Recently the makers of the Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner have come under fire based on a quote that its company’s CEO made to Reuters, in which according to iRobot’s CEO Colin Angle, he seemed to suggest that the mapping data of your home collected by the Roomba could be sold to other companies.Unsurprisingly given how privacy is taken extremely seriously, this was alarming news to Roomba owners and potential owners who might have been put off by the idea. However iRobot and Angle have since clarified their stance on the matter in a statement that was released to the folks at ZDNet.
The company basically stated that they will under no circumstances sell your data. The statement (in part) reads, “Information that is shared needs to be controlled by the customer and not as a data asset of a corporation to exploit. That is how data is handled by iRobot today. Customers have control over sharing it. I want to make very clear that this is how data will be handled in the future.”
iRobot also clarified that the report from Reuters was a misinterpretation of Angle’s comments, and that iRobot never had any conversations with companies about possibly selling the data that it has collected, so hopefully with this cleared up, Roomba owners can continue using their devices in peace.