Wyze App is Tracking you

[carverofchoice]

Here’s an older thread that interested people can review as well, which includes direct responses from Wyze in a bit more detail about those contracted 3rd party companies:

Wyze app data collection

I recently noticed that the Wyze app communicates with two third-party “customer engagement” companies. Specifically, Braze and Segment are contacted multiple times when the app is launched and even when it’s not open. Both these companies collect some form of user and engagement data. I noticed these requests in my tracker blocking firewall (Disconnect Pro): [Screenshot_20200605-202913_Disconnect Pro for Samsung] I would really like to know exactly what data and/or telemetry Wyze is collect…

Key responses include the following:

@WyzeLogan

Hey All, @WyzeGwendolyn hunted me down and diligently made sure I got back to all of you here. I am not saying that to downplay the importance of responding here or of downplaying the importance of letting you know what information we collect. I only added that to let you know that Gwen is awesome.

Ok, to the question posed by @Daniel_SA. We are working on implementing both Segment and Braze . They are still not fully implemented, but we do have their basic SDKs inside of our apps starting with release 2.10 and 2.11. So, what do these collect? Let me start by giving a little context on each of these tools.

Segment
Segment is a customer data platform (CDP) and is intended to be a single place where we can unify the data that we collect. One of the reasons we chose to use a platform to unify the data that we collect is because it helps manage data privacy. It can control what platforms get what data and easily let us report the data that we collect to our customers as well as quickly remove data from ALL sources.

Braze
Braze is a customer engagement tool. We chose Braze because it allows us to send all messages from a single platform (email, push messages, in-app messages, etc.) rather than have data spread across multiple tools (like most companies). The data that goes into Braze is managed by Segment. Again, Segment allows us to control what data gets sent in as well as allowing us to quickly pull what we have collected and delete data upon customer request (delete ALL data across multiple sources).

What data do Braze and Segment collect?
Segment and Braze collect usage data from the apps. Currently, they track which screens a Wyze user visits and select actions a user takes within the Wyze app. An example of a select action would be “Turns on Auto-unlock in the Wyze app.” These were all things that we were already tracking and able to see. In addition to app usage tracking, Braze is able to see how a customer engages with any messages that are sent. We are able to see what messages a user received, open rates on messages, if a user closed a message, or if the users chose to visit an additional page after viewing the message, etc.

All message engagement data is tracked by pretty much every platform that sends messages. Our prior email service provider before Braze would do the same.

It is important for us to have this in a single platform because 1) it is actually safer than having duplicate data spread across multiple sources, and 2) it allows us to do things such as set frequency caps on how often a user gets messages and only send messages to those that need them (i.e., don’t send messages about Wyze Sense outages to users that don’t have Wyze Sense products).

These apps DO NOT store or even have access to credit card or password information. We do not intend them to ever do that. We do send in customer email addresses, first and last names (for those that have ordered with Wyze.com), order IDs and shipment tracking numbers. At this time we do not send in phone numbers or addresses.

This data collection and usage is covered in our privacy statement here:
https://wyze.com/privacy-statement

I get it that statements such as these are often overlooked. We tried to make our privacy statement user friendly and readable. The sections that best apply to apps such as Segment and Braze are the “COLLECTION OF INFORMATION,” USE OF INFORMATION," and “SHARING OF INFORMATION” sections.

I hope this helps answer your questions. I am open to feedback on how to communicate this to our users? Should we highlight it in our next privacy statement update? Should we post here in the forum? Should we announce it over social? Thoughts?

@WyzeLogan

Thanks @Daniel_SA for the awesome feedback. I believe our privacy and security team has something like this planned. I will make sure to pass this on to them right now. Feel free to occasionally ping us here to follow up on our progress. I can proudly say that our first application of Braze was to set up anomaly detection notifications to alert users if anything suspicious happens with their account. I believe that is actively being tested right now.

For now, I love the idea of being able to keep yourself anonymous in the app and will make sure this gets passed on.

@WyzeLogan

Check this out too:

Segment

User Deletion and Suppression Documentation- Segment

The technical documentation for Segment.

Segment has the ability to suppress all data collected by users when they opt in. We can actually implement this immediately from the standpoint of a user manually requesting via a support ticket and then work to integrate it into a toggle as suggested.

Hopefully some of that information is helpful to those interested. Apparently, you can have all your data from Segment suppressed (not just from Wyze, but others too).