Garmin Forerunner Series
Review date: 11/02/2020
If you're looking for a gadget that knows more about you than you know about yourself, this is it. The list of sensors on these watches include GPS, glonass, galileo, heart rate, barometric altimeter, compass, gyroscope, accelerometer, thermometer, and pulse ox. All those sound super cool. super nerdy, and super all up in your business. Not only do these watches have a zillion sensors, they also handle your music, calendar, texts, have the ability to up your golf game (seriously), and even gives you a way to send an alert if you've fallen and can't get up.
What could happen if something goes wrong
When one of our researchers for this guide wanted to get a fitness tracker, Garmin is what she went with. In large part because Garmin seems to do one of the best jobs handling the privacy and security of all the personal data fitness trackers collect of the many options out there. Garmin doesn't share or sell your data for marketing purposes. And it de-identifies the data it collects so it's (hopefully) not personally identifiable. We say hopefully because, depending on the kind of data, it’s been found to be pretty easy to de-anonymize these data sets and track down an individual’s patterns, especially with location data. Is our researcher happy with her decision so far? Yes, she is. Although it does make her a little nervous that she now leaves her phone's Bluetooth on all the time.
Privacy
Can it snoop on me?
Camera
Device: No
App: Yes
Microphone
Device: No
App: No
Tracks Location
Device: Yes
App: Yes
What is required to sign up?
Yes
Phone
No
Third party account
No
What data does it collect?
Personal
Name, email address
Biometric
Heart rate, movement, sleep data, blood oxygen levels, menstrual cycle, and more
Social
How does it use this data?
How can you control your data?
What is the company’s known track record for protecting users’ data?
Garmin was subject to a ransomware attack that took it offline for 3 days in July of 2020. No customer data was compromised.
Can this product be used offline?
User friendly privacy information?
Links to privacy information
Security
Does this product meet our Minimum Security Standards?
Encryption
Uses encryption in transit and at rest.
Strong password
Security updates
Manages vulnerabilities
Garmin doesn't have an official bug bounty program, but it invites responsible disclosure of security vulnerabilities.
Privacy policy
Garmin has a privacy summary page that highlights the high level points in a easy to read format.
