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You can tell a lot about someone from how often the washing machine runs, and which modes get used - whether they live alone, have a large family - even whether they have pets - all data that, when tied to a user account which contains your name, address, email address, (inside leg measurement, blood group...) is valuable to advertisers.

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> inside leg measurement, blood group

Now I'm imagining a fancy washing machine that can measure the inseam of your pants and run tests on blood stains to determine blood type.

Surely there are easier ways to get that data.

There may be but the easier ways don't put money into the pocket of the appliance vendor.

my point was about who is in the market for that data when it should be available elsewhere.

The manufacturer doesn't care about the data, they care about selling it to advertisers. There's no better way to measure someone's actual washing machine usage than actually measuring their washing machine usage. The next-best thing is to buy data on how often the person buys laundry detergent.

Soon a sensor will be added to detect what kind of detergent you use!

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