Oura Ring
Tracking health biometrics has its merits. And wearing a watch 24/7 can be cumbersome. Oura makes a ring that tracks your health stats and aims to help you sleep better and feel better. And it seems the rich and famous--from Prince Harry to the NBA, WNBA, and more--have taken a shine to this little ring. It tracks sleep, steps, calories, as well as heart rate, respiratory rate, temperature, inactive times, and even naps. Oura offers up not one but two privacy policies that cover everything from the device and app to a privacy policy for sharing data with your doctor, trainer, or coach. It's different, and maybe that's a good thing.
What could happen if something goes wrong?
From what we can tell, the Finnish company that makes the Ōura does a pretty good job with the privacy of all the personal data this little ring collects. Ōura says they don’t sell or rent your personal information or share the Ōura app data with third party advertisers. This is great.
This device does track your biometric data closely. So closely, in fact, that there have been academic studies done that show data from the Ōura ring can help predict the start of covid-related symptoms and maybe even pregnancy. It’s a good thing Ōura seems to protect that data carefully. It’d be very weird for a company to know you’re pregnant before you do.
Tips to protect yourself
- Consider turning on a “Ring airplane mode” feature which allows to proactively disable all radio transmission from the ring, which causes the ring to lose connection to the app, at the moments you do not want your data be collected.
Can it snoop on me?
Camera
Device: No
App: No
Microphone
Device: No
App: No
Tracks location
Device: No
App: Yes
What can be used to sign up?
Yes
Phone
No
Third-party account
No
What data does the company collect?
Personal
Email, gender, date of birth
Body related
Heart rate, movement, sleep data, temperature, and more
Social
Partners that you share your data with, for example, your doctor, fitness trainer, etc.
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?
No known incidents in the last 3 years.
Can this product be used offline?
While some parts of the experience require an internet connection to stream cloud-enabled content, the daily Sleep, Readiness, and Activity scores and many other features do work without an internet connection.
User-friendly privacy information?
Simple language
Links to privacy information
Does this product meet our Minimum Security Standards?
Encryption
Encryption in transit
Strong password
Security updates
Manages vulnerabilities
Privacy policy
Does the product use AI?
You can connect different third-party AI apps. Descriptions of most machine learning-supported features are given in our blog at https://ouraring.com/blog/, together with links to publications where they exist.
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