
Garmin Vivoactive
Stressed out? Overwhelmed? Neck in knots? Stomach a mess? Garmin's Vivoactive fitness trackers have you covered. They do all the usual fitness tracking stuff like activity, heart rate, sleep monitoring and more. They also track the time interval between each heartbeat and use that to figure out how stressed you are. If you get too stressed, they will vibrate and remind you to take a moment to breath. Deep breath everyone, this sounds like just what we need these days.
What could happen if something goes wrong?
When your *Privacy Not Included researcher wanted to get a fitness tracker, Garmin is what she went with. Garmin seems to do one of the best jobs handling the privacy and security of all the personal data fitness trackers collect. They did suffer that very public ransomware attack in 2020. Ransomware attacks suck and it seems no company is safe from them these days.
Garmin says they don’t sell your personal data to anyone. This is great. Garmin also seems to do a good job with what data they do share, which doesn’t seem to be too much. They ask for explicit consent before sharing things like location data for navigation purposes and emails for marketing.
Garmin may share or sell de-identified aggregate data collected by the Garmin Connect app with third parties to do things like make their features better or for research purposes. This doesn’t worry us too much. Although now is a good time to remind you that it’s been found to be pretty easy to de-anonymize some types of data and track down an individual’s patterns, especially with location data. If you’re worried about this, you can opt out of using the Garmin Connect app, you’ll just lose a lot of cool data about your sleep, stress, and menstrual cycles if you do.
Is our researcher happy with her decision to get a Garmin fitness tracker? Yes, she is. Although it does make her a little nervous that she now leaves her phone's Bluetooth on all the time. But hey, knowing that body battery score is really cool!
Tips to protect yourself
- Be very careful who you chose to share your Garmin wellness data with.
- Adjust your privacy settings in the Garmin Connect app to suit your comfort level.
- Don't connect your Garmin app to any social networks like Facebook.
Can it snoop on me?
Camera
Device: No
App: Yes
Microphone
Device: No
App: No
Tracks location
Device: Yes
App: Yes
What can be used to sign up?
Yes
Phone
No
Third-party account
No
What data does the company collect?
Personal
Name, email address, gender (optional), age (optional), date of birth (optional), photos (optional), location
Body related
Tracks steps, active minutes, and hours of sleep.
Social
You can add friends to see their activity data
How does the company use this data?
How can you control your data?
What is the company’s known track record of protecting users’ data?
They did suffer that very public ransomware attack in 2020. No user data was compromised during this attack.
Can this product be used offline?
User-friendly privacy information?
Links to privacy information
Does this product meet our Minimum Security Standards?
Encryption
Garmin devices and apps use a combination of asymmetric and symmetric encryption appropriate to the nature and function of the product, and data stored/transmitted.
Strong password
In order to use companion apps, an account with a strong password is required.
Security updates
Manages vulnerabilities
Privacy policy
Garmin use Machine Learning (ML) to provide personalized insights to customers who wish to receive them as they pursue their fitness and wellness goals.
Is this AI untrustworthy?
What kind of decisions does the AI make about you or for you?
Garmin says in their privacy policy, "Garmin does not make any decisions based on algorithms or other automated processing that significantly affect you."
Comments
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