Muse maker Interaxon reportedly trained AI on users’ de-identified brainwave data, then revised its privacy policy after journalists asked questions.
Worth knowing for anyone who owns one: since 2024 Colorado and California both treat neural data as sensitive personal information under their privacy laws. In Colorado that means it needs opt-in consent; in California you can tell the company to limit its use to what’s needed for the service. If you’re in either state, a deletion or limit-use request that names the neural data specifically is the practical step, and “de-identified” brainwave data is a weak promise when the recordings are long and unique to each person.
Not to let this company off the hook for their poor disclosure but just assume all data is being stolen from you the second you open a door. Even if a company seems legit they have a dozen sketchy vendors handling your data. If you don’t like it you don’t buy this ridiculous, gimmicky shit. It’s bad enough we have to submit to these practices to use the dentist or the grocery store. You don’t have to invite it into your life for some gewgaw that should be sold next to whoopie cushions and x-ray specs.
I was doing research the other day for my job and it involved all those data broker removal tools. One of them is by incogni and it’s supposedly “better”. They claimed all your data stayed in America except if you checked their JavaScript was literally sending data straight to an analytics company based in Europe.
A different data removal tool called easy opt out on the other hand loaded zero JavaScript at all (or at least third party JavaScript) and had actual security claims on their site. But they haven’t done any audits so don’t trust them either!!!
