are building a data-using feature, such as one which
takes Fitbit health data and links it to your medical record to recommend
tests or interventions that might benefit you. Those engineers may only think
about how many lives this will save - the benefits of sharing this data.
Because there are some benefits, for some people, in that use case. The
problem is when those engineers do not consider all the many ways that sharing
could go wrong, and how many other people could be hurt. Discrimination,
denial of insurance, stalking, etc.

Personally, I think it would be incredibly beneficial for most software
engineers to spend time learning hacking and adversarial thinking. Teaching
the people who build these features to think about how the features could, and
will, be misused would likely help them build better, safer features.
(/soapbox :) )

------
vader1
I bought a Garmin the day Fitbit sold out and haven't touched the Fitbit
since. I'm very happy with the switch, the Garmin (Vivosmart 4) app and device
are actually better than Fitbit's on almost every account, so that's a double
win :)

The only unfortunate consequence is that Garmin's import service only imports
very coarse data from your Fitbit export, so all detailed historic records are
lost unless you manually dig through your Fitbit export files. I hope Garmin
will still provide a 100% complete importer in the future.

~~~
mavsman
Any idea how data exporting is with the Vivosmart 4? I thought about getting
one but one of my main use cases for getting a fitness tracker is exporting
data and then creating custom visualizations from it. I haven't dug into this
world much yet but curious what the best hardware would be for this use case.

~~~
smalley
If you sync to garmin connect its easy enough to manually download many
different formats of activity recording for fitness activities. I don't have a
vivosmart but I haven't had issues collecting data from my Fenix watch.

There is a service I do like from
[https://tapiriik.com/](https://tapiriik.com/) that will sync all your fitness
data across a bunch of common fitness apps (it helps when all your friends
want to link up for activities but nobody agrees on a single tracking
platform). One of the sync options is just to directly download all the raw
datafiles to dropbox which is pretty convenient.

If none of those sound good you could roll your own from the source code to
tapiriik which is available here:
[https://github.com/cpfair/tapiriik](https://github.com/cpfair/tapiriik) . It
does use some hacks to get around garmin not making all their APIs easy for
personal development.

------
llarsson
"Google could know which medications I take, and what any medical diagnosis's
I have," Carpenter said. "It makes me feel sick to my stomach."

Google already knows what diagnoses people have, simply because people have
been searching their symptoms. Remember when Google several years ago boasted
about predicting epidemics faster than the health care system, based on
searches?

~~~
daliusd
They are not doing this anymore [0] and I assume there is a reason for that.

UDPATE: Here is the reason: "And then, GFT failed—and failed
spectacularly—missing at the peak of the 2013 flu season by 140 percent. When
Google quietly euthanized the program, called Google Flu Trends (GFT), it
turned the poster child of big data into the poster child of the foibles of
big data. " [1]

[0]
[https://www.google.org/flutrends/about/](https://www.google.org/flutrends/about/)

[1] [https://www.wired.com/2015/10/can-learn-epic-failure-
google-...](https://www.wired.com/2015/10/can-learn-epic-failure-google-flu-
trends/)

~~~
ryanmercer
That just says they are no longer _publishing_ it. That is very intentional
phrasing.

>Google Flu Trends and Google Dengue Trends are no longer publishing current
estimates

~~~
daliusd
As well they say they are working with universities on that. Basically, they
are doing something most probably, but not necessary have something valuable.

------
nkrisc
I had recently begun considering a smart watch to replace my original Pebble,
and was considering Fitbit, but this is exactly why I won't be going with
them. I'm slowly De-Googling and spreading my digital life across multiple
providers instead of being at the mercy of a single one. I don't expect my
total privacy exposure will be significantly less, but it's more about not
having my email, media purchases, phone integration, and more all tied to just
Google.

~~~
9dl
What for you will use "smart watch"?

For real. There is not so much they can do and even less they can do properly

~~~
nkrisc
Same things I used my Pebble for.

Read and send canned responses to texts. See who's calling me. Read emails.
Check bus/train schedule.

Basically an extension of my phone. You can debate the "smart" label if you
like, but the semantics don't really concern me.

~~~
9dl
I'm more about "fitness and heath" aspect of such devices

And probably just hate small displays in general

------
TheCondor
I’ve owned/own 4 Fitbit products and was planning my change before this news.
The privacy thing is an issue but compared to your phone, it’s pretty small
potatoes. The issue that really irks is the products seem to take software
updates that make them worse, often with bad bugs. Like my ionic will vibrate
when a phone call comes in and continue to until the call ends. Bands wear out
too quickly and are expensive to replace. The watches themselves seem to die
at an almost predictable rate. Then the price is sort of in this sweet spot of
being inexpensive enough to not hurt you but expensive enough to be
frustrating when it’s not right.

I like the concept but I think Fitbit doesn’t have enough data points to be
really useful and then the execution is mediocre. Maybe google will be good
for them but I think I’ll switch

~~~
HaloZero
My blaze has the same calling issue...

The Blaze though has standard watch bands so you can replace it inexpensively
with any type of watch band as long it's the right size.

------
PMan74
27 million active Fitbit users at end of 2018.

"Several" _say_ they are getting rid of the devices because of a lack of trust
in Google. How many constitutes "several" is left for the reader to calculate.
27? 270? 2,700?

Poor journalism.

~~~
flattone
If I buy anyone in my family a home speaker, or Fitbit, or other thing for
holiday I'm getting laughed back into my car

~~~
Medicalidiot
Anecdotes don't necessarily correlate to populations.

~~~
flattone
They certainly don't but this entire discussion board is either people talking
about their views and their experiences or sharing information and resources
about things that correlate to populations so have I done something wrong
here?

------
drtillberg
Independent tech in the 2010s is like independent banking in the 2000s. You
find a decent partner and 6 months later you roll over and see BigCorp beside
you.

I struggle to see how this even is consistent with the spirit of the Fitbit
terms-- the purchase of the company transfers ownership of user data, which
Fitbit assured customers it would never do. Time for some common sense
concerning this consumer-unfriendly trend.

------
whoisjuan
The average Joe that uses Fitbit probably doesn't even know that this
transaction is happening. Sometimes we think people read the same news we read
and understand things the same way we understand them. That's definitely not
the case.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
That was my thought - even the people who know may or may not care, but
certainly everyone who owns a Fitbit doesn't know - my wife's work handed them
out for Christmas one year - those people won't have any idea.

I'm also not sure why a sudden distrust of Google over Fitbit. It's not like
Fitbit wasn't in a position to misuse your data as well. Google is just better
at it.

------
ChuckMcM
For me the change is ownership was just the last straw, their incredibly
crappy app and the difficulty in downloading my data was a more significant
factor.

~~~
criddell
Same here. I'm not going to use a health monitoring device from an advertising
company.

~~~
fluidcruft
I flip-flop on that. I mean you just get more relevant and useful ads? Running
shoes on sale? Cool if I need some.

But you also don't want ads publicizing private health info to people who are
nearby. Like, I don't want to sit down and watch "TV" at a friends house and
have to wonder why I'm seeing ad after ad for valtrex.

~~~
criddell
I used to be on the relevant ads side of the equation. Then I realized that I
have been pumping data into Google for two decades and I still get terrible
ads. I've let Google peek into many parts of my life and they aren't giving me
more useful ads now then they did in 1998.

Plus, if I need shoes it's not hard to find shoes. I order from Zappos and
they show up tomorrow.

------
kop316
For an anecdotal story, my finacee just went from a Fitbit to a Soleuos
Fitness tracker. The change in ownership was one reason, but the reason was
that the one she had broke 3 times within the first year of her having it. The
first two times she sent it back, and the third time she gave up on it and
didn't want to buy another Fitbit.

But I think seeing how Nest turned out is a great reason for not wanting to
buy a Fitbit after being bought my Google (forcing tighter integration to
Google, depreciating APIs to make it useful for other integrations, no really
new innovation).

------
rvz
Ideally I would prefer a SmartWatch that has AsteroidOS [0] preinstalled that
on the software-level is free from Google.

Such a watch might be very difficult to obtain. Even by flashing existing
Android Wear devices not only it requires several steps, but the unfortunate
lack of apps might be a big turn-off for many people.

Either that or my money will be going to an Apple Watch.

[0] [https://asteroidos.org/](https://asteroidos.org/)

~~~
worldsayshi
> Either that or my money will be going to an Apple Watch.

Because at least you're not the product?

------
mscasts
Pro tip for Fitbit users that want a great alternative:

[https://www.withings.com/](https://www.withings.com/)

~~~
npongratz
At first glance, these products looked compelling. But how is Withings
actually any better? Per [https://www.withings.com/us/en/legal/privacy-
policy](https://www.withings.com/us/en/legal/privacy-policy):

>"How do we use your personal data?

...

>Marketing, advertising and making recommendations[.] Your personal data may
be used to offer surveys, competitions, discount coupons or events in which
you are free to participate. We may provide you with information on our
Products, such as new features, sales offers from Withings or our partners, or
to announce new Products. You may opt out of marketing offers by logging into
your Withings account and managing your notification preferences.

...

>Modification of the present Policy[.] Withings may modify the present Policy
with or without previous notice, block the access to the website, or change
its access conditions "

Will all due respect: eff that. As others have noted here and elsewhere,
marketing and advertising -- especially that using my personal data -- is
adversarial.

I paid for a thing, just let me have that thing.

And before anyone unhelpfully suggests, "they have an opt-out policy"... well,
we all understand that once your intimate, valuable data is siphoned off your
wrist, the horse has left the barn, right? That genie is out of the bottle,
that bell has rung, and all kinds of other euphemisms that illustrate how the
data is no longer in your control, and all the opt-outs in the world are not
going to actually delete all your data. It's been forked to Utah, backed up,
sharded, "anonymized" and combined with all the other data you've generated on
devices sold by other companies -- for every single "partner" that paid them,
as well as everyone who did not pay them, in the cases of Utah and corporate
espionage.

An actual alternative would be a device that has no connectivity to my pocket
surveillance slab or anything with an uncontrollable baseband processor, nor
connectivity to the Internet generally. Let me be in actual control.

Thanks for the advice, but I'm sticking with my Casio dumbwatch. Doesn't peep
on my daily activities, but it accurately tells time and I love that thing.
Bonus is that I have to think about its battery only once a decade.

~~~
mscasts
Well, if the data is never leaving your wrist you will never see any graphs
and never actually enjoy the great things a training watch gives you.

Sure they may store my personal data and I would prefer if they didn't sell it
to any third party. I would also prefer a product which can store information
locally on the phone but never sync it to the "cloud".

The thing is, there is no such products because people are stupid and would be
furious if they switch phones and their data was lost on them because they
didn't understand that the data was only stored locally and never left the
device.

I would buy such a product, if it existed, but it don't AFAIK. Fitbit stored
the same amount of data as Withings do, it's just because Google bought them
that people are worried.

Withings is basically a rival to Fitbit and since you don't want the data to
ever leave your wrist, this sort of product is clearly not for you.

~~~
npongratz
I think the point I was making is not whether the data is allowed to leave my
wrist, but to "let me be in actual control" of my data.

In a world of USB sticks, micro SD cards, and $5 Raspberry Pis, I can imagine
human-friendly ways of sharing data that don't involve tethering my wrist to
someone else's computer.

> The thing is, there is no such products because people are stupid and would
> be furious if they switch phones and their data was lost on them because
> they didn't understand that the data was only stored locally and never left
> the device.

"[P]eople are stupid"? I'd like to give people a bit more credit. They can
move data around, without surprise or fury: plenty still use Ethernet cables,
USB sticks, iPod Shuffles, Blurays, etc.

------
goatinaboat
Fitbit users are getting rid of the devices because previously all the
services were bundled with the cost of the physical device but now they want
you to buy the device _and_ subscribe to Fitbit Premium.

Source: first-hand contact with Fitbit users in the Real World

------
jbarberu
I used to have a fitbit, it broke within the warranty time and sold the
replacement rather than actually keep using it. Since then I've been thinking
of getting a new one, but the Google acquisition instead prompted me to have
my account deleted.

------
mavhc
Bought a device that uploads data to the internet, surprised when it's not
used for their benefit.

Stop buying devices that require internet access, you have a supercomputer in
your pocket that they can connect to. And a home network.

------
omarhaneef
I basically use Fitbit for sleep tracking more than any other feature. And I
used to be a loyal Jawbone Up customer (yes, replacing it every few months
when the band snapped) for the same reason.

This may be off topic since it has nothing to do with this acquisition, but
does anyone know of a equivalent or superior sleep tracker that you wear on
your arm?

~~~
XCSme
I am afraid to sleep with my Fitbit, I think I would wake up with battle scars
on my face.

------
guyzero
This is fine, people can do what they want, but they're deluding themselves if
they think small companies are perfect stewards of data. How exactly do these
people know that Fitbit wasn't already selling their data using it in a way
they don't approve of?

~~~
macintux
One reason I like sharing smaller slices of my privacy with smaller companies
is that it makes it harder to correlate everything.

I have no doubt Google can tie together every aspect of my life if I let them.

------
abalone
_> Google explicitly said in the deal announcement that it won’t sell their
personal or health data._

That’s not all. Google also said they will not use your data to target ads. In
a forward looking statement about the deal. That’s significant.

~~~
JohnFen
This sounds snarky, but I honestly don't intend it that way... Google's
statements on this are only significant if you trust Google.

------
parliament32
For what it's worth: I switched from Fitbit to Garmin about a year back, but
hearing about the Google purchase actually made me log back in to my old
Fitbit account and request deletion of all my data.

------
dawg-
I don't think Google cares about this relative handful of people. They will
keep moving on and 90% of society will go with them.

I often wonder what will happen to the few individuals who are willing to push
tech/privacy issues so far that they will be okay with being left behind. In
50 years will we have communities of amish-like people who choose to continue
living as if it's 2005?

------
eecc
I saw some while killing time at an electronics store. My thought train went
something like:

Uh, nice. Oh wait. Fitbit? Wasn’t it just acquired by google? Ah I need to get
off gmail too..

------
koolhead17
And yet they use Android daily. :D

~~~
criddell
Privacy is becoming something only the wealthy can afford.

------
martin_a
I'm using a Fitbit and I'm thinking about just uninstalling the app.

The watch is set up like I want it to, it can show my heartbeat during
training, the steps of the day and the time. Obviously without the app and
data synchronisation I will not get weekly fitness reports, but I don't really
care about those.

Maybe my next watch will be a dumb one again. Didn't get that much out of a
smart watch as I expected.

------
savrajsingh
You might be able to estimate how many users are jumping ship by looking at
the resale market (say on eBay) and if it’s spiked recently.

------
anonymouswacker
I'm just an n=1, but I got rid of my two Fitbits (returned to Costco as they
were still within 90 days) primarily for this reason.

------
imgabe
Personally I stopped using Fitbit a long time ago because the band came
unglued and it fell apart.

------
pbalau
I find this very naive. The op is not trusting Google because someone told
them not to trust Google. They were trusting Fitbit because nobody told them
not to.

How did Fitbit make their money to pay for the online services? Only from
selling devices? You really believe that?

------
make3
not a single statistic or data point. this is really garbage content

------
dumbw4tch
Are there any good alternatives out there? (leaving Apple/Google products
aside).

------
C14L
They should probably send a GDPA request to delete all their data as well.

------
krtkush
Ordered a Garmin few days back for the same reasons.

~~~
cbHXBY1D
Same and I'm kicking myself for not switching sooner. If you care about
improving your running ability then getting a Garmin is a no-brainer. The
PacePro feature which just arrived on my FR245 is incredible.

------
sergeev
I am wearing xiaomi band. [trolling] What could be a problem?

------
867-5309
_some_ say

------
acollins1331
Fitbit is a terrible product. Enjoy paying smart watch prices for a tiny
screen that tells you your heart rate.

~~~
jrockway
I have a watch with gears in it that only tells me the time. It cost more than
an Apple Watch, too. How stupid of me!

