Google buys Fitbit, because knowing everything you do online isn't enough

Google knows where you live, who you talk to and what you're interested in buying. And now they'll know your health habits and heartbeart as well. Stay tuned for your Daily Charge. [MUSIC] Welcome to the Daily Charge. Today is Monday, November 4th, I'm Alpha Yang. And I'm Richie Carry. And here today's top stories Google on Friday announced I was purchasing Fitbit for $2.1 billion. If you're not familiar with Fitbit, it's the fitness wearable your relatives gave you as a crappy gift because they thought, I don't know he definitely walks every day right? So why your Fitbit might have gone straight to your junk drawer after New Year's Day, that dumb little wristband tracking your heartbeat and your steps every day turns out to be pretty valuable to Google. Wereables are to Google are like white your New Year's resolutions already you that tech junkies making these promises and then decides. **** it. It's not worth it. Meanwhile, apple, it's been in the gym. It's been getting waterproof for swimming. It's out there. Saving people's lives with fall detection. So Google, they clearly want a piece of that pie the problem for Google as though people think they're a creepy company. With privacy concerns after privacy concerns. Why the hell would anyone think, no, this company will know My health information that rules. To their credit, Google said it won't be using any of that data for advertising. But Fitbit has already been used by insurance companies to track people, manage how much they pay on a monthly rate. There's a lot of health data that can be used, outside of advertising. So I think this really begs the question Does this has ruined Fitbit for a lot of people now that you know they're owned by Google. There's a couple things you hit on that were smart like with with the what is that data gonna be used for? Okay, not ads but people kind of forget is that there's not a lot of. HIPAA protections for your health data when you're using gadgets like this or even apps out there. So yes, this could be stuff that shared with your employer on like, how much you're active, like when it comes to not just Fitbit but all these things and but then again, you said okay, Google's a little creepy, right? On the creepy shark, though I think Facebook leads. people think maybe Amazon's creepy. They were the **** of the SNL joke this weekend too with Jeff Bezos and everything. And then with this Google Play. People are really creeped out about Google or they go " they've got everything anyways". I don't really buy into a creepy scale. I just think like if you're creepy you're creepy that's it. Yeah but I A lot of companies use that we're not gonna use this for advertising thing as some sort of like red herring or straw man argument of well, we're not selling this advertise Facebook does this all the time we don't sell your personal data and it's just like, well, that argument doesn't, you're kind of taken away from the actual issue here, which is, okay, cool you're not selling it, but you're certainly like using it in ways that we don't like Think is very privacy friendly, Google talks about this with the, remember when they got in trouble about the facial recognition stuff, where they were purposely targeting homeless people and people of color, to test out their facial recognition? Yeah. They weren't selling that for advertising either, but they ended up just Taking all this like very valuable data off of people that like, you can't like replace that people like to always say like, like, what's the monetary value of your privacy, right? Like, they're selling my data she got some of that money. problem with that is that That's a very limited resource. Once I saw my privacy out there like it's out there, it's not like I can keep selling that for five bucks a pop or something like that. Yeah, it's basically like it's already out there. All I can do is like put a tourniquet on it- Yeah. And try to stop the bleeding. [LAUGH] So it's There's definitely a lot of privacy concerns with Fitbit. Like regardless of the fact that they're using it for advertising or not. Fitbit has also had some of their own privacy troubles. There was the the data tracker, like the location data stuff with the apps, where there was revealing like,these people if it's outside of army bases. That's where the hidden army base.>> I just want it right guys. I remember that. Yeah, I wonder how much of this is going to play into these arguments you're going to be hearing over the past couple. Our next future months. People want to break up big data, you know, like, like, is this gonna get on people's radars or is it like another case of>> I don't know if it was owned by Google and well this is just steps right you know yeah I don't I don't know where it's gonna him people's weird out meter Yeah I think it's gonna take time I do think though that people like. Are sufficiently creeped out by Google despite the fact that they still will use Google Maps to find out wherever they need to go. And now you know now Google will also know how often you sleep at night which is very cool. You know, giant companies definitely need to know that information.>> I love starting my Monday off.>> [CROSSTALK] So you know if any of your relatives get you a [UNKNOWN] for the holidays Now you know what to yell at them about. [LAUGH] Speaking of yelling, hackers have been targeting Facebook accounts that spend money on advertisements unlike the normal account where you just spend time getting into arguments with your uncle about climate change. Facebook ad accounts have extra value because there's a credit card attached to them. We found multiple instances where hackers took over accounts and started using another person's credit card, to pay to promote posts on Facebook that have malware on it. One of them was for like toy wagon priced at 99 cents. At least 813 people clicked on it, and put their credit card information in which then got stolen. The hacked accounts ad campaign only ended because the credit card to use for expired you know not because it was fraud. The hackers on this account were trying to spend $10,000 a day for an ad campaign using you know someone else's money since this was fascinating for so many different layers you have like Like the hackers going after people and then when they find out they have access to make ads. Bingo. Let's just fill a bunch of ads for phony products and then, An 800 or some people clicked on those on those ads in Cape. Who's giving their credit card information to weird suspicious, [CROSSTALK] The way that this scam work. This particular scam for this wagon worked was that they made it look like it was a pricing error. You ever see those posts I was like, like somebody messed up this post on Amazon this. It's usually $500 only $50 you should get it right now. So they made the promoted post look like that was like we're selling his toy wagons. This one is 99 cents oops. And then all these people like just rush to buy it. That that's always the key right? Do something fast don't think quick quickly. Yeah. And they are not thinking it through. Yeah, their campaign only really lasted for six hours not because it was a scam but because Facebook hey this guy's out of money. Cancel this. But what is Facebook, are they doing enough to scan for if an ad is going to malware or being malicious? They said, so when I reached out to Facebook they said that they have been clamping down on it. Hackers have techniques, there's one they called cloaking, where they hide the skimmer on the website really well. So they can't find it that much. So Facebook has been trying to crack down on it for a while but obviously like we've seen like things like this still get through. The other big problem to me that I found was that they weren't notifying these people when their accounts got hacked and they were spending this much money on these accounts. I spoke with another women who had her account hacked and she didn't know about it for like five days. Okay, if you have big ad campaign, shouldn't you get like an email going, Congrats on your ad campaign. Thanks for, it's like when you buy shoes on Amazon, at least you get an email that you bought shoes. If I bought an ad campaign, I'd like to get alerted. Yeah, this woman, it's funny as I will send you a notification like hey, are you going to this event? You going to this event you put maybe are you going or not? But you know, hey, you just spent $10,000 on this. This looks cool to me. You don't even know about that. This woman in North Carolina who had a Facebook account hacked She didn't even know it was going on until PayPal, emailed her and was like, Hey, you spend like 1200 dollars on ads and like you've never spent that much money. So we just is everything good. Are you okay? [UNKNOWN] I didn't spend that at all. What the hell is going on? Which is weird that Facebook didn't notify any of these people that they spent this much money on [CROSSTALK]. Clearly hackers has seen that look Facebook doesn't notify people. This is easy pickings to go after. And their AI picks up on it too. So in the case of the $10,000 add campaign, There was a screenshot of it that he showed me where it was basically like hey, you've only really spent like 250 dollars before and 10,000 dollars are a lot. Are you sure you want to spend this? And the hackers are Obviously, yeah, I'm Henry. [LAUGH] Nothing to see here. Yeah it was weird. So they obvously can tell when something is going on, but they don't send any notifications to His victims and it's awful. It's a weak spot and they evenly splitted it, yeah. > Yeah, and then the two people I've spoken with are not the only ones that this has happened to. There's countless blogpost about like hey, my Facebook account got hacked, they spent this much money using my credit card. Nothing got settled like some of these people are still banned from Facebook and they can't even go on Facebook and see like what they got banned over. So the woman from North Carolina, I kept asking like, so what was the ads taken out for? Is it I don't know. They banned me after that. Wait, she was banned for what a hacker did to her account? Yeah, yeah. She was trying to tell FaceBook, she was like, I didn't post this. The hacker posted it. I was like, no, you're banned. Wow. Cuz there was a hotline thing that [CROSSTALK] was like an actual person at Facebook. She actually got her account back after I was reported on this story. But the thing is it shouldn't take a reporter going to Facebook to get any actual support for people. You know, I'm not a, what is it like? $17 billion company. Yeah. Yeah. For real. For the Daily Charge, I'm [UNKNOWN] And I'm Bridget Carey. Thanks for joining us. Can't get enough? Check out the daily supercharge. 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