The Dark Side of Wearables: It will remain up to the Consumer to determine the Risks of Wearing

„In our lives, conveniences seems to trump privacy every time.“ Basil Hashem

A very interesting article by Teena Hammond on privacy with a lot of great quotes. And of course wearing an Apple Watch – whichs main purporse currently is to do my exercises and keep track of my activities – I feel affected.

My 2 cents: You won’t be able to stop the explosion of wearables, but we urgently need to define the rules and procedures to guarantee security, and drastic penalties for those interfering data privacy. And we need (again) to educate on the opportunities and the risks of wearables.

As wearable devices make their way into the workplace and corporate networks, they bring a host of security and privacy challenges for IT departments and increase the amount of data that data brokers have to sell about an individual. …

Privacy rules need to be instituted quickly, because the amount of data being collected is growing at an astronomical rate. ..

Wearable devices will continue to grow in popularity, as consumers appreciate the immediate access to fitness tracking, health tracking and other convenient measurements. As of yet, there have been no well-publicized data breaches involving the data collected by health and fitness wearables and smartwatches, so there hasn’t been a public outcry about the privacy and security risks.

But numerous experts say that will eventually happen, because the value of the data is worth much more than that of, say, stolen credit card numbers. …

Until solid regulations are in place, either through the government or private industry, or a combination of both, there will be inherent security and privacy risks involved with wearable devices. Meanwhile, it will remain up to the consumer to determine if the risks of wearing that trendy Apple Watch or Misfit Shine are worth the gain.

Source: The dark side of wearables: How they’re secretly jeopardizing your security and privacy – Feature – TechRepublic