ROOMBA WANTS TO SELL A MAP OF YOUR HOME’S INTERIOR

East County News Service

July 26, 2017 (San Diego) – More and more homeowners have shown they are ready to “Roomba” – buying robotic vacuums to clean their homes. But many don’t realize that for the past two years, Roomba’s i900 series vacuums have been aided by tiny cameras that have built photographic maps of customers’ homes—capturing far more than dust and dog hair.

Now Colin Angle, chief executive officer of iRobot, the maker of Roomba, told Reuters news service,  “There’s an entire ecosystem of things and services that the smart home can deliver once you have a rich map of the home that the user has allowed to be shared.”

Angle told Reuters that iRobot, which made Roomba compatible with Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant in March, could reach a deal to sell its maps to one or more of the Big Three in the next couple of years.

Now Roomba wants to sell maps of the interior of your home for access to smart home services.

East County Magazine’s editor owns a Roomba and reached out to iRobot to request that her data not be shared, also voicing privacy concerns for others whose jobs make privacy paramount for safety’s sake, such as police officers, judges, or psychiatrists who may not want criminals or deranged patients potentially having access to maps of their homes.

James Baussmann, public relations manager for iRobot in North America, responded. Despite what Roomba’s CEO earlier told Reuters News Service, Baussman told ECM, “We have not formed any plans to sell the data.  iRobot is committed to the absolute privacy of our customer-related data, including data collected by our connected products. No data is sold to third-parties. No data will be shared with third-parties without the informed consent of our customers.”

But he made clear that in the future, the company hopes its customers will “opt in” to allow such information to be shared to enable smart home devices to work better, such as voice commands for systems of interconnected lights. New partnerships would first need to be forged, he added.

But just how clearly would such information be disclosed to consumers?  Will it be buried in fine print that nobody reads, or would users expressly need to sign off before a Roomba map of their floorplan could be shared with anyone willing to pay – and potentially vulnerable to hackers?

An analysis of iRobot’s privacy policy at Gizmodo found opportunities for third parties to get hold of Roomba users' data—including not only iRobot’s subsidiaries and third-party vendors, but also the government.  The potential for such data to be hacked, misused, or even posted maliciously online, also raises uncomfortable privacy issues for Roomba users.

"Convenience trumps privacy every time," concluded Rhett Jones at Gizmodo.  He adds, "Just remember that the Roomba knows what room your child is in; it’s the one where it bumps into all the toys on the floor."