Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff. I'm Oz Valoshin. Today is all
Speaker 1: about biometric data and how it's increasingly become a part
Speaker 1: of modern life. We unlock phones with our faces, send
Speaker 1: DNA samples to learn about our ancestry, track our workouts,
Speaker 1: and you can even pay for groceries now with the
Speaker 1: palm of your hand. But as people get more and
Speaker 1: more comfortable using their highly personal data to seamlessly and
Speaker 1: efficiently move through life, questions arise, like what's being done
Speaker 1: with all this information? And are the benefits to using
Speaker 1: biometric technology worth the costs. Here to walk us through
Speaker 1: all our questions is Adam clark Estes. He's a senior
Speaker 1: technology correspondent at Vox. Adam, welcome to tech stuff.
Speaker 2: Hey, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much becoming. I love your newsletter and
Speaker 1: I was struck by a recent piece you wrote that
Speaker 1: began with a visit to the doctor. Can you tell
Speaker 1: the story?
Speaker 2: Sure? So, my doctor is at NYU Lango and it's
Speaker 2: a huge healthcare system in New York City, and I
Speaker 2: walked in one day and there was a little Amazon
Speaker 2: branded scanner next to the little kiosk where you check in.
Speaker 2: The idea was that I would put my palm over
Speaker 2: this sensor and it would scan it, and that's how
Speaker 2: it would verify my identity. I didn't do that. There
Speaker 2: was an option to opt out of it and go
Speaker 2: and visit the desk clerk, which is what the doctor's
Speaker 2: office doesn't want you to do because it takes more
Speaker 2: time for them and for their staff to verify you,
Speaker 2: and the tech based way of doing it is a
Speaker 2: lot quicker. But it also just raised a lot of questions,
Speaker 2: like I didn't know what I was giving up when
Speaker 2: I gave my palm print to Amazon. I didn't know
Speaker 2: if that would have anything to do with the ads
Speaker 2: I saw on Amazon dot Com. And then I talked
Speaker 2: to some privacy experts. I interviewed three or four people
Speaker 2: for this story, and ultimately the message was that it's
Speaker 2: really hard to say what is going to happen to
Speaker 2: your data long term. Amazon has a lot of businesses,
Speaker 2: They have a lot of data about you already, and
Speaker 2: if they can add more, especially this biometric data, which
Speaker 2: to be clear, gives proof that you were at a
Speaker 2: place physically, and that's kind of hard to do otherwise
Speaker 2: because even just like your phone pinging a cell tower,
Speaker 2: doesn't prove that you were somewhere, but if your palm
Speaker 2: was at a place that knows that you were at
Speaker 2: a doctor's office, you can kind of figure out.
Speaker 1: A digital DNA effectively.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, and then you know, I did talk to
Speaker 2: Amazon quite a lot about this. They really tried hard
Speaker 2: to make it clear to me that the data being
Speaker 2: collected for the Amazon one biometric system was not shared
Speaker 2: with other Amazon businesses. It's much less clear in the
Speaker 2: privacy policy, and I did talk to lawyers who basically
Speaker 2: argued that there's some legalise to work around here that
Speaker 2: gives Amazon some wiggle room. But that said, I frankly
Speaker 2: kind of believe the company that they're not doing anything
Speaker 2: else with this data right now, but it's hard to
Speaker 2: say what they'll do with it in the future.
Speaker 1: Did you ask them any questions at the doc's office
Speaker 1: about like, you know, obviously patients and medical settings are
Speaker 1: reasonably quite concerned about their privacy.
Speaker 2: I did. I talked to NYU lengthon and they assured
Speaker 2: me that Amazon was not collecting any health data about you.
Speaker 2: You know, the sort of interaction you'd have with your
Speaker 2: doctor in the doctor's office is covered by hippolaws. Which
Speaker 2: are actually quite narrow and specific to your health data.
Speaker 2: But everything else, sort of like you're being at the
Speaker 2: doctor's office, is not protected by HIPPA in any case.
Speaker 2: Nyu langone Health actually had palm scanners before Amazon. They
Speaker 2: never worked, but there's just something much more foreboding about
Speaker 2: seeing that Amazon logo greet you when you're at the
Speaker 2: doctor's office. So I ended up at the end of
Speaker 2: this reporting experience back at the doctor's office, and I
Speaker 2: still did not put my palm on the scanner.
Speaker 1: I remember when they sort of switched inn apes from
Speaker 1: metal detectors to like full body visualization scanners. There was
Speaker 1: a time when I resisted and asked for the pat down,
Speaker 1: But after about a year of extremely unpleasant experiences, I
Speaker 1: was just like, you know what, let me just, you know,
Speaker 1: go through the machine that is now technically optional but
Speaker 1: practically mandatory. And when you see something as a technology
Speaker 1: correspondent like that in a doctor's office, what's your sense
Speaker 1: of its kind of inevitability.
Speaker 2: Inevitability is a great word, I think, especially with biometrics,
Speaker 2: because for the companies that are pushing this technology to us,
Speaker 2: there are so many upsides. There are so many upsides
Speaker 2: for Amazon to sell this service to businesses. So Amazon
Speaker 2: One is the name of the technology, and it's a
Speaker 2: new business within Amazon's Aws business. So you know, it's
Speaker 2: like a Russian nesting dollar of businesses. And Amazon says
Speaker 2: they're all separate, but still you're going to start seeing
Speaker 2: these Amazon scanners up. They're already in Whole Foods with
Speaker 2: Amazon owns. They're popping up in doctors' offices like at
Speaker 2: NYU Lango and health, and you'll see them at stadiums
Speaker 2: and it will be annoying enough for people to work
Speaker 2: around it that I think a lot of people will
Speaker 2: just figure that whatever hang ups they had about their
Speaker 2: their privacy, it's easier to just go ahead and comply
Speaker 2: and have their palm scanned and frankly, we'll save them
Speaker 2: some time. But makes me feel uneasy.
Speaker 1: And what's their widest strategy why they want to take
Speaker 1: ownership of this biometric scanning technology.
Speaker 2: There's a bit of a race, I think to come
Speaker 2: up with a good way to verify our identities in
Speaker 2: a digital world. The New Yorker cartoon of a dog
Speaker 2: looking at a computer and the caption is on the internet.
Speaker 2: Nobody knows you're a dog I love that one. It's
Speaker 2: very easy to mimic somebody else online and increasingly difficult
Speaker 2: to prove that you are who you are, even in
Speaker 2: the United States. Kind of our gold standard identification method
Speaker 2: is our Social Security number, which is not very secure
Speaker 2: at all. It's just a string of numbers. So there
Speaker 2: are a lot of tech companies who want to get
Speaker 2: at this problem. Amazon solution, i think, is this pomp print,
Speaker 2: because it is a way of creating a unique identifier
Speaker 2: for you. So your palm is basically the key, and
Speaker 2: what the scanner does is kind of create a lock
Speaker 2: that it can fit into so that the next time
Speaker 2: you scan your palm, if the data from that hand
Speaker 2: matches that kind of digital lock, it confirms that you
Speaker 2: are who you are and you get into wherever you're going.
Speaker 1: Why did you find this more concerning or more worthy
Speaker 1: of writing about than the thing which we're all accustomed to,
Speaker 1: which is opening our iPhones with our faces, Like, what's
Speaker 1: the difference between Apple are doing what Amazon are doing
Speaker 1: in this respect?
Speaker 2: I'm a fan of face ID and it have been
Speaker 2: a fan of touch ID because I know that the
Speaker 2: processing that happens is happening on my device that's Apple's
Speaker 2: big commitment to privacy is that it's not setting that
Speaker 2: data up to the cloud, where as Amazon One is
Speaker 2: literally run by Amazon's cloud computing business, so all this
Speaker 2: data is kind of has the chance to get out there.
Speaker 2: And the trouble with biometric data is that it's pretty permanent.
Speaker 2: I can't go out and get a new hand if
Speaker 2: the details of my pomprint get out there, I can't.
Speaker 2: It's not like changing a password.
Speaker 1: I mean, when you think about the wider Amazon ecosystem,
Speaker 1: which is shopping video now verify identity in healthcare setting,
Speaker 1: I mean, what's the night meassonaryoo for you here?
Speaker 2: The nightmare scenario for me online at any time is
Speaker 2: identity theft. There's so much of my information online if
Speaker 2: someone could pretend they were me and really do anything
Speaker 2: that I wouldn't want to do, like open a bank
Speaker 2: account or buy a new car. And when it comes
Speaker 2: to healthcare, it's the most private data I have, and
Speaker 2: I think that details about my health now are in
Speaker 2: the future that could end up in the wrong hands,
Speaker 2: or even in the right hands, could have a bad
Speaker 2: outcome for me. I don't necessarily want my health insurance
Speaker 2: company to know everything that's happening with me all the time.
Speaker 2: I don't necessarily want my employer to know what's happening.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, a lot of what has
Speaker 2: always kind of pushed me towards privacy online is got
Speaker 2: feeling that technology is increasingly encroaching upon our privacy and
Speaker 2: kind of changing the definition of what is publicly available information.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you also had an experience recently elsewhere in the
Speaker 1: Amazon ecosystem that had to do with health and being
Speaker 1: recommended prescription drugs.
Speaker 2: The experience I had with prescription drugs and Amazon is
Speaker 2: a great example of something that just felt wrong and uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: It was a feeling I didn't like having. I ordered
Speaker 2: groceries through Amazon Fresh and went to check out, and
Speaker 2: at the bottom it was recommending me a list of
Speaker 2: prescription drugs. And I had no idea how Amazon would
Speaker 2: know what kinds of prescription drugs I might be interested in,
Speaker 2: or it might apply to me, or even why I
Speaker 2: might be prompted at that specific moment to buy them
Speaker 2: from Amazon. I talked to Amazon again about that, and
Speaker 2: Amazon told me that the system was working as it should.
Speaker 2: It had looked at what I purchased and based on
Speaker 2: what other Amazon customers bought from Amazon had recommended something
Speaker 2: I thought I would like. In this case, I'll be specific.
Speaker 2: I got the reduced fat version of my coffee creamer,
Speaker 2: and so it recommended a statin to me to lower
Speaker 2: my cholesterol. So I could see kind of on the
Speaker 2: back end how that would happen, but it's still just
Speaker 2: sort of an uncanny experience.
Speaker 1: This is like if you go to the Woolgreens, you know,
Speaker 1: around the corner, and you're in the you're reaching into
Speaker 1: the refrigerator to get a low fat yoga and the
Speaker 1: pharmacist runs out and tries to use them statins, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like that would be pretty weird in
Speaker 1: real life.
Speaker 2: It would be, but now that you put it like that,
Speaker 2: that's sort of exactly what happened. Amazon has a newer
Speaker 2: pharmacy business that it wants people to sign up for,
Speaker 2: and if I'm reminded that I might want to take
Speaker 2: a statin, then maybe I would sign up and be like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: it would be more convenient to get my prescriptions through Amazon.
Speaker 3: Two.
Speaker 2: So I think it's marketing and a lot of these
Speaker 2: recommendations are pushing you towards other Amazon. Businesses to spend
Speaker 2: more time and money on Amazon, and that's why Amazon
Speaker 2: has a huge, multi billion dollar advertising business.
Speaker 1: What does all of this tell us about Amazon's wider
Speaker 1: ambitions in healthcare?
Speaker 2: We've known for some time that Amazon wants to be
Speaker 2: a healthcare company, and it's funny ahead of this experiment
Speaker 2: years ago, I actually I wrote a whole story about
Speaker 2: whether Amazon wants to have an Amazon Prime for healthcare,
Speaker 2: and then kind of like what I had been reporting
Speaker 2: on in the story ended up happening. Amazon bought a
Speaker 2: healthcare company. They bought Amazon One. Amazon launched and then
Speaker 2: expanded its pharmacy business, and Amazon is getting into telehealth
Speaker 2: as well through the company that have bought One Medical.
Speaker 2: It's very clear to me that Amazon wants to be
Speaker 2: in the healthcare business. I think because it's a good
Speaker 2: business to be in. Just like everybody needs groceries, everybody
Speaker 2: needs healthcare, and there's a lot of money to be made.
Speaker 2: And I also in this context, I have to think
Speaker 2: about how much Amazon knows about us from my own
Speaker 2: experience where recommended a statin to me. Amazon knows the
Speaker 2: groceries that I'm buying, the books that I'm reading, the
Speaker 2: clothes that I'm wearing a lot of times. So all
Speaker 2: that data can be leveraged into a business that can
Speaker 2: help Amazon grow and make more money. So why wouldn't
Speaker 2: they want.
Speaker 3: To be in the healthcare business?
Speaker 1: After the break, how much health trecking is too much?
Speaker 1: Health tracking?
Speaker 3: Stay with us.
Speaker 1: So there's this interesting pushball to your point about like
Speaker 1: your palm print, creating a new locke when you're quite
Speaker 1: happy just to go and checking with a receptionists, like
Speaker 1: that's not something you really want. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: wearables are a kind of voluntary self conversion into data
Speaker 1: in order to optimize, and that's something you've written about
Speaker 1: a fair bit as well. And then recently you decided
Speaker 1: to write a story about your experience of wearing basically
Speaker 1: every wearable that you could feel on your body, including
Speaker 1: glucose monitors, watches, rings. Tell us a bit about that
Speaker 1: story and what the experience of all of that data was.
Speaker 2: It all started at the beginning of this year at CES,
Speaker 2: which is the world's largest electronics show in Las Vegas.
Speaker 2: And I've been to CS many times as a technology journalist,
Speaker 2: and usually it's a lot of TVs and some goofy robots,
Speaker 2: but I'm always looking for innovation, for new things, for
Speaker 2: something I hadn't seen before, And what I saw at
Speaker 2: CES this year was a continuous glucose monitor for people
Speaker 2: who don't have diabetes. These are the little sensors that
Speaker 2: you might see on the backs of people's arms. Historically
Speaker 2: those have been to help people with diabetes manage their illness,
Speaker 2: but now a growing number of companies want to market
Speaker 2: them over the counter to people who are interested in
Speaker 2: fitness tracking. And what you're tracking is the glucose in
Speaker 2: your bloodstream. So I talked to a company there that
Speaker 2: was doing it, and then suddenly I started noticing all
Speaker 2: these other interesting health tracking products things I hadn't seen before.
Speaker 2: There are lots of companies selling smart rings, which have
Speaker 2: been around but are kind of newly popular. I saw
Speaker 2: and met with a company that actually has headphones that
Speaker 2: can track your brain waves.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: It's a company called Neuroble, and they've figured out a
Speaker 2: way to take over the year. Headphones the ones that
Speaker 2: kind of cup around your ears, and they have electrodes
Speaker 2: embedded in them and it can pick up on the
Speaker 2: electricity that your brain produces. They have a lot of
Speaker 2: ambition for this technology. But right now, the headphones that
Speaker 2: they're selling track your attention basically, like there's a you
Speaker 2: can kind of imagine a meter showing you how much
Speaker 2: you're paying attention. And the more I got distracted by
Speaker 2: the meter, the more my attention went down because I
Speaker 2: wasn't paying attention to the thing I was supposed to
Speaker 2: be paying attention to. So I think that actually kind
Speaker 2: of put me over the edge and wanting to do
Speaker 2: this story, like what can I track and what's useful
Speaker 2: because this is a health tracking is a huge and
Speaker 2: growing market and a lot of people are spending a
Speaker 2: lot of money to try to make themselves healthier with
Speaker 2: the help of tech.
Speaker 1: So you were wearables for many months, and lots of them.
Speaker 1: Can you list the wearables that you tried and what
Speaker 1: they were kind of marketed to do?
Speaker 2: I'll do my best. There were probably two dozen things
Speaker 2: that I tried. The Apple Watch was something I already had.
Speaker 2: The woopband was something I hadn't tried before, but I
Speaker 2: see a lot of people wearing it and they really
Speaker 2: like it. I wore in ordering all the time, but
Speaker 2: I really liked it for sleep. Other smart rings I tried,
Speaker 2: there's one called the Superhuman ring, one called the Lunar Ring.
Speaker 2: I wore headphones that read my brain waves, and I
Speaker 2: wore several different cgms. The companies that make the cgms
Speaker 2: the sensors themselves are Abbot Pharmaceuticals and dex Calm, and
Speaker 2: then the companies that make the software. Abbot has its
Speaker 2: own called Lingo, there's a company called Levels and Aura
Speaker 2: also recently started doing glucose tracking. So I tried all those,
Speaker 2: and then there were other devices that were in the mix,
Speaker 2: like Withvings has a number of health tech tools that
Speaker 2: I tried. The BPM Vision Plus is a fancy blood
Speaker 2: pressure cuff. They have a body scanner that I think
Speaker 2: is just called the body scan and I even tried
Speaker 2: glasses that also worked as hearing aids. They didn't track
Speaker 2: my health per se, but they were kind of they're
Speaker 2: in the mix.
Speaker 1: Who are these companies marketing to? I mean, who are
Speaker 1: these products FORU?
Speaker 2: I think they are basically two groups of people that
Speaker 2: these wearable companies are trying to appeal to. One is
Speaker 2: the athlete. A lot of these wearable companies started out
Speaker 2: as a kind of really hardcore fitness tracking, like the woopband.
Speaker 2: I think is particularly tuned towards people who like really
Speaker 2: want to optimize their their body's performance. The Superhuman Ring
Speaker 2: is another one that is really geared towards athletes, and
Speaker 2: the other group of is just everybody else who's just
Speaker 2: trying to gain some insight and be a little bit healthier.
Speaker 2: Maybe they want to feel better, have more energy, maybe
Speaker 2: they want to to sleep better, have more energy. Having
Speaker 2: more energy is a pretty common thing people want. But
Speaker 2: in general, I don't think that any of these devices
Speaker 2: or services really promise anything other than inside and information.
Speaker 1: What did you find useful about the experiment for yourself
Speaker 1: and what was less helpful?
Speaker 2: It was at times awful to be in that experiment.
Speaker 2: It was self imposed. I knew that I was getting
Speaker 2: myself into something that was probably going to end up
Speaker 2: being unpleasant, and it was also something that the average
Speaker 2: person should never try. I think that when I maxed out,
Speaker 2: I would be wearing the headphones, be wearing two or
Speaker 2: three smart rings, wristbands on each risk and continuous glucose
Speaker 2: monitor as well. At the same time, there are other
Speaker 2: things that I couldn't really wear that I was still
Speaker 2: trying out, Like I tried a scale that scanned my body.
Speaker 2: I tried a service that promised to give me actionable
Speaker 2: insights on my gut microbiome, and I did learn a
Speaker 2: lot about my health. I think the problem is that
Speaker 2: the way all these devices work is pretty similar. They
Speaker 2: have sensors that can pick up on things like your
Speaker 2: body temperature, but mostly they pick up on your heart
Speaker 2: rate and something called heart rate variability. As you may
Speaker 2: have guessed, heart rate variability is how much your heart
Speaker 2: rate varies at any given time. And I like that.
Speaker 2: I just didn't know how much to count on how
Speaker 2: the algorithms were kind of analyzing what I was doing.
Speaker 2: And the thing is every device was a little bit different.
Speaker 2: There were smart rings that told me I was super fit,
Speaker 2: and there were smart rings that told me that I
Speaker 2: had work to do, so they're all tuned a little
Speaker 2: bit differently. But overall, I found that the thing I
Speaker 2: wanted most was a way to check in with myself
Speaker 2: and know if I was being active enough. And the
Speaker 2: other thing and I didn't really expect this to be
Speaker 2: such a big factor going into the test was I
Speaker 2: really got into the sleep tracking side of it. It's
Speaker 2: something I hadn't tried before, but I still wear the
Speaker 2: or ring when I sleep, if only to check the
Speaker 2: score when I wake up, And I realized it sounds
Speaker 2: silly to think that you need to check a score
Speaker 2: to see how well you slept. But I have an
Speaker 2: eighteen month old. I don't sleep super great. But to
Speaker 2: have an extra little bit of data about what I'm
Speaker 2: doing when I can't track it at all, I thought
Speaker 2: was really helpful. And I am sleeping better, I'm going
Speaker 2: to bed earlier. I find myself listening to the software
Speaker 2: telling me what to do and feeling better as a result.
Speaker 2: And I think that if the goal for this was anything,
Speaker 2: it was to feel a little bit better and more
Speaker 2: confident about my health. And although it was a bumpy
Speaker 2: road the last six months, I think I got to
Speaker 2: a good place.
Speaker 1: Two kind of bigger zoom out questions. One is we're
Speaker 1: living in this sort of Maha time. Make America healthy again.
Speaker 1: And I think the one app which is truly like
Speaker 1: capture people's imagination this year is Yuka Right. You can
Speaker 1: scan products in the supermarket, in the grocery store and
Speaker 1: it will tell you the ingredients and how healthy the ingredients.
Speaker 1: So I was a French app and people are going
Speaker 1: crazy for it, and I think huge corporations like Into
Speaker 1: the Amazon changing the formulas and their products in response
Speaker 1: to consumer demand based around this app. It's sort of
Speaker 1: this idea that the best way to be in control
Speaker 1: of your health is to have more knowledge and to
Speaker 1: basically be your own doctor in some respects. Right, So
Speaker 1: is there a wide a cultural, socio political trend into
Speaker 1: which all of this is fitting.
Speaker 2: There's absolutely a bigger picture here. And I didn't even
Speaker 2: know that I was going to be getting into to
Speaker 2: the Mahab movement in this experiment until one of the
Speaker 2: companies that I tested out that sells continuous glucose monitors.
Speaker 2: They make the software actually was co founded by Trump's
Speaker 2: pick for Surge. In general, Casey means, the company is
Speaker 2: called Levels, and it is very much about giving you
Speaker 2: more information about what you're eating and how your body
Speaker 2: is responding to it. And it's hard to argue with
Speaker 2: giving people more information, but I do think that it's
Speaker 2: a slippery slope when you are are not just empowering
Speaker 2: them with information, but empowering people to take things into
Speaker 2: their own hands. And I did feel like some of
Speaker 2: these health tracking companies flirt with that idea of you,
Speaker 2: you can be your own doctor, and you can make
Speaker 2: the right healthcare decisions without needing to be involved in
Speaker 2: the healthcare system. There are a lot of criticisms about
Speaker 2: the US healthcare system that are really valid. But I
Speaker 2: think that there are some of the Maha movement that
Speaker 2: kind of think that people can make decisions better themselves
Speaker 2: with the right devices and technologies, and having spent a
Speaker 2: lot of time with these devices and technologies, I don't
Speaker 2: think that's the case for me. I still like talking
Speaker 2: to my doctor, and I still believe in traditional healthcare,
Speaker 2: but I do think that this tech can be a
Speaker 2: good supplement for a lot of people.
Speaker 1: I remember in my high school theology class, so we
Speaker 1: were introduced to this concept of the God of the gaps,
Speaker 1: which is basically like everything you couldn't explain with science,
Speaker 1: you could say, oh God, that's God, and that was
Speaker 1: like a kind of diminishing wedge of like God's role
Speaker 1: in the world. It makes me think about the tech
Speaker 1: of the gaps. In other words, like we're in a
Speaker 1: time where's mental health crisis, and so people are using
Speaker 1: large language models to be a therapist. There's a time
Speaker 1: where it's like tremendous chronic illness and very very uneven
Speaker 1: access to healthcare, and so we see these like fitness
Speaker 1: trapping tracking apps emerge like there's a kind of like
Speaker 1: patchwork tech solutionism, which at the margins that all these
Speaker 1: things can obviously be good, but in the aggregate they
Speaker 1: do point towards like a wider absence.
Speaker 2: Perhaps that's absolutely true, and it's something that I addressed
Speaker 2: in my piece about this. There is a primary healthcare
Speaker 2: crisis in the US, and it's not just an access
Speaker 2: to healthcare crisis, which is its own crisis. Not enough
Speaker 2: people in the US have health insurance, not enough can
Speaker 2: get access to a doctor, and even if they do,
Speaker 2: their primary care doctor is probably overworked and can't spend
Speaker 2: more than ten minutes with them maybe in the whole year.
Speaker 2: I can see how it's hard to depend on that
Speaker 2: system for most people. And technology isn't necessarily coming in
Speaker 2: to replace your doctor. I think that it's coming to
Speaker 2: help make you feel better about what you're doing, maybe
Speaker 2: in the absence of a doctor. But I continue to
Speaker 2: kind of have a hard time towing the line here
Speaker 2: because I do think that these devices are really helpful,
Speaker 2: and I think that the technology is good but from
Speaker 2: my own personal experience, I found that the more information
Speaker 2: I collected about myself and my body, the more anxious
Speaker 2: I felt about not knowing what it meant or what
Speaker 2: to do with it. And then that's where I think
Speaker 2: that the healthcare system has to come into play.
Speaker 1: Just to close we told to the beginning the conversation
Speaker 1: about privacy biometric data palm scans at the doctor, how
Speaker 1: concerned were you and should other consumers be about this
Speaker 1: treasure trove of health data escaping. I mean, obviously you
Speaker 1: feel like it's your rings, you'll whoop, it's your Apple watch,
Speaker 1: it's your continuous glucose monitor. But we've seen time and
Speaker 1: again that the databases that stills information are permeable. How
Speaker 1: much of a concern is that for you? And how
Speaker 1: robust are the so security protocols from any of these
Speaker 1: consumert health treking companies.
Speaker 2: One thing I think that is really important to point
Speaker 2: out here is that the data being collected by your
Speaker 2: or ring, or your wo band or Apple watch is
Speaker 2: not covered by HIPPA. Again, HIPPA is a really narrow
Speaker 2: law and it's very serious, and I think the data
Speaker 2: is well protected, but it's like your messages between you
Speaker 2: and your doctor and your test results. Those things are covered,
Speaker 2: but your oring data is not. We have seen major breaches.
Speaker 2: There is a huge fit bit breach where a lot
Speaker 2: of people's data got out there. I think with biometric
Speaker 2: data it's permanent, so once it is out there, if
Speaker 2: Amazon One got hacked and everybody's pomprints got out there,
Speaker 2: they'd be out there. We saw what happens when data
Speaker 2: kind of ends up in unexpected hands with the twenty
Speaker 2: three and me bankruptcy, where a lot of people's DNA
Speaker 2: information was up for sale. So I think that most
Speaker 2: people should assume that whatever data they're giving up when
Speaker 2: wearing one of these devices could get hacked and could
Speaker 2: end up on the dark web being sold. But that's
Speaker 2: true with any data that you're giving up when you're
Speaker 2: surfing the web or doing anything with technology. I think
Speaker 2: that there are companies that I trust more with my
Speaker 2: data who have made a stronger commitment to protecting it,
Speaker 2: like Apple. But I also think that there's a faith
Speaker 2: that you have to have in using some of these products,
Speaker 2: otherwise you'll go crazier or just not be able to
Speaker 2: use technology in general. If you're just too scared about
Speaker 2: getting hacked or a breach.
Speaker 1: Adam, thank you so much, Thank you for tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'mos Vloschin. This episode was produced by Elyza Dennis, Victoria Dominguez,
Speaker 1: and Adriana Toppia. It was executive produced by me, Karen
Speaker 1: Price and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katrina Norval for
Speaker 1: iHeart Podcasts. Jack Insley mixed this episode and Kyle Murdoch
Speaker 1: wrote our theme song. Join us on Friday for the
Speaker 1: Weekend tech when we'll run through all the headlines you
Speaker 1: may have missed, and please rate, review, and reach out
Speaker 1: to us at tech Stuff podcast at gmail dot com.