Is Your Sex Toy Phoning Home?

Sometimes, you just want some personal time. And when you're having that personal time, you probably don't want others to know about it: not your friends, (possibly) not your loved ones, and certain not some company. Even anonymously, the details of your personal goings-on—and we mean personal—are your business and your business alone, and it's up to you to decide who to share them with.

If you're using a We-Vibe 4 Plus, however, your personal details aren't your own. As was revealed in a recent Def Con presentation, those using the vibrator to have some fun are being tracked and recorded if you (or your partner) connect the device to your smartphone. (Ah, technology).

As Fusion notes, the We-Vibe 4 Plus uses your Internet connection to ship back details about your sessions to the device's manufacturer, We-Vibe. This includes the device's temperature, the various times you modify its vibration levels and, presumably, the amount of time your various fun sessions take. And We-Vibe fully admits to this data collection.

"At We-Vibe, we strive to create innovative products that have our customer's preferences in mind. We-Vibe collects data on the use of its products in terms of vibration intensity and mode for market research purposes so that we can better understand what settings and levels of intensity are most enjoyed. Our reason for collecting CPU temperature data is purely for hardware diagnostic purposes. Data is only collected when the app is in use," said Frank Ferrari, president of Standard Innovation Corporation (We-Vibe's parent company), in a statement.

The problem? People might not even realize that the We-Vibe 4 is doing this, given how vague the company's privacy policy is. Fusion reporter Kashmir Hill couldn't find any mention of the data-sharing bits in the company's current privacy policy, nor does the We-Connect app give you any kind of warning that the device you're connecting is going to send data about itself somewhere else.

At the very least, the Def Con talk seems to have showed We-Vibe that it should probably be a bit more forthcoming about what its connected toys can do. However, the talk also indicated that the toy's transmissions could potentially be intercepted by a third-party or, worse, controlled by a remote system.

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"While our policy does disclose that we may collect data, we are currently in the process of reviewing our privacy & data collection policy in an effort to provide more transparency for our customers," reads Ferrari's statement.

Our advice? Stick to offline mode.