Kinsa Smart Thermometers

Kinsa Smart Thermometers

Kinsa, Inc.
Bluetooth

Überprüft am: 8. November 2021

|
|

Mozillas Meinung

|
Abstimmungsergebnis: Ziemlich unheimlich

Thanks to the coronavirus, thermometers are a must have these days. Kinsa's smart thermometers take your temperature like a regular thermometer--there's one that does it in the ear and another the oral, under arm, anal way. What makes these thermometers interesting is that they connect to Kinsa's app via Bluetooth and give you personalized guidance based on your symptoms. They also take the health data they collect from the over two million thermometers in use and anonymously aggregate this date to see where illness outbreaks are happening down to a county or zip code level in the United States. You can even access this information at their site healthweather.us. This might worry some privacy experts, while making many public health experts working to battle illness outbreaks happy.

Was könnte passieren, wenn etwas schiefgeht?

Kinsa seems to do a pretty good job with privacy and security. They say they won’t sell your personal information, which is good. They may de-identify and aggregate your personal information to create "Illness Signals" to help inform where and when illness is spreading. According to a 2018 NY Times article, they can use this de-identified data to target ads to an area based on illness outbreaks, or as they state in their privacy policy, “Help companies direct their marketing to sicker areas.” That sounds creepier than it probably actually is...we hope.

And de-identifying personal data is generally an OK practice and can help better public health, although many privacy researchers will point out it can be relatively easy to de-anonymize such data. If you’re looking for a smart thermometer that doesn’t share this sort of aggregated data, the Withings Thermo currently doesn't share health data to help determine public health outbreaks in an area.

What's the worst that could happen? You could record your symptoms in the app. Kinsa sees that you and seventeen others like you in your county have the same symptoms, alert public health officials to a potential outbreak of illness, and public health officials step in to stop further spread of the illness. That doesn't sound too bad in the age of coronavirus.

Tipps zu Ihrem Schutz

  • Be very careful what third party companies you consent to share you health data with. If you do decided to share your health data with another company, read their privacy policy to see how they protect, secure, and share or sell your data.
  • mobile

Kann es mich ausspionieren? Information

Kamera

Gerät: Nein

App: Nein

Mikrofon

Gerät: Nein

App: Nein

Verfolgt den Standort

Gerät: Nein

App: Ja

Was kann zur Registrierung verwendet werden?

Signup is not required to use the Kinsa thermometer. Signup with email address is required to use the Kinsa app's full features.

Welche Daten sammelt das Unternehmen?

Wie nutzt das Unternehmen die Daten?

Kinsa promises to not sell personal information. According to New York Times in 2018, Kinsa does share non-personal data for targeting ads. According to Kinsa's privacy principles, they 'Help companies direct their marketing to sicker areas.'

Kinsa may provide research institutions certain de-identified health data for research purposes to better predict and stop the spread of infectious disease.

If you opt-in to share IDENTIFIABLE health data with an organization, the data specified at opt-in (examples: temperature values, self check red/green status results) will be shared with the organization you have enrolled with. Users may verify and opt-out of sharing identifiable data with an organization at any time via the mobile app settings.

Wie können Sie Ihre Daten kontrollieren?

After 1 year of user inactivity, data is deleted. Users can also delete their usage data.

Wie ist das Unternehmen in der Vergangenheit mit den Daten über seine Verbraucher umgegangen?

Durchschnittlich

No known incidents in the last 3 years.

Kann dieses Produkt offline genutzt werden?

Ja

Benutzerfreundliche Informationen zum Datenschutz?

Nein

Links zu Datenschutzinformationen

Erfüllt dieses Produkt unsere Mindestsicherheitsstandards? Information

Ja

Verschlüsselung

Ja

Sicheres Passwort

Nicht verfügbar

Sicherheits-Updates

Ja

Umgang mit Schwachstellen

Ja

Datenschutzrichtlinie

Ja

Verwendet das Produkt KI? Information

Ja

Ist diese KI nicht vertrauenswürdig?

Nicht zu bestimmen

Welche Entscheidungen trifft die KI über Sie oder für Sie?

The AI does not make decisions for the users, according to Kinsa.

Gibt das Unternehmen transparent an, wie die KI funktioniert?

Nicht zu bestimmen

Hat der Benutzer die Kontrolle über die KI-Funktionen?

Nicht zu bestimmen

*Datenschutz nicht inbegriffen

Tauchen Sie tiefer ein

  • What's your local illness risk?
    Kinsa Link wird in einem neuen Tab geöffnet
  • “Smart” thermometer identifies likely pandemic hotspots
    Jeff Rowe Link wird in einem neuen Tab geöffnet

Kommentare

Möchten Sie einen Kommentar loswerden? Schreiben Sie uns.