Creepiest Tech Guide of 2020 — Activity Trackers, Wireless Headphones, Smart Speakers, OMG!

Our *Privacy Not Included warning label

We’re very excited our *Privacy Not Included buyer’s guide now comes with *Privacy Not Included warning labels on products we think consumers should think twice about before buying. It’s no small thing to assign such a label to a product, so we set ourselves some strict standards. If we can’t confirm a product meets our Minimum Security Standards it automatically earns the label. We also factor in if a product shares or sells your data, doesn’t let you delete your data, or if the company has a poor track record of protecting their users’ data into our decision to assign these warning labels. We hope users will find these warnings useful. We also include a Best Of category now to showcase companies who are doing privacy and security right.

Our Minimum Security Standards

We realize people want to just know which products are safe and which aren’t. We are Mozilla—not a consumer product review company—so we won’t say “Buy this, don’t buy that.” Instead, we used our technical expertise to create a set of Minimum Security Standards we think all products should meet in order to be sold in stores. Those standards include using encryption, automatic security updates, requiring strong passwords, having a system to manage vulnerabilities, and having an accessible privacy policy.

There is a Creep-O-Meter.

We want users of this guide to be able to share their opinion too. It’s important companies, and other consumers, see which products people think are safe, and which products people feel are a bit creepy. So we created our Creep-O-Meter—a user rating on each product—to let folks give their opinion. Companies are paying attention, so let them know if you think their product is creepy or not.

Bigger and better.

Our product list has grown to 136 connected products across seven categories. You’ll notice a lot of research went into this guide. From knowing if the device uses a camera or microphone, or tracks your location or biometric data, to our section laying out what could happen if something goes wrong with a product—we’ve covered a lot of ground. Fortunately, we have great researchers and expertise here at Mozilla to dig into this so you don’t have to. Our researchers combed through privacy policies, reached out to companies with questions about encryption and bug bounty programs, and sifted through product and app specifications. We’ve done our best to make your access to all this research easy to understand.