Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/12/18/surveillance-dentistry.html
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“it appears you are at a donut shop. Your rates are currently going up by $.001 per minute. To reduce your charges, please move to our sponsor Tender Greens, .04 miles away”
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Android phones require location permission for the app to detect Bluetooth Low Energy devices. So blame Google for making no distinction before “find my toothbrush” and “track me everywhere I go forever”
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Are you sure the toaster knows that?
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the obvious point is why does a toothbrush need firmware any more than a pencil would
but now I want to see a movie plot where an evil russian hacker murders thousands by reprogramming their unsecured toothbrush with a 0-day
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Who the hell is buying an internet-connected toothbrush?
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These are the questions i need answered
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I’ve been using my old Sonicare for years now, and am pleased with its performance. Not sure I want to broadcast details of my toothbrushing when I replace it, however.
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I don’t know what brand electric toothbrush i have, but i would gladly downgrade to a normal toothbrush if the alternative was a “smart” one.
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The location approval screenshot was from an iPhone.
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It’s not quite that simple.
Let’s say you enable for the Sonicare app - it’s then allowed to see all Bluetooth devices in range.
This means that the app could, for example, know when you’re at CVS - because CVS has installed a ton of Bluetooth beacons. Given how many BT beacons are out there, they can’t promise any shade of gray between ‘no location’ and ‘all location’.
They can’t limit it to individual BTLE devices, because that would drastically increase UI complexity and piss off users even worse: “Would you like to connect to ToothBlrush 12:34:56:78:90:ab?” “Would you like to allow the Sonicare app to see ‘ToothBlrush 12:34:56:78:90:ab’?” “Would you like to hide ‘ToothBlrush 12:34:56:78:90:ab’ from all other applications by default?”
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I don’t understand why your toothbrush needs any data. Like, seriously, I have no idea. You brush for two minuets twice a day. What more information does one need?
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Nope, I want firmware updates, even in my toothbrush - if it’s being made ‘smart’.
If it’s a pure hardware circuit? Fine.
But if there is software, software has flaws. I want it to be able to fix things like ‘we forgot to account for Lithium-Ion battery life and will overcharge a dying battery, causing the toothbrush to halt and catch fire’ or ‘2 min brushing timer occasionally resets mid-brush’. Oh, sure, I’d rather it not have those flaws from the start. But I write software for a living; it’d take a miracle.
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I think today is the day I officially give up, and acknowledge that we are simply in fully dystopian times. So I will attempt to find the humor in such things as surveilling internet-connected location-aware toothbrushes foisted upon us by our corporate overlords and the strange entities they serve.
So on that note:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Spy-toothbrush!!! LOL!!! 
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One’s dental plan provider would like to know that you’re brushing properly.
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Internet of Shit, yes, but there are multiple parallel skidmarks of shittiness to consider.
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The “Solution in Search of a Problem” skidmark: this toothbrush connects to the internet, not because that will help your teeth, but because it’s cheap to do (as long as you don’t do it well) and someone thought it would impress their boss
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The “Making Don Norman Cry” skidmark: a built-in internet connection is a great way to simplify a product’s administrative burden! Unless the product is a motherfucking toothbrush, which didn’t have an administrative burden until you put an internet-connected microcontroller in it.
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The “Privacy Holocaust” skidmark: you can make an internet connection tolerably secure, or you can have an internet connection that doesn’t require any attention. If someone’s selling you an internet-connected toothbrush, it’s pretty clear which option they have in mind.
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The “All That Is Solid Melts Into Air” skidmark: applies to most toothbrushes, but this really rubs it in your face
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I think my daughter got one of these with the start of her braces. It seems to do a good job on her actual tooth brushing. Never connected it to any apps, so it is possibly just waiting for an unsecured phone to come visit.
It also came with a phone mount so you could mount your phone on the mirror while you brush.
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The day a damn toothbrush rats me out to the dentist for a root canal is the day it goes to the garage for clean-up duty on crud impacted car parts. What if the damn thing spots bad tonsils and jumps past my uvula? I don’t need no quivering toothbrush.
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But keeping track of time is H A R D. Why wouldn’t you want your smart-phone taking care of such smarts-required things.
It will also auto-notify your parents and/or tinder profile of your good cleaning habits. And, really, everyone else on the internet.
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