Tech News : Wearable users tracked with Raspberry Pi.

[Anonymous]

Headline : Wearable users tracked with Raspberry Pi.

"People who use wearable gadgets to monitor their health or activity can be tracked with only $70 (£40) of hardware, research suggests."

My thoughts :

I'm very interested in purchasing one of the smart watches in the near future ,but am saddened to read such reports of how easy it was for these people to 'hack' them. 😞 I hope after this the manufacturers implement some form of tech to combat this.

Source : BBC News.
Read more here : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-28602997

[Anonymous]

"The research team used a barebones Raspberry Pi computer to which they added a Bluetooth radio module to help sniff for signals."

So...they were able to tell a device was within 10m, as they were using Bluetooth. To actually track people they would need to follow them about and stay within 10m, which forgive me if I'm wrong...is stalking!

Yes, if the Pi was static they could say that a particular device had been a a particular place at a certain time, but that says nothing about who was wearing the device. I also can't see what other information that they could get that would be in any way useful, or is the speed someone is running, their heartrate and their GPS co-ordinates now being used to break into bank accounts?

I'll just wear my tinfoil hat the next time I'm out a run with my Nike watch...

[Anonymous]

What's disconcerting is that these smart watches are rapidly moving on to uses such as reading / sending emails and so on.

[Anonymous]

I assumed it was health gadgets like the Fitbit or Nike+ , not smartwatches when the article started with "People who use wearable gadgets to monitor their health or activity"

[Anonymous]

It is but as we know these wearable gadgets are striving ahead to be possible all in one style gadgets with those uses.

[Anonymous]

I'm really interested on wearable devices and how tech gave us control over health and fitness. I actually developed an infographic about this for a course I did on Digital Marketing. As you can see, it is evolving really fast. I agree with @Anonymous the info they can get says nothing about who was wearing the device... I'm more concerned about how Facebook or Google can manage our data. But that's another discussion.

@Anonymous What's disconcerning about being able to check your email with these smart watches?

[Anonymous]

Hi Marina

A course that you did.. Clever you.

What I'm meaning is with all the snooping that goes on in various ways by various person(s) / businesses etc I'm not wanting to leave myself open by using a device that could lack adequate firewalls.

I've nothing to hide ~ honest ~ but I wouldn't want someone intercepting emails / texts.

[Anonymous]

I totally agree with you @Anonymous but I'm honestly more concerned about companies like Facebook or Google.

Anyway I'm starting to think that is going to be impossible to void companies intercepting emails/texts. But as we don't have anything to hide we shouldn't worry too much