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In bed with Google: Sleep Sensing feature prompts privacy worries

CNET – The search giant already knows what you’re doing for much of your waking life.” Google wants you to take its latest gadget with you into the bedroom.  The marquee feature on the search giant’s new Nest Hub, a smart display released on Tuesday, is a tool called Sleep Sensing that tracks a person’s sleeping patterns by measuring motion and noise at their bedside. It can record when you fall asleep and wake up or how long it takes you to get to sleep. It knows if your slumber is interrupted during the night and how fast you’re breathing while asleep. It’s by no means the first sleep tracker to hit the market. But some privacy experts worry specifically about Google’s push into sleep data because of the company’s shaky track record when it comes to user privacy. The focus on sleep tracking underscores an uncomfortable reality about Google’s size and ubiquity. The tech giant already collects vast amounts of data about people in their waking lives: what they search for online, what videos they watch on YouTube and where they’ve traveled, from location data gathered through an Android phone or Google Maps. Now the company is zeroing in on the other half of people’s lives — what they’re doing when they’re not awake…”

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