Fitbark GPS

One sure fire way to make a privacy researcher grumpy is to sign them up to your email list without consent when they email you to ask questions about privacy. This is what they did to us every time we sent them an email with questions. Bad form, Fitbark, bad form.

More bad form comes in all the data Fitbark seems to collect on their users, both human and canine. They collect personal information on you such as name, email, physical address, birthday, phone number, and more. They collect your dog’s health, location and behavioral information too. They also say they collect data when you link your human fitness tracker and data about you from other companies related to their brands. All in all, it seems they try to collect a lot of data. And in Fitbark’s own words, they use all that data to “sell you stuff.” Finally, Fitbark may use anonymized data for marketing and promotional use, and for sale to third parties. This is a good time to point out that many privacy researchers claim it can be relatively easy to de-anonymize such data, especially location data.

This GPS version of the Fitbark tracks your dog's movements and whereabouts using all the ways--Bluetooth. WiFi. and GPS. That's a lot of ways to track something and share them with a company that really seems to like your data a lot. What’s the worst that could happen? Well, it’s one thing to spy on your pup to keep them safe. It’s a whole ‘nother thing to spy on you and your pup to “sell you stuff” and then potentially sell that (hopefully) anonymized data that could be linked back to you through your location. We’ve seen bad things come out of that practice.