Roomba creator won't sell your data after all??

In this article from theverge, the Roomba parent company iRobot states they now won't sell the data of the layouts of inside your home - taken by the Roomba device. Maybe just not hooking the Roomba up to any network by default is the safest way to make sure it won't send your data? Or maybe iRobot will send out 'updates' and acquire the data that way, like other companies have I am sure acquired information in the past from 'updates'.  What's next, your internet connected fridge sending out blogs on how much milk you drink?

Roomba creator says it ‘will never sell your data’ after talking about selling your data

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by Jacob Kastrenakes  Jul 28, 2017, 11:04am EDT

Just a few days after musing about the potential to sell mapping data of customers’ homes, the CEO of Roomba maker iRobot has pedaled those claims way back. In a statement provided to ZDNet, company CEO Colin Angle now says that “iRobot will never sell your data.” A company representative said his previous statements were misinterpreted.

Angle isn’t backing off of the idea that Roomba data could be used to enhance smart homes, which is what he originally thought the data would be sold for. But he’s positioning it in a much more palatable way this time: saying that, if customers want that feature, it would be entirely their choice to share it with other apps and devices. It wouldn’t be used “as a data asset of a corporation to exploit,” he says.

EVIDENTLY, THERE WAS ENOUGH BACKLASH FOR IROBOT TO CHANGE PLANS

Earlier this week, Angle said to Reuters that mapping data collected by the camera on the company’s newer Roomba models, like the Wi-Fi-connected Roomba 980, could be used to enhance smart home devices. He seemed to say that iRobot could make a deal with Apple, Google, or Amazon in the next year or so to share the data.

The story was widely picked up and generated some obvious fears about customer privacy. Evidently, there was enough backlash that iRobot has had to scrap whatever plans it had, or at the very least provide an assurance to customers that they’ll still be in control.