Is Roomba Robot Vacuum Mapping Users’ Homes And Selling Them To The Highest Bidder?

Anyone who has a Roomba robot vacuum in their home from iRobot Corp. recently found cause for concern when a Reuters interview revealed the company’s plans on using the tiny machine to map the homes of users. Company CEO Colin Angle even hinted that the data collected when mapping homes would be invaluable to other companies like Amazon and Apple.

This news has prompted an outcry from the public, with many expressing concerns about their privacy being threatened. In response, Angle defended the feature, saying that it helps improve technology related to the Internet of Things (IoT). More to the point, the iRobot boss stressed that no Roomba unit would initiate mapping without the expressed consent of the users themselves, Tech Crunch reports.

With regards to the matter of the company selling the data to the highest bidder, iRobot emphasized that there is no such thing in the works. Rather, the company is in talks with other tech firms in an effort to form some kind of coalition or cooperation, and even that is still in its early stages. There’s no guarantee that it’s even going to happen.

Of course, all of this is still far into the future. The opt-in feature will be made available to the users as soon as it becomes functional and Angle was quick to point out that the data will not be sold to other companies without the permission of the users.

What has likely happened in this case is that the iRobot boss got a little too excited and made statements that should have been kept hushed for the moment. While the company has been upfront about its goals to start mapping homes for a while, the implications are startling and push back would have been expected. Hopefully, once the feature does go live, the opt-in option is clear enough to understand.