To control your lights you soon need to create an account and share your data with the Hue cloud.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/5717757

Today’s story is about Philips Hue by Signify. They will soon start forcing accounts on all users and upload user data to their cloud. For now, Signify says you’ll still be able to control your Hue lights locally as you’re currently used to, but we don’t know if this may change in the future. The privacy policy allows them to store the data and share it with partners.

  • Hyperreality@kbin.social
    107·
    1 year ago

    Location data, when you’re home/not home, which room you’re likely in/not in. Data that costs almost nothing to produce, but can be sold for millions.

    Bulbs tell them when you’re in the kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, etc. Relatively easy to combine it with smart tv, smart watch, security cam, and app/phone data to identify you exactly.

    Combine it all and it’s likely they’d be able to identify you exactly and identify what you’re doing with a high degree of certainty, then micro-target you with ads or propaganda.

    Honestly, there comes a point where you’d have more privacy shoving a camera up your ass. Less privacy than the DDR.

    • deweydecibel@lemmy.worldEnglish
      49·
      1 year ago

      A lot of people don’t seem to understand that each individual bit of data is often not valuable in itself, but it is as part of a whole.

      Basically, everything there is to know about you is a jigsaw puzzle. Many companies out there want that finished image, so they pay a premium for each individual piece of the jigsaw, and the companies you give your data to everyday are selling those pieces.

      • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        9·
        1 year ago

        This might be a stupid question, and I don’t know if anyone would even have the knowledge to answer… but is this data ever audited? Other than possible lawsuits, what prevents me from randomly generating data points for my customers and selling them to these companies? I assume they are cross referencing with other data sets and they could catch on quickly?

      • hardypart@feddit.deEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        "Big dat"a has become a buzz word, but it’s a very real, potent and also frightening thing.

    • Number1SummerJam@lemmy.worldEnglish
      15·
      1 year ago

      As an added bonus, anything with unnecessary wireless functionality can easily be hacked, controlled and monitored by anyone savvy enough

    • Gork@lemm.eeEnglish
      7·
      1 year ago

      Intelligence / espionage agents will have a field day with this kind of info.