On Owning Your Data

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I step on a bathroom scale and my body fat percentage gets beamed to a server in Shenzhen. This is the arrangement. In exchange for this intimacy, the app suggests I upgrade to premium, which I find touching in a way the developers probably didn’t intend.

I don’t have a problem with companies making money — I have a problem with the default. The default is: your body’s measurements belong to someone else’s database, and you’re welcome to look at them through their app, on their terms, until they pivot to a different business model or get acqui-hired and shut down the API. The data isn’t especially sensitive on its own. Nobody is going to blackmail me with my impedance readings. But if I can’t own the numbers that describe my own physical form, what exactly can I own? It’s a question worth asking, even if the answer turns out to be “not much, but you should try anyway.”

Privacy on Guy Freeman

On Owning Your Data