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Your Peloton Is Spying on You, Mozilla Says in New Report
Home fitness equipment got poor marks in the Foundation’s annual Privacy Not Included report
Your treadmill is likely spying on you. That’s one of the most surprising conclusions of the Mozilla Foundation’s 2021 Privacy Not Included report, which was released this morning. For the report, the Mozilla Foundation’s researchers spent over 950 hours poring over the privacy policies, data gathering procedures, and hardware capabilities of over 150 smart tech products. Many home fitness products — including offerings from Peloton, Nordic Track, and Tonal — got terrible marks in the Foundation’s report.
Many of the smart gadgets in the Mozilla Foundation’s report are obvious privacy offenders. No one should be shocked, for example, that the Portal — an AI-enabled device from Facebook with an always-on microphone and smart camera capable of “tracking your every move” — raises privacy concerns. That your treadmill could be used to gather data about you and target you with ads, though, feels less obvious. That’s part of why Jen Caltrider, Mozilla’s lead researcher on the report, called smart home fitness products “especially problematic.”
In many ways, smart fitness products are likely a victim of their own success. The Peloton Bike and Pelton Tread, for example, have become wildly popular during the pandemic, with sales surging 172% as the world locked down in 2020, gyms closed, and well-heeled users craved a way to work out at home. As Mozilla reports, though, Peloton has “had a rough 2021.” The company had to intervene (Mozilla lauded it for doing so) when QAnon conspiracy theories started popping up in its leaderboards and forums. Peloton’s Tread also tragically lead to the death of a six-year-old child earlier in the year.
Peloton’s response to that tragedy, though, has created issues for many users, Mozilla says. To avoid future accidents, the company forced Tread owners to adopt a Tread Lock safety feature, which requires them to enter a PIN before the treadmill will operate. The problem? Enabling the feature initially cost $39 per month and required purchasing a subscription. While Peloton offered a free trial, Mozilla says that many users worried once the trial was done, their pricey…
