[HN Gopher] Fitbit users will have to sign into Google from 2023
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Fitbit users will have to sign into Google from 2023
Author : LinuxBender
Score : 144 points
Date : 2022-09-24 15:02 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theregister.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theregister.com)
| 5555624 wrote:
| It sounds like time to create a "johndoefitbit@gmail.com" account
| and use it only for Fitbit.
| sixhobbits wrote:
| And Google definitely has no tools to link two accounts that
| are constantly accessed from the same location or IP address so
| this will definitely provide privacy in spite of using two
| devices that constantly stream your personal information to
| Google servers.
| legrande wrote:
| And risk getting your main account banned for registering
| multiple Google accounts. Also you will need a whole new
| phone number for these alternative accounts which can get
| expensive
| bob1029 wrote:
| I use AWS Workmail for this purpose. Every service has its
| own address and mailbox on my custom domain. No phone
| numbers or other nonsense required.
| 8organicbits wrote:
| How does the pricing for that work out? Is that $4/mo for
| one user with a catchall address?
| nilespotter wrote:
| > Also you will need a whole new phone number
|
| textverified.com
| sowbug wrote:
| _And risk getting your main account banned for registering
| multiple Google accounts._
|
| No, that's not true.
|
| _Also you will need a whole new phone number for these
| alternative accounts which can get expensive_
|
| No, that's not true.
| Eleison23 wrote:
| Google's TOS has no objection to users registering multiple
| Google accounts. I checked this out long ago.
|
| In fact, how could they? I currently hold Google Workspaces
| accounts at my community college and from my employer. In
| addition to these two, I also have a "main" personal
| account where I do most of my stuff, including my Android
| device. Then, I maintain two other separate accounts for
| volunteer work in various capacities.
|
| So I have five accounts in total; in fact I've signed up to
| Google One and gathered three of them into my "family"
| group. Google actively encourages people to create as many
| accounts as we can handle. It's nothing like Facebook,
| which requires a 1:1 correspondence between humans and
| personal accounts.
| kaszanka wrote:
| If you have a supported band (which the Fitbit is not) I highly
| recommend Gadgetbridge[1], a Free app that respects you, doesn't
| require online login and never will.
|
| [1] https://gadgetbridge.org/
| [deleted]
| xnx wrote:
| Longer term, the direction has to be that Fitbit goes away, and
| -at most- becomes an app that runs on the Google Watch.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| I bought a Fitbit before it was bought from Google few years ago,
| and got quite upset with this thing that despite you carefully
| trying to stay away from buying things that require a meta or
| Google account, you might end up having to because of
| acquisitions, so I had an unused Fitbit , fortunately I guess
| thanks to karma they had a recall for the watch model I had and I
| got the full money back, but yeah to hell Google, I guess can say
| that as I don't even have a Google account
| GnarfGnarf wrote:
| I hope Google continues to allow downloading of log files. I
| wrote an app that charts calories burned (from Fitbit), calories
| consumed and weight loss (from MyNetDiary dieting app), spO2,
| sleep, heartbeat, etc.
| jxi wrote:
| t_mann wrote:
| Turns out time and time again that the most sustainable way to
| store your personal data (health, financial, notes,...) is in
| flat files on your harddisk, not some startup's cloud service.
| Not that that will stop them from collecting, but at least from
| putting your access behind some walls or disappearing all of a
| sudden.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Except, for the vast majority of people, that is definitely not
| true. It's actually extremely rare for your average person to
| get locked out of their Google account (though, of course, it
| does happen, as chronicled so frequently on HN). It's extremely
| _common_ for people to lose their hard drive, or have it
| otherwise damaged by a fall or fire, or just have it crash due
| to age without a sufficient backup.
|
| It order to fix the problems with modern corporate
| surveillance, we can't keep pretending that storing things in
| the cloud and using cloud services doesn't have huge benefits.
| Just telling everyone to only store things in flat files on
| their local disk just brings up the "old man yells at cloud"
| meme in my head.
|
| What we need are stronger laws. For example, if one company is
| acquired by another, and that company demands a new login
| scheme that can link additional data, I think they should need
| to give you the option of a full refund.
| t_mann wrote:
| You're right about the backup situation, but I would still
| say that even just having your personal data in a flat file
| backed up with OneDrive - which a lot of users probably have
| set up without even fully realizing - still beats the app-
| specific cloud for most purposes (both access- and privacy-
| wise). Just consider the difference that it makes in the
| mental model of vendor lock-in.
|
| And yes, it may not be that common for people to lose their
| Google account, but that's really just one failure mode of
| relying on in-app storage. The provider may decide to
| suddenly put parts of your data behind a paywall (like Slack
| just did), or may straight up cease to exist. Even if
| Microsoft were to do something similar to your OneDrive
| account, you'd still have your local copy and could change
| your cloud backup provider with very reasonable effort.
| prepend wrote:
| > It's actually extremely rare for your average person to get
| locked out of their Google account
|
| It's also extremely rare for an average person's house to
| burn down. Or extremely rare for a 500 year flood. Or an
| asteroid hitting the earth. Should we not prepare for, avoid,
| and mitigate these risks?
|
| It's not telling people to store flat files in the cloud.
| It's encouraging sustainable protocols that decompose to
| strong flat files in the cloud.
|
| Story time is when ynab originally just write their files to
| a file structure and used Dropbox to sync. Then they switched
| to saas, charged people a monthly fee and store customer data
| in their proprietary cloud. One day ynab will go away and so
| will their data. Their earlier method will last forever
| because of the portability of flat files.
|
| Customer lock in makes companies more money.
| coding123 wrote:
| No this is not how data is lost. Data is lost because
| people buy new laptops or other devices and let the old
| ones rust, thinking, hey if I ever needed it, I can just
| boot up the old one. Far more chance of losing your data
| that way.
| BurritoAlPastor wrote:
| People are also not really expected to be individually
| responsible for mitigating flood or fire risk; they buy
| insurance. People can't buy insurance for getting locked
| out of their Google account. We're currently in a "well
| it's your own fault for not owning and furnishing a second
| house in case the first one burns down" situation for
| digital property.
| nyokodo wrote:
| > People can't buy insurance for getting locked out of
| their Google account
|
| Maybe they should be able to? I'd purchase that kind of
| insurance!
| t_mann wrote:
| That might actually be interesting, because then there'd
| be actors who could give Google and the other BigTechs a
| lot more heat than any individual user can over
| unjustified account deletions (to avoid having to pay out
| the insurance premium).
| [deleted]
| jjulius wrote:
| I agree, but that's one hell of an uphill battle considering
| the amount of money that would be behind those opposing such
| laws. Until said laws pass, storing things locally is a valid
| option for a stopgap despite how cumbersome it might be.
|
| Edit: I also have little faith in any legal remedy going far
| enough. The cat's out of the proverbial bag, too many
| businesses "depend" on data, and the government certainly
| enjoys being able to more easily access your data via cloud
| businesses than having to deal with a different enduser's
| setup every single time. Not saying we can't make progress,
| but I'm pessimistic.
| jsnell wrote:
| And how long should that obligation exist? Google bought
| Fitbit in 2019. The article says the Fitbit account system
| will be supported until 2025. That seems pretty decent
| compared to the expected lifetime of the hardware? (My 2017
| Alta was basically useless in 2020, completely dead in 2021).
| varelse wrote:
| Karellen wrote:
| The thing is, a lot of people own more than one device.
|
| Even more people know a couple of people who have devices
| with some spare space.
|
| Wouldn't it be great if we had a way that people could "join"
| trusted devices to create mutual background backups. So I
| could pair my laptop with my phone, and each would back up
| "essential" data for the other. But I could also pair my
| phone with my significant other, and our phones would also
| work as backups of each other. Syncing could be done on some
| kind of schedule, maybe when they're in bluetooth range, or
| maybe if they find each other on the same LAN. Or maybe they
| could use cloud storage to transfer E2E encrypted blobs.
|
| (i.e. my phone would backup my laptop and my parter's phone,
| my partner's phone would back up my phone, and my laptop
| would also back up my phone. If my partner wanted/was willing
| to also back up my laptop, that would be a separate step, and
| they would back up each other.)
|
| Deciding which data should be considered "essential" is left
| as an exercise for the implementor :-)
| _emacsomancer_ wrote:
| Like what Syncthing does?
| nradov wrote:
| In principle you can do most of that with IPFS. The user
| experience isn't great though, especially when trying to
| use it as a backup solution for multiple people across
| multiple platforms. Someone might be able to build a
| startup around fixing this.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Fitbit users will become Garmin or Apple users from 2023.
| jsnell wrote:
| What's the concrete concern here, specifically with regards to
| _migrating the account system_? If you 're thinking that some
| mustache-twirling villains are totally lying to customers and
| regulators about how the data will be used, why do you think
| using a distinct account system would provide any kind of
| technical barrier? While if you think that separating the
| accounts does in fact matter for something, just make a new
| single-use Google account for just the Fitbit data.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| Privacy concerns. Consolidation of Fitbit data into the already
| vast Goggle ecosystem.
| cush wrote:
| "Just" make a new single use Google account. And what, do this
| for every new product, service and use-case we want to ensure
| doesn't get joined together? It's so cumbersome to work around
| today's data-hungry Googlesphere. Google would rather take
| another decade of yearly $4B fines than build systems that
| respect our personal information.
| jsnell wrote:
| See, that's exactly what I mean by "concrete". You seem to be
| saying it's unreasonable to create an account just for the
| purpose of using a Fitbit. _But you 've always had to do
| that_. It is literally exactly what a Fitbit account is. For
| ten years, nobody has thought that it's unreasonable. Like,
| the only distinction is that now you get to choose whether to
| create a separate account or reuse the existing one.
|
| If you can't actually formulate why the migration of the
| account system is bad thing, maybe it's actually not?
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| It is the undisclosed consolidation of information sources
| that Google holds that scares me. I think most considered
| Fitbit account a small privacy issue. The Google ecosystem
| on the other hand is enormous, highly entwined in our
| lives, extremely intrusive, and information collection &
| sale is done surreptitiously.
|
| I think most, even non technologist feel the negative in
| this, even if they cannot articulate it.
| jsnell wrote:
| But again: how does the account system switch matter for
| any of that? Like, what is the thing that's suddenly
| possible for them to do when you log in using a Google
| account rather than a Fitbit one? If they're willing to
| maliciously (and at ludicrous risk for low payoff) do
| some kind of cross-account sharing of health data for
| unrelated purposes, why would it be any harder to
| associate a Google account with a matching Fitbit
| account, than to associate two Google accounts?
|
| You seem to be making an argument, in vague generalities,
| for why they shouldn't have been allowed to buy Fitbit.
| But that deal was approved by the regulators across the
| world, after concessions, so there is no point in
| relitigating that. Is there a concrete argument for why
| they should require indefinite support for a legacy
| account system?
|
| There is a pretty obvious reason for why people cannot
| article why they feel negative about this... Because they
| are feeling negative about something else entirely, and
| projecting. But this particular change is be strictly an
| improvement: it's going to be much better to argue
| against the things that actually bother you, not use this
| as a proxy.
| autoexec wrote:
| I have no doubt that Google knows who is using multiple
| accounts/devices and they'll stuff your dossier with data
| from all sources.
|
| If you're wearing a device that knows when you're asleep,
| awake, fucking, or sick and you're sending that data to a
| third party whose entire business is built on collecting
| your personal data and you've been viewing that data
| yourself on a cell phone running their OS you can't care
| very much about your privacy to start with. Being forced
| to sign into a google account at that point is a
| formality.
| schroeding wrote:
| Creating accounts for other companies is easier than
| creating a new Google account, though.
|
| I tried to create a new Google account for a webservice
| that only allowed third-party logins:
|
| The account was requiring a phone number immediately after
| creating it. After begrudgingly entering a phone number
| (that was, to be fair, already used with another Google
| account - I don't have random burner phone numbers lying
| around), the account was locked due to "unusual behavior".
|
| (This was a Google account with an existing mail address
| from a normal mail provider, no new Gmail account, btw.)
|
| In contrast, most "normal", non-SV companies don't even ask
| for a phone number as a hard requirement, yet alone decide
| your fate by ML algos.
| ilikerashers wrote:
| Fitbit feels a bit like loss leader for a bunch of cloud services
| already. "Sign up for our premium subscription stuff" is
| constantly pushed.
|
| Meanwhile the charge 5 takes ages to sync just to show metrics
| and doesn't work offline.
|
| It's a cheap tracker that looks good but something is definitely
| off about the product.
| t_mann wrote:
| I once ran a trial comparing two FitBit models (one quite
| recent at the time) to a medical heart measurement device and
| manual counting. My conclusion was that FitBit's numbers were
| pretty much garbage: the manual and medical measurements
| generally agreed up to 3-4 beats, while the FitBit readings
| were off by 20 beats and more and fluctuating wildly in a short
| span of time. Their readings for step numbers might be more
| accurate, I don't know, but I concluded that the heart rate
| measurements probably contained more noise than signal.
| nabaraz wrote:
| I really hope Garmin doesn't get bullied by Apple, and continues
| to exist. Between Google and Apple, Garmin is a notable
| competitor, I'd argue Garmin products are superior too.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| How would Apple bully them?
| nabaraz wrote:
| Crippling Garmin app on ios, subsidizing Apple watch Ultra to
| start a price war etc.
| mvexel wrote:
| It already kind of is crippled, compared to the Android
| app. The Garmin iOS app doesn't (can't?) support sending a
| quick reply to an incoming text message from the watch, for
| example, something you can do when connected to an Android
| phone.
| rgbrenner wrote:
| has apple ever engaged in price wars? the 'premium' image
| of their products is pretty important to their position in
| the market, and their ability to maintain their high price
| margins.
|
| iOS app limitations though, I agree. Fits their pattern of
| behavior.
| driscoll42 wrote:
| While I don't think it's intentionally crippled, the Garmin
| app is better on Android than iOS. You can have fine
| grained app notifications on Android that you can't on iOS,
| and from /r/garmin it seems that iOS app is more unstable.
| itronitron wrote:
| It's worth noting that not all GPS receivers honor all of the
| finer points of the GPS protocol/spec. Longer running companies
| such as Garmin may have a more rigorous implementation and be
| able to save their customers some headache in the future.
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| I want to switch to Garmin because my Fitbit Charge 5 died
| after 4 months and the replacement they sent me dead after 2
| days! I heard Garmin is superior in almost every way, but the
| only problem is there's countless reports of Garmin having poor
| sleep tracking; which is a feature I really need with my
| fitness tracker.
| nradov wrote:
| Garmin smart watches are very accurate for tracking total
| sleep time. But as for details on sleep phases, who knows? No
| wrist device including Fitbit can be totally accurate for
| sleep phases. Regardless of how good the sensors and
| algorithms are, there just isn't enough clinical information
| available at that body site.
|
| The smart watches with blood oxygen saturation sensors can be
| useful for detecting sleep apnea. But that only applies to
| people with the condition.
|
| Why do you think you need sleep tracking? Is the data
| actionable?
|
| If we want to improve sleep quality then it's no big mystery
| what to do. Consume less alcohol and caffeine. Exercise more.
| Don't be obese. Don't eat a large, protein-rich meal late in
| the day. Go to sleep earlier. Keep the bedroom cool, dark,
| and quiet. We all know what we ought to do, we just don't
| reliably do those things. Better sleep tracking won't fix a
| lack of discipline or give us more hours in the day.
| capableweb wrote:
| Poor sleep tracking in what way? I have a Garmin (<$300 one)
| I mainly got for sleep tracking and haven't noticed any
| problems with it. It tracks when I go to bed/wake up
| correctly, and seems me notice nights I sleep less (after
| drinking alcohol for example) well vs nights I sleep better
| (done lots of exercise in the day) properly.
| post_break wrote:
| Get the withings under mattress sleep tracker. You have to
| wear nothing, it just works, and the quantified scientist on
| youtube verified it's very accurate.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > Garmin having poor sleep tracking; which is a feature I
| really need with my fitness tracker.
|
| Needs are required for life. You don't need sleep tracking,
| you want it.
| ubercow13 wrote:
| No, need can be used in various contexts. You could say 'I
| _need_ to do X in order to meet my personal goal Y. ' Or
| you could say 'I _need_ a product to support Z before I 'd
| consider purchasing it.'
|
| GP didn't make it explicit but you can probably assume they
| were implying one of these contexts, rather than that they
| would die without that feature.
| nabaraz wrote:
| I moved from Versa to Fenix, and haven't noticed much
| difference.
| lrvick wrote:
| I was in charge of data security and privacy at Pebble among
| other things. I fought hard against data science teams having
| access to PII. It made me few friends but considering the data
| could reveal health issues I regarded it as health data even if
| it technically legally is not at the moment.
|
| We were bought by Fitbit which operated with almost complete
| disdain for any attempt at security or privacy that could slow
| down operations. Anybody who wanted paintext access to user data
| seemed to get it without delay. Security and privacy were not
| among the things that created shareholder value so every issue I
| discovered was permanently backlogged.
|
| It was depressing seeing all the data I fought to hard to protect
| be absorbed into a machine that would sell it off to the highest
| bidder, or shrug when it got stolen by a blackhat. I quit 3
| months before my golden handcuffs would have kicked in because it
| felt too unethical to keep working there.
|
| Then of course all the data was sold again, this time to Google.
| No Pebble user ever consented to their health data being sold to
| Google, but all of this is legal.
| pfortuny wrote:
| So sad. Just because... "fitness is not health, you know? there
| is no informed consent nor a doctor here".
| verisimi wrote:
| Yes. Once your data is out there, it will be harvested, by
| crook or by hook. The only way to avoid this, is to not use
| this (enslaving) technology.
|
| I'm genuinely wondering if the erosion of privacy, the breaking
| down of that wall, was the whole point of the Internet from the
| start.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Point of the internet from the start? I don't think so.
| Surveillance Capitalism didn't start with the internet, it
| was invented later. With that said it does seem like every
| single new product is built for this extractive purpose.
| lrem wrote:
| You're a step too far with your assumptions. I'm a Googler.
| I've noped away when Pebble sold to Fitbit. But seeing from the
| inside how Google treats user data, I'd be 100% ok with the
| data going to Google instead.
| spaceguillotine wrote:
| My Pebble and Time are still missed, charging once a week and
| the e-ink screen was so damn nice to read
| hobo_mark wrote:
| Mine still runs a week on one charge, could not find a
| substitute yet.
| GeneralAntilles wrote:
| E-paper, actually, which is a fairly broad umbrella for a lot
| of reflective LCD displays. E-ink is specifically from E Ink
| and uses a different display technology (it's what's used in
| Kindles, etc.).
|
| This is probably a lost word-use game, as everybody just says
| e-ink, but it seems important given the major differences
| between reflective LCDs and the electrophoretic technology
| used in ereaders.
|
| I had a MetaWatch watch with an e-paper display with silver
| reflective screen backing and it was, by far, the most
| comment-generating thing I've ever worn. Still miss it.
| voisin wrote:
| Google did this with Nest, forcing all accounts to move from the
| Nest app to the Google Home app and change to have a Google email
| address. Madness.
| cianmm wrote:
| I foolishly bought a Nest and three Nest Protects back when
| Nest were promising to implement HomeKit. Then Google bought
| them and they just stopped mentioning it.
|
| Google continuously doing this means I'll probably never pay
| for one of their services.
| nilespotter wrote:
| Anyone want to buy a 3 point Nest mesh system I have sitting in
| a drawer? When Google did this I replaced them with an pfsense
| router and a couple of UniFi APs.
| manishsharan wrote:
| Is there an non-cloud ( Desktop based) alternative to Fitbit
| Premium ? I hate the idea of having such personal and intimate
| data being accessible to third parties ?
| rvz wrote:
| Now you have to thank Google for storing all your personal health
| data and putting it all behind a Google login.
| elpocko wrote:
| Thank you, Google. I love you, Google.
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| Don't equate money with happiness.
| [deleted]
| acheron wrote:
| But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle
| was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved
| Big Brother.
| amelius wrote:
| Love and hate are emotions that sometimes lie very close
| together.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Demanding audible expressions of appreciation is the most
| aggressive thing I've heard of in a TOS, but I suppose it was
| inevitable.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| At least you don't have to do a little dance after drinking a
| "verification can" of specially-chipped soda.
| throwaway12245 wrote:
| Is there a fitbit type gadget that let's you USB or bluetooth
| to a laptop and keep your health data private?
| swarnie wrote:
| Now? Didn't this advertising company buy fitbit 18 months ago?
| cush wrote:
| I'm still bitter about Fitbit buying then destroying all of the
| IP from Pebble. Still the best smart watch ever made.
| sushid wrote:
| That's not quite what happened. Pebble was virtually dead and
| shopping around for an exit. Fitbit bought Pebble for its IP
| (i.e. patents) / soft acquihire. No one was going to be making
| the Pebble 3.
| arcbyte wrote:
| As i recollect it, they had been launching product after
| product and were in the middle of launching pebble time 2
| when they got bought. That's a far cry from "virtually dead"
| SyneRyder wrote:
| Still wearing my Pebble Time Steel daily, and recently bought a
| backup/replacement on eBay because the battery on mine is dying
| (down to barely 1-day of battery, from the original 10 days
| battery life).
|
| I really wish Rebble were putting more effort into keeping it
| alive. I understand the firmware is now open source, but it
| seems the efforts to make new hardware (or even replacement
| hardware) never really went anywhere. I'm grateful that they're
| keeping the app store & weather & voice recognition servers
| active, but it feels like they could do more. I guess I'm maybe
| looking for the Framework of smartwatches, with the aesthetics
| of the Time / Time Steel team.
| legrande wrote:
| Another data-point for the largest data-mining operation ever
| conducted (Google)
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