iRobot Roombas

iRobot and their robot vacuums are one of the good guys when it comes to privacy. That’s why they make our “Best Of” list. And why Consumer Reports named them the most privacy and secure robot vacuums they review. Shoot, we even hired an independent cybersecurity firm to look into iRobot Roomba’s privacy and security and they came back with a report that said, “Despite the fact that rigorous testing approaches and techniques were instigated against the Roomba Vacuum i3 … no issues of any kind were identified during the course of this review.” Good work iRobot!

That’s the good news. Now for the worrisome news. The reason we asked an independent cybersecurity firm to look into iRobot’s robot vacuum cleaners is because we wanted to confirm that they are as good at privacy and security as we thought (and it seems they are). Because not-very-good-guy Amazon announced in August, 2022 that they are acquiring good guy iRobot for about $1.7 billion. And this has us -- and many other experts -- concerned about the privacy of all the personal information these robot vacuums can collect on you and your home going forward.

Here’s why: Amazon loves data. They like to know as much about you as they can so they can target you with the ads and product recommendations that will sell you more stuff. iRobot’s privacy policy says they can collect lots of data about you and your home -- things like your home’s floor plan, the objects in your home and where they are located, cleaning schedules, your location, name, email, device and advertising IDs, and even images from your home if you chose to share those from their vacuums that use camera-based navigation. That’s a lot of info about your and your home that Amazon could potentially use to know more about you, target you with ads, and sell you more stuff

iRobot currently makes it fairly clear they want to do a good job protecting and respecting all the data their little roving vacuum robots can collect. They don’t sell your data (neither will Amazon, but Amazon doesn’t need to as they are the advertising giant others pay to use the data they have on you to target you with ads and promotions). iRobot also says they won’t share your personal information for third party advertising (they may share some app and website usage info for targeted advertising…this is super common). This is good. However, we can’t say Amazon will do the same. Amazon wants to own that data on you to target you with more ads and sell you more stuff. As one privacy expert put it, “People tend to think of Amazon as an online seller company, but really Amazon is a surveillance company. That is the core of its business model, and that’s what drives its monopoly power and profit,” says Evan Greer, director of the nonprofit digital rights organization Fight for the Future..

All this makes it feel quaint that a few years back iRobot got into a bit of hot water because it appeared they were mapping users' homes with their Roomba robot vacuum cleaners with potential plans to sell that data. Since then, iRobot stepped up and made it a point to show they don't sell users' personal data about their lives or homes. And you can choose to not have map data transmitted to iRobot at all. All this is great…and shows why the news of the pending sale of iRobot to Amazon isn’t so great.

It used to be the biggest concern you had with your Roomba was it rolling through dog poo on the floor and creating a huge mess. Now the new J series Roombas come with what they call P.O.O.P. (Pet Owner Official Promise). According to the company, the P.O.O.P promise means certain robot vacuums ”will steer clear of your pet’s waste as it gets down to its own business. If it doesn’t, we'll replace your robot for free.” Roomba accomplishes this poop detection with a camera and artificial intelligence. Does this raise some privacy concerns? Yes. Sensors for navigation are generally a safer bet than cameras in your home. However, we do like the measures Roomba takes to protect users from their cameras, like only recognizing a few objects (including poo) and shutting the camera off if it detects a human. Will Amazon keep these measures in place to protect their users? We don’t know.

What’s the worst that could happen? Well, the sale of iRobot to Amazon could (will likely) go through. And once Amazon takes over iRobot, they could turn it from a privacy success story to a privacy nightmare. And all those people who bought a Roomba partly because they were good at privacy could now have their personal information transferred over to Amazon as part of the sale. And now Amazon could have a floor plan mapping, objects in your home tracking, roving camera sending data back to the retail and ad targeting Big Tech giant. And, well, your privacy could never be the same. Dear Amazon, would you please not screw up iRobot’s robot vacuums and their strong privacy and security!?? Please! Can we just have one nice thing for privacy these days?