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CANADA: Every Step You Fake: A Comparative Analysis of Fitness Tracker Privacy and Security

08 February 2016

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"Contemporary consumer fitness wearables collect a broad range of data. The number of floors, or altitudinal changes, a person climbs a day is measured, levels and deepness of sleep, and heart rate activity are all captured by best-of-class consumer-level fitness trackers. And all of this data is of interest to the wearers of the devices, to companies interested in mining and selling collected fitness data, to insurance companies, to authorities and courts of law, and even potentially to criminals motivated to steal or access data retained by fitness companies.

Every Step You Fake explores what information is collected by the companies which develop and sell some of the most popular wearables in North America. Moreover, it explores whether there are differences between the information that is collected by the devices and what companies say they collect, and what they subsequently provide to consumers when compelled to disclose all the personal information that companies hold about residents of Canada."

See the full report: Every Step You Fake: A Comparative Analysis of Fitness Tracker Privacy and Security (link to pdf)

And see: Report by: Open Effect (link): "Open Effect is a Canadian not-for-profit that conducts research and advocacy focused on ensuring people’s personal data is treated securely and accountably. We use a mix of policy and technical analysis methods to explore how digital services use personal data. We build interactive advocacy tools to disseminate our work and empower individuals to learn about and exercise their rights online."

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