I want to assure you that the story I’m about to tell you is not made up.
An Illinois woman has filed a class action lawsuit against Ottawa-based Standard Innovation for sending the company information about how her smart vibrator was used.
The We-Vibe Rave was connected to the internet via an app called We-Connect that paired her vibrator to the internet through a Bluetooth connection.
From McClatchy:
“The complaint says the manufacturer fails to notify or warn customers that We-Connect monitors and records, in real time, how they use the device. It charges that the data transmittal amounts to a violation of federal wiretapping and Illinois eavesdropping statutes and results in wholesale disregard for consumer privacy rights.”
Sex with Robots
My first reaction to this is for those who are concerned that we’re rapidly moving towards full-scale monkey sex with R2-D2, that starship has already sailed.
Also, let’s set aside, for a moment, what our collective obsession is with attaching everything to the damn internet.
What I’m most concerned with is how anxious we all are to acquiesce our privacy for the sake of convenience. Even the fevered imagination of George Orwell never imagined the invasiveness of our devices, or that our private lives would be displayed before the world so willingly.
The Internet of Things
It’s the gift-giving season, and one of the hot items this year are devices that connect to the internet and manage your home’s door locks, lights, air conditioning, and much more. We are also rapidly adopting internet connectivity to our cars as well.
What this Illinois woman, who connected her vibrator to the internet, did not consider is that she was potentially sharing her personal sexual habits with the company who created the vibrator.
Furthermore, world governments have increasingly shown a propensity to grab our personal information off the internet without our consent.
And I have one other thing to point out. Hackers have shown that they easily get into anything we attach to the web including, our homes, our cars… and yes, even our sex toys. If you don’t want a company to know about your sex life, how do you feel about Julian Assange in your bedroom?
“Smart” Devices
Unfortunately, our ability to make devices “smart” are not being matched by security that would keep companies, the government, and hackers from accessing our private lives without our express permission.
So, kids… my advice is to give some real thought about what you’re putting out there, because it’s been shown time-and-time-again that anything in the cloud is just one keystroke away from being shared with the world.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article120697843.html
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/artificial-intelligence-creeps-daily-life-084229789.html
Dirk Hooper
Dirk Hooper is a professional writer who has done work for many high-profile online magazines, has won the Top Writer Award at Quora for the past two years, and a Moore Award for copywriting in 2017.