Kohler, the makers of a smart toilet camera, can access customers’ data stored on its servers, and can use customers’ bowl pictures to train AI.
Kohler, the makers of a smart toilet camera, can access customers’ data stored on its servers, and can use customers’ bowl pictures to train AI.
Reading TFA it seems like it is encrypted when it’s sent to their servers, a security researcher just doesn’t like the use of the term “end to end” to describe that.
It would be impossible to analyse the images if it wasn’t decrypted, so it seems a little silly.
So HTTPS.
What’s silly, that Kohler is deliberately misusing a popular term for advertising purposes, or that a security research called them out for false advertising?
E2EE is a term used in the context of a messaging app to indicate that the messaging app provider cannot read your messages, only the intended recipient. It makes zero sense to use that term in this case because the messaging app provider is also the recipient.
Yet the marketing people at Kohler saw that this technical terminology is something people associate with “secure” or “private”, and just rolled with it. This harms consumers who are inevitably mislead into making a purchase decision, and it harms the broader tech industry as consumers lose the ability to understand complex privacy technologies through simple terminology like “E2EE”
I think its more hijacking the terminology rather than anything else
Yeah, I guess they could use the term point-to-point like point of sales systems define it, but it seems a little semantic. If the images are encrypted on the camera device, and only decrypted once the contents reach the secured analysis environment, then I don’t see how this is misleading customers. Even in the context of messaging apps, users understand that the receiver can decrypt and see the message; it’s saying that no intermediary party can.
But good grief, I can’t fathom putting a camera in my toilet. I feel bad for folks that are either too worried about their health, or have such issues that this is helpful. There but for the grace of fiber go I.