Wireless scale tracks your weight over time

Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/06/19/wireless-scale-tracks-your-wei.html

Not sure about this scale but I’ve been using a Fitbit Aria scale and tracking using Trendweight.com for 20 months now. I’ve lost 35 pounds and kept it off for over a year by recording my weight every day.

This one single thing has made the biggest difference in maintaining weight loss more than anything else.

https://www.amazon.com/Fitbit-Wi-Fi-Smart-Scale-Black/dp/B0077L8YOO/ref=sr_1_1_s_it?s=hpc&ie=UTF8&qid=1497898628&sr=1-1&keywords=fitbit+aria

How private would my weight data be? I don’t want any “Guess Your Weight” carnies getting their hands on that data.

[spoiler]It uses bluetooth for one. So only the device you connect to it can get the data. After that it all depends on you and which mobile operating system your phone has. iOS (Apple) encrypts in and nobody but you will be reading it.

https://www.apple.com/privacy/approach-to-privacy/[/spoiler]

As ugh responded their own app can basically do whatever they feel like. If they just used (for iOS) the Health app it might be safer. I don’t know if any of these scales do or can do so directly. I’m interested to know if they can. Or at least if whatever scale’s app didn’t ask for any registration and just forwarded the data through the Health API, it would be alright.

Though might as well manually fill in your weight in the Apple Health app in this case… it hardly saves you any time of your life.

1 Like

But does the app keep the data on the phone, or does it share it with Koogeek?

EDIT: I found my answer.

  1. Which data are collected?

The use of Koogeek products and services request data to be collected. Those data identifies you either directly or indirectly.

Data that identifies you directly may be your first name or surname, your date of birth, your e-mail address, your photo, etc. We may also collect data that identify you indirectly such as your weight.

(Source: koogeek.com, under “Koogeek Health”)

As a software engineer, I suspected this was the case.

1 Like

My bad. I somehow (it’s early morning here) just thought it would tap into the Health app. But yes their own app can basically do whatever it wants. I’ll correct my other respons.

I had an early digital scale about 30 years ago. It didn’t have any special features but other scales advertised at the time did.
One day, my girlfriend came out of the bathroom, saying she likes my new scale. I told her, yeah, it remembers the last 100 uses so you can track your weight.
I really didn’t think she’d start crying…

1 Like

I’ve been using an old Wii balance board and WiiScale. You can save data to a file, a custom URL, twitter, or fitbit.

Set me back a whole $0.00.

My clothes do an excellent job of tracking my weight. Whenever my weight falls out of their range of measurement, I just have to get some new clothes with a new multiplier. Sadly, they are not Bluetooth but they are wireless, mostly.

This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.