According to the Sleep Number privacy policy, it collects personal information, which can include names and information about a consumer’s age, weight, height and gender. If a consumer creates a user profile on the bed’s app, that personal information is expanded to include specifics about movement, positions, respiration and heart rate.
That is also true for children if parents create a user profile for them.
The policy also notes that personal data might be stored indefinitely, even “after you cancel or deactivate” user accounts.
It’s More Than Just Zzzzz
The privacy policies of many devices that track and transmit personal information allow for the sharing of data that has been stripped of personal identifiers.
But privacy experts have shown it’s not terribly difficult to use or combine such information to “re-identify” people.
“You are left with the impression that, ‘Don’t worry, no one will be able to point to you,’ but they don’t actually say that,” said Tien. “I don’t know how they actually could say that.”
Unlike personal data collected in a doctor’s office or a sleep clinic, the information gathered by sleep trackers is not protected by federal privacy rules.
Some sleep trackers or apps can connect with other “smart” devices in your home, such as a thermostat or coffee maker.
Nifty, for sure, because as you wake up, your heater can kick on and the coffee maker can start doing its thing. But it also can mean those devices are sharing your information. Sleep Number said its beds can import information from other devices but does not share customer information with them.
Still, the interconnectedness exposes more vulnerabilities.
“We connect all these devices to each other,” noted Kilic at Public Citizen. “If hackers want to get into the system, [they] can easily do so and collect all this info from you: How do you use your bed? How often do you have sex? This is very sensitive information.”
Privacy experts recommend encryption and the use of strong passwords and additional authentication whenever possible.
The goal of the data gathering, Sleep Number and other companies say, is helping sleep-deprived Americans do a better job at, well, sleeping.
But do consumers really need an app — or a bed that can cost thousands of dollars — to tell them how rested they feel in the morning?
Such tools are “great because it makes people more aware of sleep, but it’s a slippery slope,” said Dr. Seema Khosla, a pulmonologist and medical director of the North Dakota Center for Sleep, a sleep study facility in Fargo. Khosla, who uses a few trackers herself, is also the lead author of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine’s position paper on sleep apps.
One unexpected consequence: Consumers so attuned to their data may experience anxiety — and an inability to sleep.
“We call it orthosomnia,” she said. “They get all this data and get upset about having a perfect number. We tell them to put it away for a couple of weeks.”
jappleby@kff.org, @Julie_Appleby
Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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