I’d like to hear your opinion on smart watches and also your personal setup, use case and threatmodel if you wear one, as I’m not opposed to the idea of smart watches.
I was inspired to make this post after a friend of mine completely abandoned smart watches after the Stanislav Rzhitsky incident, even tough I’m well aware it wasn’t the smart watch directly that got him killed.
My personal setup is the following:
Garmin Fenix 7 setup using a secondary phone which has no personal information associated with me with all it’s traffic routed truth orbot. The watch itself was never connected to wifi and I don’t sync it with a phone since the information provided on the watch is enough for me.
I primarily use it for telling the time, but also use the navigation, fitness and music listening features as I don’t have my phone on me at all times.
From what I know GPS is a one-way system and the maps are all offline. Bluetooth isn’t a problem in my threatmodel but it remains off when not in use.
Sorry to pop your bubble but I would rather use a simple watch rather than a smart one especially if I am already carrying a phone on my pocket.
The whole point of the smart watch is its connectivity with its attached ecosystem. If you don’t connect it to a phone, it sort of loses the entire point.
Changing the watch face could also be a cool feature. The only interesting reason for me is to get one is the fitness tracking and the phone can already do some of that.
Is there a privacy-conscious fitness tracker out there? I would love to track things like my heartrate while exercising, and maybe my sleep, but I don’t need any ecosystem beyond that. Just stats.
I use an apple watch, only sync the health data to the phone it’s connected to and none of my other apple devices. I definitely do not use Strava lmao, it’s all within the native apple stuff so I trust that it’s probably safe from an insurance company snooping on it.
My threat model is more about avoiding surveillance capitalism and state actors from unfriendly nations, so using an iPhone+apple watch works out for me
I’m in. the RePebble project may be the Linux of smartwatches we’ve been waiting for.
(also hardware has not been open sourced by Google, it’s mostly just the software)
The main benefit I have found from using a smart watch is the ability to be phone free for many hours of the day. I am using and trusting the Apple ecosystem. The haptic notifications have replaced a ringing phone or chirps of messages arriving. I currently think that I am in a reduced level of surveillance capitalism as I can get. (trade off of useful services and data collection).
hey… this is interesting. Never heard of pebble or even used a smart watch. But a relative was asking if I can do some research on privacy-friendly smart watches.
Could you tell me more? From what I understand this Rebble project is not privacy-oriented as it is, but b/c it’s open source someone can create smthn degoogled and private from it?
Sorry I cannot really provide insights of owning smartwatches as I have not owned one myself. Like your relative, the thought of owning one seems exciting. What holds me back is that I do not really have a use case for it. Maybe someone else here who has owned one can provide you with better advice.
Pebble was popular a long time ago until Google bought it and subsequently killed it, leaving the smartwatch users stranded without an update. The previous owner/CEO of Pebble has successfully bought back the company from Google.
As for the privacy exploration, if you are already in the Apple ecosystem, you might as well go for the Apple watch for better integration to the ecosystem. But some people do not like/trust Apple.
I have heard someone in other forums having success with Fossil watches and Asteroid OS. But I do not have any experience with it:
I guess they’re like the LineageOS of Smartwatches.
There is also PineTime from good old Pine64 but they’re more like concept/beta hardware:
They’re cheap enough and private enough for you to try and see if it is for you.
Overall I think if you do not turn on the Bluetooth/WiFi you should be good enough, tracking-wise but turning off some of the features sort of ruins the idea of having a smartwatch in the first place.
I can’t provide inside to using a pebble smart watch, but I’ve been using Gadgetbridge in conjunction with my Garmin which I’m really happy with.
Does your relative have a specific use case in mind for that smartwatch? In my opinion the watch itself is really important as it dictates the usage in everyday life a lot.
