Consumers Voice Privacy Concerns Over Fitness Wearables

Fitness wearables have enabled us to own our health. But despite the wealth of information they provide, medical officials have yet to take advantage of them, which may be a good thing. Forbe’s Bruce Japsen reports that Americans are ready to embrace the fitness tech revolution, but a majority have concerns about how their medical data will be protected. The unfortunate truth is that the information transmitted by your device isn’t just between you and your doctor—there are third-parties involved.

In this post-Snowden era, Americans want to know that some things are kept private, like their medical history–there’s a reason why doctor-patient confidentiality exists after all. A report was filed today by PwC’s Health Research Institute after surveying 1,000 U.S. customers on their thoughts pertaining to fitness devices. It lists the top 10 health industry issues—two of which involve security and privacy worries. Almost 70 percent had concerns about their data being transmitted via smartphone and 78 percent took issue over the security of their medical data.

A “privacy nightmare,” Deborah Peel, the Executive Director of Patient Privacy Rights, called it when she spoke to The Washington Post earlier this year. Consumer advocates share her concern and believe the government isn’t doing enough to regulate this sensitive information. Especially, when you consider that manufacturers of these wearables can change their privacy policies any day of the week to say, “We may share information, including personally identifying information, with our affiliates … to help provide, understand and improve our services.” But it’s not just the companies you have to worry about, it’s hackers.

Fortunately, there’s a glimmer of hope for securing your data. Lisa Vaas of Naked Security writes on a recently funded project to encrypt and secure your information from user to health provider. Professor Sanjay Jha, Director of the Cyber Security and Privacy Laboratory at the School of Computer Science and Engineering, believes:

“If healthcare professionals and medical insurers are to trust the data coming from wearable devices, they also need to be confident that the provenance, namely the context–the person, time and place associated with the data–is genuine, that the device integrity has not been compromised by malware, and that the data has not been tampered in transit or storage.”

Perhaps more efforts, like these will crop up in the future, and with some help from lawmakers, perhaps consumers won’t have to worry about their medical information falling into the wrong hands. Whether they may be a hacker or a marketing agency.