Consumers have varying degrees of
trust in how much their connected devices protect their privacy.
Just in time for the holiday shopping season, Mozilla has created its annual guide to which products are considered to have
good privacy systems in place and which don’t.
The Mozilla “creep-o-meter” identifies 20 products as not
creepy, with lots more ranging from a little creepy to super creepy.
In the not-creepy category are the Sony PS4, Amazon Kindle, Jabra Elite 75t earbuds, Findster Duo Plus Pet Tracker, Apple
Watch 5 and Roomba 690 Robot Vacuum.
To make the selections, Mozilla created what it called “minimum security standards” to rate products on using encryption, automatic security
updates, requiring strong passwords, having a system to manage vulnerabilities and having an accessible privacy policy.
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Researchers at Mozilla, the nonprofit behind the Firefox browser, also
went through privacy policies as well as product and app specifications.
Some of the more popular connected products from some of the most notable brands made the “super creepy”
list. These include Google Home, Amazon Echo Show, Facebook Portal, Ring Video Doorbell, Cams, Nest Cam Indoor Security Camera and Link AKC Smart Collar.
Looks like there may be some marketing
challenges ahead, if consumers are paying attention.