Kohler, the makers of a smart toilet camera, can access customers' data stored on its servers, and can use customers’ bowl pictures to train AI.

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[–] 51 points 11 months ago (2 children)

To be fair, that still may be end to end encrypted, just not the ends you were hoping for.

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  • [–] 38 points 11 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] 25 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    I don’t know what is more stupid, that this exists or that it’s $600 plus $7/month.

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  • [–] 44 points 11 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 19 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    toilet. camera.

    ummm… no thanks

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  • [–] 15 points 11 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    I like how they refer to BO as a administration tool when really it was an exploit tool that had the side effect of some nifty administration ability,

    It was significantly more reliable than sub7, which usually was itself infected.

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  • [–] 14 points 11 months ago

    TFW you spend $600 a month on a subscription iot toilet camera just to find out it's been taking pictures from inside your toilet and sending them over the internet!

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  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago
    [–] 5 points 11 months ago (5 children)

    What we're looking for is "zero-knowledge storage". If it's anything else we can just ignore the whole "encryption" marketing. That's because claiming "end-to-end encryption" is still semantically valid if it's transit only and they are the other end.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    Doesn't end to end also mean at rest?

    But at rest still doesn't matter as they'll own the key unless it's zero knowledge like you said.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    End-to-end means a path from point A to point B.

    End-to-end encryption could definitely include at rest encryption, but only as part of the path that isn't one of the ends. An example would be where a service like WhatsApp stores your message until it can be delivered to the other contact. End-to-end includes "zero knowledge storage" in this example because WhatsApp can not view your message. You are one end and your contact is the other end. The data is stored encrypted at rest (going trough their servers) because their server is neither end. This is literally why end-to-end encryption exists.

    In the case of the smart toilet storage, you are not both ends. Instead you are one end and the storage provider is the other end. The transit is still end-to-end encrypted but it does not imply "zero knowledge storage". They use the term end-to-end encryption because they transfer the data to their servers without people being able to intercept it. And that's semantically correct.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    it does not. end to end encryption and point to point encryption are two ways of delivering an encrypted message to a destination. a point to point encrypted message has a message and header that are decrypted by every node in the network to determine where to route it next. an end to end encrypted message has its header and body encrypted separately such that only the sender and recipient see the body, but the nodes can read the header for routing. encrytion at rest just means that the message, once saved to disk, is encrypted

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago (9 children)

    What could they possibly tell me about my health by visually inspecting my shit? I see the website mentions detecting blood, but pretty sure I can do that too...

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago* (6 children)

    The colour can say a lot of different things than just showing blood in your stool.

    Also, if you have red blood in your toilet after shitting, it's probably a popped hemorrhoid, but if your shit is black and tarry, that's digested blood, could be from an upper GI-bleed.

    If your shit is orange/yellowish and floaty, youre clearly not absorbing fat correctly for some reason.

    There's all sorts of things you can tell from shit. I've actually logged hundreds of photos of shit to an e-mail address (because I want to store them but not in my phone's gallery).

    I'm waiting on going to a good gastroenterologist hopefully.

    But idk if I'd trust an ai analysing them, but proper doctors should be able to.

    Edit here https://gutscharity.org.uk/advice-and-information/poo-torial/

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago* (1 child)

    The size, shape, consistency, color are all telling of something going on.

    Tie that in with tracking changes in diet and can learn a lot.

    Tracking what you eat in detail is still a bitch though.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    Tracking what you eat in detail is still a bitch though.

    For this too, the camera is kinda helpful. Just snap a photo and the write it down later. Or don't write it down and just have the photos there and "I'm sure I'll remember when I look at it"

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (3 children)

    Would you consider spending $600 plus $7/month for this? (Assuming it was actually secure not like this one)

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (2 children)

    You asked about what they could possibly tell about your health from your excrement, not what my monthly budget is...

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (1 child)

    No, I know. I didn't see any possible market for a product like this, but you shared you're already doing what this product does, but manually. So I was wondering how much value you see here.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    I imagine a lot more people would benefit from passive monitoring of poop than just I.

    I pretty much figured out my issue and now I've just been documenting it because the doctors genuinely believe the opposite of whatever I tell them, so I have to have photographic evidence and even that doesn't usually help. (Finnish healthcare sucks. Is the price bad? No, it's free. Does it achieve anything? Also no. Especially when it comes to mental health.

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  • [–] 9 points 11 months ago* (9 children)

    https is end to end

    surely, once I read this article, I'll find they implemented ssl

    edit:

    as I suspected, Kohler is one of the ends of the e2ee. and it is implemented. what is the news here exactly

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (6 children)

    That's not what end to end encryption means. All encrypted transmissions are not end to end encrypted.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (5 children)

    if Kohler is the other end of your transmission, and the data is encrypted til they decrypt it, it's e2ee. if you disagree, try explaining why.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago* (4 children)

    Because that's plainly not what end to end encrypted means. That's just HTTPS.

    if Kohler is the other end of your transmission

    They're providing the service. End to end encryption maintains an encrypted communication channel between two clients that the service provider cannot decrypt.

    By your definition, all HTTPS traffic would be end to end encrypted.

    The term "end to end encryption" is just not applicable to this context and using it as marketting to users in order to give them a false sense of security is disingenous.

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  • [–] 0 points 11 months ago* (1 child)

    From the perspective of the Kohler toilet camera being the sender and the Kohler shit-reviewing service being the recipient, TLS can technically be end-to-end encryption. As long as the shit-reviewing server is doing the TLS termination itself—and not Cloudflare or a reverse proxy—that meets the definition insofar as only the two communicating parties having the ability to see the cleartext. That's assuming the server has disk encryption and no employee has access to it while the disk is unlocked.

    Kohler calling it E2EE is still disingenuous as fuck regardless of my above hypothetical, however.

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  • [–] 9 points 11 months ago (8 children)

    Why do people want a toilet cam in the first place?

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Urine and stool samples can indicate a person’s health and evaluate some conditions, such as over/underhydration or a lack of fiber. If there’s blood in the urine, a picture could allow a doctor to evaluate whether it’s a UTI or a kidney stone.

    I’d even say it’s a scenario where machine learning could be used to train a computer to recognize many of those scenarios and offer suggestions to improve one’s health.

    Is that worth $600 and a subscription fee when you could learn to recognize those things yourself and take a picture for your doctor if it’s needed? Maybe if you’ve got money to burn.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago

    Wait... this is a thing? I never thought someone would actually make this when it's been the butt of many gags in the media.

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  • [+] 3 points 11 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    I'm shocked. Absolutely shocked, I tell you.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    When the Man-in-the-middle hacks into it, he may not like what he sees.

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