Jabra Elite Earbuds

Jabra Elite Earbuds

Jabra
Bluetooth

Review date: Nov. 1, 2023

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Mozilla says

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People voted: A little creepy

If you're more the sporty type or if you just don't like wearing big, over the ear headphones, Jabra's Elite series of little earbuds might be for you. They do all the things: noise cancelling, custom sound levels for music, multiple microphones for calls, filtering out noise, and listening for you to ask Alexa, Siri, or Google to play that next song with up to 32 hours of battery life. The latest models, Elite 8 Active and Elite 10, might even be the toughest, most advanced earbuds ever? Wow! All shoved right into your ears. Best of all, Jabra seems happy to sell you their earbuds and not sell your data.

What could happen if something goes wrong?

Jabra -- a Denmark based company who privacy policy follows the EU'sGDPR privacy laws (which are way better than the privacy laws the US has...as the US doesn't have a federal consumer privacy law) seems to do a good job with privacy and security. For the most part, they sell hardware (their snazzy headphones), not you. They say clearly in their privacy policy, “under no circumstances will jabra sell your personal information.” This is good. They do say they can share some personal information with third parties, which is pretty normal, and they add that, “These third parties may not process your personal data for their own purposes.” Yay!

Yep, it seems like while other companies that make wearables were cooking up ways to use your personal information, Jabra was busy studying 62,000 ear scans to better design these buds to stay in your ears -- a much more worthy endeavor!

And really, these earbuds just don’t collect a whole lot of data on you. If you download the app to control certain features, which isn’t required to use these little headphones but sure makes things nicer, you’ll have to give them some basic personal information. But even the personal information you do enter into the app, like your gender, profile picture, or birthday, won't be sent to Jabra unless you share it. All in all, these earbuds feel pretty private. They are even the chosen earbuds of this *Privacy Not Included researcher!

Tips to protect yourself

  • Consider deleting your location data in Jabra+ app
  • Consider using your headphones without connecting it to an app. This way, you may decrease amount of data collected
  • Use your device privacy controls to limit access to your personal information via app (do not give access to your camera, microphone, images, location unless necessary)
  • Keep your app regularly updated
  • Limit ad tracking via your device (eg on iPhone go to Privacy -> Advertising -> Limit ad tracking) and biggest ad networks (for Google, go to Google account and turn off ad personalization)
  • Request your data be deleted once you stop using the app. Simply deleting an app from your device usually does not erase your personal data.
  • When starting a sign-up, do not agree to tracking of your data if possible.
  • mobile

Can it snoop on me? information

Camera

Device: No

App: No

Microphone

Device: Yes

App: Yes

Tracks location

Device: No

App: Yes

What can be used to sign up?

What data does the company collect?

How does the company use this data?

General Privacy Policy

"Jabra will generally limit sharing your personal data and always only to the extent necessary. Under no circumstances will Jabra sell your personal information; sharing your information will take place on a need to know basis only and only to fulfil the above-mentioned purposes. However, we might share your personal information with suppliers, business partners and vendors that we work with to assist our business (meaning service providers, technical support, supply services, and financial institutions); other collaborators (such as company benefits as internet providers); group entities; and/or public authorities."

"Certain business partners and vendors process personal information on behalf of Jabra and may only process your personal data in accordance with the instructions given by Jabra and in compliance with this privacy policy and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures. These third parties may not process your personal data for their own purposes"

"Your personal information will be stored for as long as it is necessary to fulfil the purposes described above and comply with minimum retention periods under applicable law. In general, this means we keep data for a minimum time and data will be deleted when no longer necessary under the purpose for which it was collected."

"Like many others, Jabra uses cookies. Cookies enables us to provide a better user experience, so any features on the Jabra sites are dependent on using and storing cookies. You can see our policy on our website."

Privacy Policy for Applications

"If you want to use the location service or the workout performance, you will share the following information:

Location information – opt-in: Only, when you enable a location-enabled service, we collect and process information about your actual location, like gps signals sent by your mobile device. we may also use various other technologies to determine location, such as sensor data from your device that may provide information of nearby wi-fi access points and cell towers. when you opt-in the location service you agree and acknowledge we can collect and process this information."

"Jabra may share aggregated, non-personally identifiable information publicly and with partners, which could be publishers, advertisers or connected sites. for example, jabra may share information publicly to display trends about the general use of our applications."

How can you control your data?

General Privacy Policy

"Your personal information will be stored for as long as it is necessary to fulfil the purposes described above and comply with minimum retention periods under applicable law. In general, this means we keep data for a minimum time and data will be deleted when no longer necessary under the purpose for which it was collected."

"We hereby inform you, that when the processing of your personal data is based on your consent, you may withdraw your consent at any time. However, please note that this does not affect Jabra's processing of your personal data prior to withdrawal of your consent. We encourage you to opt-out or use un-subscribe when the consent is withdrawn, however you may also withdraw your consent by writing directly to our Data Protection Officer, ref. above.

Your rights
As the data subject we would like to inform that Jabra has taken all necessary and adequate steps to protect your personal data and ensure your rights. Please note, that there may be more conditions or limitations to these rights than stated below.

Right of access
You have the right to request access to your personal data which we have processed about you and additional information in relation to the processing.

Right to rectification
You have the right to get inaccurate personal data that we have stored about you rectified. That includes completion of incomplete personal data.

Right to erasure (right to be forgotten)
Under certain circumstances, you have the right to erasure, which means that upon your request, we will erase stored personal data about you before our normal retention period ends.

Right to object
Under certain circumstances, you have the right to object at any time to our processing of personal data concerning you. You have an unconditional right to object to the processing of your personal data for direct marketing purposes.

Right to restriction
Under certain circumstances you have the right to restrict our processing of personal data concerning you.

Right to data portability
Under certain circumstances, you have the right to receive the personal data concerning you in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format, and the right to have your personal data transferred to another data controller."

"We provide users the opportunity to opt out of receiving any further communications from Jabra when they receive distributions via e-mail. At the end of each email message, instructions on how to unsubscribe and be removed from the mailing list database are included. Jabra gives users the option of contacting Jabra at any time to remove their information from our database or to stop receiving future electronic distributions."

Privacy Policy for Applications

"You can at any time stop all collection of information by any jabra app, by uninstalling the app. you can do this by using the standard uninstall processes which is available as part of your mobile device or via the mobile app marketplace.
We aim to retain any information already collected only for as long as you use the jabra apps and for a minimum and reasonable period thereafter. we only retain information in accordance with applicable legislation."

What is the company’s known track record of protecting users’ data?

Average

No known incidents in the last 3 years.

Child Privacy Information

"Jabra does not intentionally collect personal data from anyone under the age of 16. Nor do we entice children to divulge any personal data, by means of special prizes or games. Jabra web site visitors must be at least 18 years old to participate in any Jabra sponsored on-line contests or giveaways. Jabra encourages parents to participate actively in their children’s Internet experience. If Jabra learns that the company has obtained personal data pertaining to a child under the age of 16, the information will be deleted from the database."

Can this product be used offline?

Yes

User-friendly privacy information?

No

Jabra has two different privacy policies -- a general one and an app specific one -- that could be easy to confuse.

Links to privacy information

Does this product meet our Minimum Security Standards? information

Yes

Encryption

Yes

Strong password

N/A

Bluetooth connection

Security updates

Yes

Manages vulnerabilities

Yes

Privacy policy

Yes

Does the product use AI? information

Yes

You can connect to Alexa or Google assistant.

Is this AI untrustworthy?

N/A

What kind of decisions does the AI make about you or for you?

If you connect to Alexa or Google Assistant, the voice recognition is used.

Is the company transparent about how the AI works?

N/A

Does the user have control over the AI features?

Yes

*Privacy Not Included

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