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Comment by camillomiller | Hacker News Reader

Am I the only one that's finding a bit upsetting the fact that a single overlooking identity could dispose of people's data like that? I know, I know: all the Up wearers have "enrolled" voluntarily, but I wonder if they really like to be part of a giant anonymous data science experiment. If you can do this with the users' data, you can certainly do the same for more profit-related purposes. Or maybe it's just me, sometimes I just can't ignore the scary within the scientifically cool.

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Anybody who is willing to (A) Track their personal biological information, and (B) willing to upload this information to a third party, is utterly unconcerned about an aggregate graph like this.

Your meta point, though, that people should be concerned about this type of tracking is well founded - but, honestly, I'm probably a lot more concerned about how easy it is for my cellular provider to track where I am at any given instance with my Smart Phone - (or any cell phone for that matter) - as I don't recall ever "enrolling" to provide them with my tracking information.

Did they really dispose any of the users data though? It appears they displayed a chart.

That graphic, it could be argued, is based on an entirely new data set.

So while individual data sets may been used at some point behind the scenes, it's not like those data sets are the ones being disposed.

the issue is that they're collecting this data in the first place.

I cant help but wonder how much it would cost to get the sleep records of a competitor of mine - or if it's not for sale, how much the data would be worth on the black market if their servers got hacked.

I have doubts this information is being kept as securely as it should be, that's where my concern lies.

The whole point of the device & service they are selling is, they collect this data. Then you can log in and see it in the future.

Distributing is a different concern. But people pay jawbone to actually collect and store it, so they can view it later.

Well, if one is willing to one-up a fellow human like that, one is a bad person. But you don't need Jawbone data to do that, there are plenty other ways. Honestly, the problem in your example isn't the data.

one is a bad person

So what? Time and time again things that would make you a bad person are silently accepted as normal or even expected of a business.

You're correctly describing the state of the world, but my indirect point was that we should stop accepting such behaviour in business and shun people who do. It's stupid and wrong.

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