If you are concerned about your privacy, then you should check Mozilla’s buyers’ guide which evaluates different products based on their ability to preserve consumer privacy. From recommending products as privacy-keepers to spreading awareness to customers regarding products that are high-rated but lack in maintaining user privacy, Mozilla’s buyers’ guide is a reliable source to check upon, before buying any gadget.
The Mozilla Foundation has released this year’s list of products that should not be gifted on upcoming holidays keeping in view the severe possible data breaching issues within these products.
The list was compiled by the Firefox browser in 2017 and has around 90 gadgets that are otherwise full of high ratings and benefits as per different articles, but the privacy issues are only discussed by the Mozilla buyers’ guide. What consumers fear the most and are worried about is what those products are, how the data is collected from them, how it is used, and whether it will affect their privacy or their loved ones. To resolve your worries, Mozilla makes sure that different products pass Mozilla’s minimum-security standard before being labeled as privacy-ensured products.
Those products that do not meet Mozilla’s minimum-security standards are labeled with a warning mentioning that privacy is not included with this device/gadget/product. Moreover, there’s an option for users to mark products as not creepy or super creepy, this counts as votes and provides understanding at a glance about a product’s reliability.
For instance, the Meta Quest Pro AR (augmented-reality) and VR (virtual-reality) headsets manufactured by Meta which is Facebook’s parent company are marked with a warning explaining how different cameras are implanted inside and out of the headset that costs $1.5K. Cameras help in increasing user experience yet they are also used to design your facial characteristics which other players in the Metaverse can see.
The research by the Mozilla product review team also uncovered Meta’s irony over user-agreement documentation which is a mega-document divided into 14 sub-documents and as estimated by Mozilla, it contains around 37,700 words. This word length is 6,747 words greater than A Christmas Carol and would take a massive four hours and fifty minutes of training.
Moving toward the part of the report where the Amazon Echo dot is discussed, it gets the same warning as Meta Quest Pro. Amazon’s Alexa-powered Echo Dot is in business, at homes, shops, workplaces, and anywhere you name it, it is the most dominant bot used in today’s world. And why not? It plays music, turns on the lights, remembers different tasks, and tells jokes too. Amazon proudly claims that it does not sell its data to any third party yet if one takes into account the fact that the data gained from Alexa-powered Echo Dot can be and it is used by Amazon to sell us more products that fit our needs then this claim doesn’t seem to fully satisfy consumer privacy. After all, someone is listening to things and is using that information to benefit themselves.
Amazon is not selling our information to any other source, but it is providing access to its users who are retailers on Amazon web stores to target the audience based on the information they get from Amazon insights. This is achieved by massive data collection by Amazon, from its products like Alexa Searches, your Amazon Prime watch history, when you watch shows and what type of shows you watch, and how much time you spend on these shows. Besides the permissions, Alexa requests during installation range from access to saved contacts to photos and videos in the gallery as well.
But not all products lack keeping up consumer privacy as their top priority, and Mozilla has mentioned those items as well that have passed their minimum-security standards. Sonos’ Smart Speakers now come with their own up-to-the-mark privacy-friendly Sonos Voice Control which neither sends nor saves your data. So, for instance, if you have asked the device to play a song, it will be just you that listened to it and not anyone else. This privacy-ensuring feature is not available in Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant.
Read next: Graphic Design Trends That Will Be Everywhere in 2023
The Mozilla Foundation has released this year’s list of products that should not be gifted on upcoming holidays keeping in view the severe possible data breaching issues within these products.
The list was compiled by the Firefox browser in 2017 and has around 90 gadgets that are otherwise full of high ratings and benefits as per different articles, but the privacy issues are only discussed by the Mozilla buyers’ guide. What consumers fear the most and are worried about is what those products are, how the data is collected from them, how it is used, and whether it will affect their privacy or their loved ones. To resolve your worries, Mozilla makes sure that different products pass Mozilla’s minimum-security standard before being labeled as privacy-ensured products.
Those products that do not meet Mozilla’s minimum-security standards are labeled with a warning mentioning that privacy is not included with this device/gadget/product. Moreover, there’s an option for users to mark products as not creepy or super creepy, this counts as votes and provides understanding at a glance about a product’s reliability.
For instance, the Meta Quest Pro AR (augmented-reality) and VR (virtual-reality) headsets manufactured by Meta which is Facebook’s parent company are marked with a warning explaining how different cameras are implanted inside and out of the headset that costs $1.5K. Cameras help in increasing user experience yet they are also used to design your facial characteristics which other players in the Metaverse can see.
The research by the Mozilla product review team also uncovered Meta’s irony over user-agreement documentation which is a mega-document divided into 14 sub-documents and as estimated by Mozilla, it contains around 37,700 words. This word length is 6,747 words greater than A Christmas Carol and would take a massive four hours and fifty minutes of training.
Moving toward the part of the report where the Amazon Echo dot is discussed, it gets the same warning as Meta Quest Pro. Amazon’s Alexa-powered Echo Dot is in business, at homes, shops, workplaces, and anywhere you name it, it is the most dominant bot used in today’s world. And why not? It plays music, turns on the lights, remembers different tasks, and tells jokes too. Amazon proudly claims that it does not sell its data to any third party yet if one takes into account the fact that the data gained from Alexa-powered Echo Dot can be and it is used by Amazon to sell us more products that fit our needs then this claim doesn’t seem to fully satisfy consumer privacy. After all, someone is listening to things and is using that information to benefit themselves.
Amazon is not selling our information to any other source, but it is providing access to its users who are retailers on Amazon web stores to target the audience based on the information they get from Amazon insights. This is achieved by massive data collection by Amazon, from its products like Alexa Searches, your Amazon Prime watch history, when you watch shows and what type of shows you watch, and how much time you spend on these shows. Besides the permissions, Alexa requests during installation range from access to saved contacts to photos and videos in the gallery as well.
But not all products lack keeping up consumer privacy as their top priority, and Mozilla has mentioned those items as well that have passed their minimum-security standards. Sonos’ Smart Speakers now come with their own up-to-the-mark privacy-friendly Sonos Voice Control which neither sends nor saves your data. So, for instance, if you have asked the device to play a song, it will be just you that listened to it and not anyone else. This privacy-ensuring feature is not available in Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant.
Read next: Graphic Design Trends That Will Be Everywhere in 2023
