Comment Re:Fitbit's fault (Score 1) 297
I own a Fitbit. It was Fitbit's fault. Apparently, though, nobody at Slashdot thought to actually look at Fitbit's site:
We take the privacy of all Fitbit users very seriously. To address some recent concerns about logged activities of Fitbit users showing up in search engine results, we have taken several immediate steps.
Some quick background:
- As you know, Fitbit users can decide voluntarily to log their physical activities. You must do this manually and this information is not collected automatically.
- When setting up their profiles, users have had the option to make their profile activity records private, though the default setting has been to make this information public.
As of Sunday [July 3], we have taken the following steps to protect our users’ privacy:
- All activity records on Fitbit.com were hidden from view from both other users and search engines, no matter what the user’s current privacy setting. We have also updated our default settings for new users for activity sharing to “private.”
- We submitted requests to Google and Yahoo/Bing to remove any indexed user profile pages from their search engines. As a result, user profile pages and their activity records have already disappeared from Google and should disappear within several days at other search engines. Once removed, previously indexed activity records should not be accessible to the public at all from that search engine.
- For now, we have removed other personally identifiable information from users’ Fitbit profile pages regardless of privacy settings.
We are dedicated to making this the best fitness platform possible with users in full control of their data. For many people, sharing information is an important motivator for them to achieve their fitness goals. We will be in touch with our users about new choices they will have when they want to share information.
James Park
CEO, Co-Founder, Fitbit