The Halo Band fitness tracker technology has been described by even The Washington Post (The Post) as both invasive and unhelpful.
The Post’s Dec. 10 review of Amazon’s new fitness tracking technology the Amazon Halo Band was no less than a condemnation. The review, bluntly headlined “Amazon’s new health band is the most invasive tech we’ve ever tested,” described how this new technology “asks you to strip down and strap on a microphone so that it can make 3-D scans of your body fat and monitor your tone of voice. After all that, it still isn’t very helpful,” noted The Post. The Reviewers admitted: “While reviewing the Halo, we couldn’t shake the suspicion it was just another effort by Amazon to collect more data about customers’ lives.”
The article acknowledged “Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post,” but declared, “we review all technology with the same critical eye.”
And the reviewers weren’t kidding.
The Amazon Halo Band was raked over the coals for high tech nagging: “We don’t need this kind of criticism from a computer. The Halo collects the most intimate information we’ve seen from a consumer health gadget — and makes the absolute least use of it.”
The reviewers commented that while there are many equivalent products to Amazon’s Halo from other companies, it seems to excel in invasiveness. While on one hand, “Like its competitors, it contains sensors that monitor physical activity, heart rate, sleep and skin temperature” it also “pushes into uncharted territory.” Amazon’s Halo does so by “collecting new, unabashedly invasive kinds of personal information — including body photos and voice recordings — and then feeding it into Amazon’s software for analysis. They’re going for AI doctor, or at least life coach.”
Amazon’s Halo surpasses Apple Watch and Fitbit with features “that have never been seen in a mainstream wearable device, including one that tracks a user’s emotional state by listening to the tone of their voice, and another that provides a three-dimensional rendering of their body,” CNBC reported August 27. This technology is yet another step towards a futuristic dystopia where users are encouraged to provide the most private details of their lives to Big Tech companies.
And let’s not forget, Amazon has a checkered past when it comes to user data.
News reports showed that “Amazon Alexa Has ‘New Ways” to Detect, Listen for Things in Your Home.” Amazon Echo has teamed up with Alexa Guard to allow Alexa to “alert you to the sounds of activity when you’re not home” too, even integrating your daily routines and, yes, also acting as your live-in “doorbell concierge.”
Conservatives are under attack. Call up Amazon at 1 (888) 280-4331 and demand that it provide transparency. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
