Amazon's Roomba robot vacuum merger bid sparks privacy fears
Amazon's billion dollar bid to merge with Roomba robot vacuum maker iRobot is another way for the company to get your personal information – which could include the floor plan of your homes, critics have warned.
The company has said it will spend $US3.9 billion ($5.55 billion) to acquire primary care provider One Medical and $1.7 billion on its merger with iRobot, which recently released a Roomba line that uses sensors to map and remember house lay outs.
But how safe is our data with Amazon, and what does it do with it?
"It's acquiring this vast set of data that Roomba collects about people's homes," says Ron Knox, from the anti-monopoly group Institute for Local Self-Reliance.
"Its obvious intent, through all the other products that it sells to consumers, is to be in your home.
"Along with the privacy issues come the anti-trust issues, because it's buying market share."
Amazon's reach goes well beyond our homes.
Some estimates show the retail giant controls roughly 38 per cent of the US e-commerce market, which allows it to gather granular data about the shopping habits of millions worldwide.
Meanwhile, its Echo devices, which connect to the voice assistant Alexa, have dominated the US smart speaker market, accounting for roughly 70 per cent of sales, according to estimates by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners.
Ring, which Amazon bought in 2018 for $US1 billion, monitors doorsteps and helps police track down crime — even when users might not be aware.
And at select Amazon stores and Whole Foods, the company is testing a palm-scanning technology which allows customers to pay for items by storing biometric data in the cloud, prompting fears of possible data breaches, which Amazon has attempted to assuage.
"We treat your palm signature just like other highly sensitive personal data and keep it safe using best-in-class technical and physical security controls," the company says on a website which provides information about the technology.
Even consumers who actively avoid Amazon are still likely to have little say about how their employers power their computer networks, which Amazon — along with Google — has long dominated through its cloud-computing service AWS.
"It's hard to think of another organisation that has as many touch points as Amazon does to an individual," says Ian Greenblatt, who heads up tech research at the consumer research and data analytics firm J.D. Power.
"It's almost overwhelming, and it's hard to put a finger on it."
And Amazon — like any company — aims to grow.
In the past few years, the company has purchased the wi-fi startup Eero and partnered with the construction company Lennar to offer tech-powered houses.
With iRobot, it will edge closer to the ultimate smart home — and, of course, more data.
Customers can opt out of having iRobot devices store a layout of their homes, according to the vacuum maker.
But data privacy advocates worry the merger is another way Amazon could suck up information to integrate into its other devices or use to target consumers with ads.
Amazon spokeswoman Lisa Levandowski denies that's what the company wants to do.
"We do not use home maps for targeted advertising and have no plans to do so," she said.
But that's unlikely to ease privacy fears.
Earlier this year, a group of university researchers released a report which found voice data from Amazon's Echo devices are used to target ads to consumers — something the company had denied in the past.
Umar Iqbal, a post doctorate student at the University of Washington who led the research, says he and his colleagues found Echo devices running third-party Skills, which are like apps for Alexa, which communicate with advertisers.
Ms Levandowski says consumers can opt out of receiving "interest-based" ads.
She also said Amazon doesn't share Alexa requests with advertising networks.
Skills that collect personal information are required to post their privacy policies on a detail page in Amazon's store, according to the company.
Researchers, however, found only 2 per cent of Skills are clear about their data collection practices, and the vast majority don't mention Alexa or Amazon at all.
For companies like Amazon, it's about more than data collection, says Kristen Martin, a professor of technology ethics at the University of Notre Dame.
"You can almost see them just trying to paint a broader picture of an individual," Ms Martin says.
"It's about the inferences that they're able to draw about you specifically, and then you compared to other people."
For example, with the One Medical deal, how will Amazon handle personal health data?
Should the deal close, Ms Levandowski says customers' health information will be handled separately from all other Amazon businesses.
She adds Amazon wouldn't share personal health information outside of One Medical for "advertising or marketing purposes of other Amazon products and services without clear permission from the customer".
But Lucia Savage, a chief privacy officer at the chronic care provider Omada Health, says this doesn't mean One Medical won't be able to get data from other arms of Amazon's business, which could help it better profile its patients.
The information just has to flow one way, she says.
The retail goliath has promised to fix its virtual assistant after reports it would laugh during conversations or without being asked anything.
And privacy concerns are not limited to Amazon.
In the aftermath of Roe v Wade being overturned Google said it would automatically get rid of information about users who visit abortion clinics after pressure from Democratic lawmakers.
Meanwhile, Meta, which owns Facebook, settled a class action lawsuit in February over its use of "cookies" about a decade ago which tracked users after they logged off Facebook.
But unlike Meta and Google, whose focus is mainly on selling ads, Amazon might benefit more from collecting data because its primary goal is to sell products, says Alex Harman, director of competition policy at the anti-monopoly group Economic Security Project.
"For them, data is all about getting you to buy more and be locked into their stuff," Mr Harman says.
AP
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