Sex Toy or Spyware? You Decide!

Admit it. You’ve always had a fantasy about being watched while doing something sexually naughty or adventurous. Being observed, secretly or overtly, during sex is one of the most common fantasies around. And with good reason.

The watcher isn’t being forced to keep their eyes locked on your sexual shenanigans nor is the person or persons being viewed inconvenienced in any way. There’s absolutely no harm in putting the screw into scrutiny if everyone’s on board with the idea.

Peeping Toms

With sex toys becoming more integrated with AI as time goes on, what are the chances of your vibrator not just bringing its owner unlimited amounts of pleasure, but being able to watch what you’re doing with it at the same time!!!

Not possible, you might say, but We-Vibe’s Canadian manufacturers were caught with their hands in the proverbial cookie jar in 2017, when it was ruled in court that they had collected more data on We-Vibe’s users than an iWatch on steroids.

A federal court in Illinois ordered Standard Innovation Corporation (We-Vibe’s manufacturers) to settle their customer’s lawsuit for $3.75 million. The reason for this massive payout was because We Vibe used the app that can be downloaded after purchasing their product to do the following without the customer’s consent:

• Track the user’s temperature
• Vibration strength
• Preferred vibration patterns
• Frequency of use
• Grandmother’s phone number

Okay, that last one’s false 😝, but the rest of the information they gathered off over 100,000 of their app users included a whole heap of secret stuff.

Listen to what the registered complaint court document said: “A sex toy that constantly monitors, stores, transmits, and collects highly sensitive, intimate user data back to the manufacturers is worth much less than a sex toy that does not. Most of all, customers wouldn’t have bought We-Vibe if they had been adequately informed of how the app worked.”

Sounds reasonable to us. But with technology advancing at such a clip, and sex toys acquiring a bunch of super-cool abilities (arousal tracking and long-distance partner connection, for example), what is a fair trade-off against lack of privacy?

Great Orgasms – But At What Cost?

It stands to reason that an AI operated sex toy could bring its user more pleasure in the long term than a standalone, analog one. We share our precious data with hundreds of app developers and websites every day, so why should we bother about one more piece of the privacy puzzle being handed over?

Think hard about this one: if you were guaranteed beautiful orgasm after beautiful orgasm, but had to trade some personal secrets to get them, would you do it?

Considering that every text you send, voice request you make into your microphone, and search engine message you type ends up as data somewhere, what’s a few muscle twitches, or how often you have them, matter in the long run.

If you think Pornhub is a secret adventure that only you know about, think again. You give them data about yourself when you use their site and Pornhub accepts it greedily with open arms (they provide acceptable and adequate warnings about doing this, however). Data info isn’t used to tell people that you have a penchant for women wearing Oriental schoolgirl outfits though. It’s all your search engine entries, for sites where you bought stuff or made enquiries about buying something, that they want. It’s packaged up and sold to all those advertisers that magically pop up whenever you surf onto a news site or entertainment article.

They’re going to get your data one way or another, so why not have some fun while you are doing it?

Sex Toys: The Final Frontier

Sex toys can be synced with your audiobook selection, monitor your arousal levels, and be linked to your partner when they travel long distance, so we should start accepting the fact that they have their finger on the pulse of our desires, whether it’s what we buy or how hot our insides get when we’re coming.

What do you think? Would you jump at the chance of getting the perfect orgasm from a snooping vibrator? Or does the thought of having your sexual preferences monitored have you running for the nearest VPN?

Image credits: Unsplash; We-Vibe website.