Tag: wearables

Study shows mobile apps are inaccurate fitness trackers

| February 8, 2016

The results of new research from the University of Toronto looked into the top three applications.

The outcome of a new study, conducted by the University of Toronto, has revealed that the three most downloaded mobile apps for fitness tracking aren’t nearly as accurate as their users likely believe them to be.

The U of T study indicated that fitness apps have a notably lower accuracy rate than regular pedometers.

When it comes to measuring how much a person walks in a day, standard pedometers were found to be considerably more accurate than the top three downloaded mobile apps that are meant to be used for the same purpose. This is concerning as those applications have been increasing in their popularity and are used by people who are attempting to motivate themselves to reach a more healthful physical activity level every day.

While messaging mobile apps remain the most popular, health and fitness applications have high engagement rates.

Mobile Apps - Fitness appIn fact, a Flurry Analytics survey conducted last September on behalf of Yahoo Canada actually showed that health and fitness apps scored higher on their engagement rate. It is estimated that they are on 11 percent of smartphones. There may be fewer of them than messaging apps, but they cause greater engagement with their users than those more popular rivals.

Due to this high engagement rate, it has made this type of mobile application extremely appealing to companies of all sizes. Everyone from giants to tiny startups are trying to carve out a piece of the market for themselves.

Unfortunately, in this haste to take part, it doesn’t look as though all the participants are taking the care that would be required to make sure their mobile apps are as accurate for users as the main alternative – using a traditional pedometer. The apps that were considered by the study included Moves, Runtastic and Accupedo. The authors of the report stated that “the most commonly downloaded smartphone applications are neither valid nor consistent in measuring step counts.” Several tests were run on both Android and Apple devices in order to allow the researchers to come to this conclusion.

Mobile security may not be as high in fitness trackers as owners believe

| February 5, 2016

A new report has indicated that certain wearables and the apps needed to use them are posing a privacy risk.

Citizen Lab, in partnership with Open Effect have now released a report that has suggested that the mobile security being provided by several popular fitness trackers are actually vulnerable to potential tampering, surveillance and tracking over the long term.

These devices are quite commonplace and are used to allow a person to monitor his or her physical activity.

The report was the result of an examination of eight different fitness trackers and the mobile apps that are needed to use them. It was conducted by Citizen Lab from the University of Toronto, and the Open Effect not-for-profit research group. They looked into these applications and wearables to determine the level of mobile security and privacy they were able to provide. The trackers the researchers examined included: the Fitbit Charge HR, Jawbone Up 2, Garmin Vivosmart, Basis Peak, Mio Fuse, Xiaomi Mi Band, Withings Pulse O2 and even the Apple Watch.

The researchers looked at a range of different mobile security measures for every device they considered.

Wearable Technology - Mobile SecurityThe factors included those pertaining to the collection and storage of data, as well as their transmission practices. What they determined was that every device, aside from the Apple Watch, persistently emitted uniqueIDs by way of their embedded Bluetooth radios. Those identifications could potentially expose the users of the wearables to location tracking over the long-term, even at times in which the device was not paired to a smartphone or tablet.

The report said the Apple Watch was the only one among the wearables that actually randomized its Bluetooth ID, causing it to be impossible to track that smartwatch over the long-term.

The authors of the report also pointed out that the Jawbone and Withings app was vulnerable to being exploited in order to crate fraudulent fitness records. The reason this poses a mobile security risk due to the chance that the data collected by personal fitness wearables could be used in court cases, health insurance programs and for other official reasons. Therefore, if that data has been falsified, it could create a highly undesirable risk for the users.