Tell Roomba to Stop Showing the Map of Your House [Updated]
The Roomba 900 Series offers a cleanliness report that displays your home while cleaning, improves movement, and tells you how well it has cleaned. But to get this card, according to customer service representatives, you must share it with iRobot, the creator of Roomba. And it gives iRobot permission to transfer or sell your card. This is exactly what iRobot CEO Colin Engle plans to do , as he told Reuters this week:
Angle told Reuters that iRobot, which made Roomba compatible with Amazon Alexa in March, may close a deal to sell its cards to one or more of the Big Three in the next couple of years.
The Big Three are Amazon, Apple, or Google, all desperate for customer data and making millions of dollars in targeted advertising.
According to Gizmodo, iRobot’s privacy policy could be construed as allowing the company to sell your data without asking you . IRobot’s Twitter account has been addressing damages with disgruntled customers, responding with a reassurance from Angle:
So, according to Angle, iRobot will ask permission before sharing your information with the other party. Of course, if you’ve ever chosen Clean Map Reports, you’ve technically given iRobot that permission. This is just another of the many ways that consumers unknowingly give up their privacy.
Currently, you can opt out of Blank Maps Reporting in the iRobot HOME App by going to More> Settings> Toggle Blank Maps Reporting.
Not all iRobot support teams respond equally well to this news. While an online customer service representative directed me to a Twitter account and Angle’s statement, the phone representative confidently informed me that iRobot would not sell data. When I read him Angle’s statement, he was taken by surprise.
If you’ve already let Roomba deliver a blank card report to iRobot, it’s unclear if there is any way to retroactively revoke permission to sell that report. I have reached out to iRobot for clarification and will update their answer.
Update (5:15 AM ET, July 25): iRobot PR responded with the following statement:
To be clear, iRobot had no plans to sell the data. iRobot is committed to maintaining the absolute confidentiality of our customer data, including data collected by our connected products. No data is sold to third parties. No data will be passed on to third parties without the informed consent of our customers. If the customer has already registered / participated, iRobot will delete the data from our servers if the customer requests it. This is retroactive.
Clean Map reports are not shared with third parties. If the Roomba owner does not want to communicate with a third party such as Amazon (for example, to enable voice control from Amazon Alexa), the owner can simply disable the skill in the Amazon Alexa app.
Update (6 PMET, July 28): Reuters changed their story by stating that, according to CEO Colin Ang, iRobot can “share with consumers for free” rather than “sell their cards.” IRobot stated that “iRobot does not sell customer data” and stated that in the future, information will only be exchanged with the express consent of customers.