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‘End-to-end encrypted’ smart toilet camera is not actually end-to-end encrypted | TechCrunch (techcrunch.com)

submitted 3 weeks ago by Blaze@piefed.zip to c/privacy@programming.dev

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Kohler, the makers of a smart toilet camera, can access customers' data stored on its servers, and can use customers’ bowl pictures to train AI.

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[–] entwine@programming.dev 8 points 3 weeks ago

It would be impossible to analyse the images if it wasn’t decrypted, so it seems a little silly.

What's silly, that Kohler is deliberately misusing a popular term for advertising purposes, or that a security research called them out for false advertising?

E2EE is a term used in the context of a messaging app to indicate that the messaging app provider cannot read your messages, only the intended recipient. It makes zero sense to use that term in this case because the messaging app provider is also the recipient.

Yet the marketing people at Kohler saw that this technical terminology is something people associate with "secure" or "private", and just rolled with it. This harms consumers who are inevitably mislead into making a purchase decision, and it harms the broader tech industry as consumers lose the ability to understand complex privacy technologies through simple terminology like "E2EE"