Amazon Halo View

We do want to give Amazon credit. They took the microphones out when they made the Halo View (their Halo Band still has built in microphones). And while they said this wasn’t for privacy reasons, it’s a step forward for privacy. Users can still choose to use the app and microphone on their phone to listen for the tone of voice analysis, but it’s not built into the fitness tracker you wear on your arm. Because we like to see steps made to protect users’ privacy, we’ve decided to not give Amazon’s Halo View our *Privacy Not Included warning label.

Still, there are some things consumers should be aware of. The problem for us isn't that all the data this device collects will be kept insecurely, Amazon generally does a good job securing your data. The problem is what Amazon can potentially use all this data for. While Amazon states that it currently does not use Halo health data for marketing, product recommendations, or advertising, the Halo is still collecting a lot of personal body-related information about you--including potentially listening to what you say and measuring your tone if you chose to enable that feature in the app on your phone. And those images in your underwear they ask you to upload, yeah, those too. What can give you insights into your health, could also potentially give others information about things like your emotional state while you are looking at something, how attracted you are to someone, or even if you've been drinking. That level of personal information is not something we want Amazon--or any other tech company--potentially knowing.

Amazon proudly states they are not in the business of selling your personal information to others, which is good. However, a good question to ask is, why would Amazon need to sell your data when they have their own advertising and retail juggernaut to use your data to sell you more stuff? Because Amazon is in the business of selling you more stuff. This means Amazon collects a whole lot of data on you -- records of your TV viewing habits, shopping habits, Alexa search requests, the music you stream, the podcasts you listen to, when you turn your lights on and off, when you lock your doors, and on and on and on.

What’s the worst that could happen? Well, you could decide to turn on Amazon Halo’s tone policing features in the app and they could listen to you all day long and determine that if you’re a man, your tone was “opinionated” and if you’re a woman your tone was “dismissive” or “condescending” and you could believe that and as a woman, think you should speak up less and as a man think you should speak up more, and hey, that is not at all what the world needs right now. Or, maybe someday in the future Amazon could decide to change their privacy policies and use that health data to try and sell you more stuff. That wouldn’t be cool and we don’t know that Amazon would ever do that (we sure hope not!). The question really comes down to, how much do you trust Amazon?