Wyze Band
Review date: 11/02/2020
Wyze makes the cheapest fitness tracker on our list. And interestingly, it comes with Alexa built-in. Which means this band you wear on your wrist all the time comes with microphones built-in (but no speaker, so you can't ask Alexa the weather, just to turn lights on and such). The idea from Wyze is to let you control your smart home devices, like Wyze's smart plug, from your wrist. It tracks all the usual, heart rate, steps, calories, and connects to your phone via Bluetooth to get alerts and share fitness data. The Wyze Band is affordable but maybe having microphones on your wrist all the time from a cheap fitness tracker with a bit of a checkered privacy past isn't worth it?
What could happen if something goes wrong
It doesn't really matter if Wyze says they won't sell the personal information they collect on you with this fitness tracker if they don't do a good job of securing that personal information where they store it. In December 2019, Wyze databases holding millions of customers' information were exposed to the public. This is bad. Should you trust Wyze with your personal information? You can and you'll likely be OK. But if they don't step up and do a better job securing your stress levels, sleep patterns, email address, gender, or even audio requests, some bad person could access that info and learn a whole lot about you. What's the worst that could happen? Oh, maybe someone could use your biometric data to learn your drinking habits. They see that you tend to drink a bit too much on Saturdays and start targeting you then with ads to buy those expensive records you collect. You drunk buy way too much stuff and end up deep in debt. Perhaps it's not likely to happen. It's also not out of the question.
Privacy
Can it snoop on me?
Camera
Device: No
App: Yes
Microphone
Device: Yes
App: Yes
Tracks Location
Device: No
App: Yes
What is required to sign up?
Yes
Phone
No
Third party account
No
What data does it collect?
Personal
Name, email, birth year, gender
Biometric
Heart rate, movement, sleep data, menstrual cycle, voice recordings (collected by Amazon), 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?
In December 2019, Wyze databases holding millions of customers' information were exposed to the public.
Can this product be used offline?
User friendly privacy information?
Links to privacy information
Security
Does this product meet our Minimum Security Standards?
Encryption
Strong password
Security updates
Manages vulnerabilities
You can submit security vulnerabilities to Wyze: https://wyze.com/security-report
Privacy policy
The privacy statement mentions audio data, but there's no explaination of what is being collected and what happens to it.
