Introduction

A few years back I became interested in the idea of getting a smartwatch. However, what I found when I started doing research into them was nothing short of horrifying. Take the journey with me as I talk about why I thought a smartwatch would be a good fit in my life, to the realization that there was no chance I would ever buy one of them.

The level of enshittification that exists in this market segment is stunning. It is so rampant that in the end I went a different, and surprising (especially to me) direction, which has a few of its own twists.

I will say this: my research into smartwatches and the accompanying applications proved to me that old-fashioned wristwatches are still a great piece of technology today.

The Search for a Smartwatch

It generally starts with something simple. That something simple in this case: my old cellphone had a step counter. When I replaced the phone, I no longer had a step counter. I hear you asking: “But couldn't a simple app accomplish that?” And yes, indeed, it could, but… There's always a “but” isn't there?

My lifestyle has changed over the past decade. I'm no longer in the rat race, I'm no longer required to have a cellphone on me at all times. It's been quite liberating. There are times when I'll set my phone down for hours while I'm off doing chores around the house or outside without giving it a second thought.

That's when I started looking at smartwatches for the simple reason: I wanted a watch that could track my health and exercise habits / routines. Something that I wore as opposed to something I had to carry. That seemed reasonable to me, smartwatches have had these features for years.

So, I started looking at the most popular options: the Apple Watch, Samsung Galaxy Watch, and Google Pixel watch, etc. But, as I quickly realized, there were problems with these choices.

The Problems Begin

It's been a long-standing issue in the Internet age that corporate entities have decided they are entitled to as much personal information about us as they can gather. It's something I, and others, have been vehemently opposed to well over a decade. Information about your health is an extremely touchy subject, at least it should. I have stronger than average feelings about this issue, a story which requires a bit of a detour.

My mother was a registered nurse for around thirty to forty years. She left the profession to raise our family, and during this time she found her way into politics, acting as the office manager for one of our States' Senators. During her time working for the Senator she cultivated connections at both the State and Federal level. Because of those connections, she was approached many times to provide feed back on healthcare related rules / laws and legislation as it was being drafted. She claimed, there were things in some regulations and legislation as a result of her feedback. (I doubt it was that simple, but I don't doubt that she provided valuable feedback.)

So, the combination of my mother being involved with healthcare related rules and legislation, and my longstanding concerns over privacy issues on the internet made for an intense combination. Let's just say the alarm bells went off so much as I did my research, I ran out of bells. Here are just a few issues I found.

Google Health APIs

All smartwatches that gathered health information used (use?) Google's Health API's to communicate between the device and the phone application. In my opinion Google has not shown themselves to be trustworthy since they removed Don't Be Evil from their corporate Code of Conduct and dropped it as their motto.

I don't feel secure knowing that a company known for scraping as much information as they can about users from their online activities as possible has access to any health related information of mine.

App Terms

Looking into the apps required by these devices, they often state they will share your information with third parties in order to “offer” additional services. There was no clarification that you needed to approve said sharing first. There were also unclear terms around other uses of this information. And, the nail in the coffin for me, was the requirement to access many things on my phone I didn't want to grant access to, like the camera. I would have been less alarmed if these things were optional, but they were listed as required instead.

So, yeah, no. I'm not giving any company that much access to my phone to gather unknown amounts of information, that can be shared in ways that I don't have any right of approval over.

Unclear Information Storage and Handling

The third and final nail in the coffin for me was information storage and handling. I was in complete shock to realize that the information handling was hardly documented. Some of the things that I hoped to find:

• Indications that information was encrypted. Most applications indicated it wasn't.
• Statement(s) of where storage of the information was located. I couldn't find any.
• Policies around data retention. There were none.
• Indications that canceled accounts (which, by the way, were required as well) would have all information related to the user removed. Nope. No such statement.

Don't get me wrong, this wasn't consistent across all apps. Some of them did indicate information was encrypted. And others might have partial data retention information, or data removal being available, etc. But none of them hit the marks in terms of me feeling comfortable with their stated policies. If anything, the process of researching these applications just put me more on edge.

The Closest

I will say, through my hazy memory from six years ago, it appeared Apple had the best policies, especially where health related information was concerned.

But, here's the thing, I'm an Android person. And no, I won't buy into Apple's closed ecosystem. And, I had just bought a new phone, so scrapping a new phone to buy an iPhone just was not in the cards.

The Other Things I Didn't Like

Even before I started looking at the applications that were used for health tracking with Smartwatches, I found there were other things I just didn't like. Basically, it comes down to this: too many features, inability to disable the features.

So, remember this started out as I wanted a device that could do some health tracking for me. And, of course, I also wanted the watch to tell the time. But that's it.

What I didn't want was a watch that would send me notifications. I didn't want to use it to control my media, receive messages on it, or make phone calls from it. I didn't want the literal myriad of other features that many of these “watches” provided.

That was when a light bulb went off in my mind. Smartwatches aren't watches, really. They are communication devices. Which is exactly the opposite of what I wanted. I wanted to get away from being tethered to a constant, intrusive communication device. This was my time to get away from the constant drag of being tied to that bloody f***ing cellphone.

That realization hit me while I was doing my research, which reinforced my growing certainty that Smartwatches weren't for me.

What Did I End up With?

Well, funny you should ask… I bought a smart ring instead. And not one of the big brands, like Oura. No, I bought a cheap, Chinese ring. “Why?” I hear you asking. The answer is somewhat surprising.

You might think that a Chinese ring would be worse in terms of data handling. Surprisingly that's not the case. The apps I looked at stated that they didn't gather any information. And, the only account they wanted was optional for “social” and supposed “information” features (which I would never use). They didn't want access to most of my phone (i.e., no camera, or media, etc.). They stated they would only use my information with my approval first. And, even better, they don't use Google's Health API.

Did I believe all of these statements? Absolutely not. However, there was one thing that I did believe: their devices had core functionality that would always work. The intrusive / scraping parts of their program wouldn't interfere with core functionality. I couldn't say that about any smartwatch, and I had an ace up my sleeve: TrackerControl.

TrackerControl allows me to block any endpoint that might be trying to spy on me. With TrackerControl installed I installed the app for the ring I'd bought (the ring hadn't been delivered yet). I verified there were five suspicious looking endpoints that the software was trying to communicate with, so I blocked them. Once the ring arrived, I connected the app to it, and everything started working. I verified again that there were no new endpoints being used now that the ring was active, and that was it.

The ring has worked well for the past year and a half. However, it's being replaced now. Why? Typical issue: battery failure. I don't know if it was programmed to do this, but the battery hasn't been holding as much of a charge over the past month or two. It's gone from 6 to 7 days per charge, down to around 3 days.

This time I'm replacing it with a bracelet. Why? Well, two things. First, it solves (or at least claims to improve on) the battery issue. Supposedly it only needs to be charged once a month. We'll see about that. The bracelet doesn't have a display, so it won't be using its charge for displaying information directly.

Also, it has more sensors, and the app gathers more information. There are a few things that I've wanted to track more closely that this ring doesn't. The bracelet should be able to (at least according to what I've read about it and the app), so it should be an improvement. And, for what it's worth, I'll still be wearing my watch, the bracelet will be on my other wrist.

Finally, I'll be honest, I don't like the physical form-factor of the ring. It's just too thick. It just bothers me. I thought I would get used to it over time. And, I have to some degree, but I still know that it's there all the time, it never goes away for me. So, hopefully a bracelet will just go away.

In Closing

I'm actually somewhat happy that things have turned out as they have. Switching to wearing a smart ring instead of a smartwatch left me space to explore wristwatches. That was the only thing that I was missing when I decided to get smart ring: something that displayed the time.

It may look a bit funny wearing a smart bracelet. But, hopefully not. They are thinner and smaller than most smartwatches since they don't have a display, microphone, etc. Hopefully it will (mostly) just look like a bracelet.

I think it's ironic that in order to get away from being tracked, and to keep my information private and secure I had to go to something that I would have thought would be the least secure option. Instead, with a bit of work, I was able to make it secure. This is something I doubt would ever work with the big smartwatches. There's just too much information and interconnectivity going on to be able to control the device using something like TrackerControl. And, if I was spending several hundred or a thousand dollars on a device, I want it to just work. I'd be even more annoyed if I found that I couldn't make it work the way I wanted.

So, there you have it. Cheap, hackable software / hardware for the win. And, in the process, I got to indulge in the hobby of wristwatches.

Categories: #Essays Tags: #rant, #enshittification, #communication, #devices, #technology, #privacy License: Copyright Unattributed. Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0.what I am going to talk about today.