It was only a matter of time. Pretty much every innovation in technology has, at one point, been adapted for the sex industry, so it was only a matter of time before robots became sex toys.
That’s right, the era of the sexbot is upon us.
Gone are the days of blowup doll jokes. These sexbots are designed to be realistic and they use cutting edge technology to make this possible. Really.
Look, I’m not here to judge. What you do with a silicon person is (truly truly) none of my business…the less I know about it, the better I’ll sleep at night.
No, the thing I want to focus on is the security and privacy aspects of sexbots. Yes, I know, nothing is less sexy than talk about security and privacy. But it’s a conversation that needs to be had.
There’s no digital condom to protect you online
Call me overly cautious but in my day job I’ve witnessed too many companies introduce products with massive security flaws. Sometimes these security flaws are a result of carelessness but often the flaws exist to benefit the company.
Ever hear of a practice called data mining?
Companies harvest as much information as possible on you to use for other purposes…generally to sell you something else.
Don’t dismiss this as paranoid ramblings. This practice is incredibly common. Companies benefit from knowing as much about you as possible.
Think about when you’ve booked a flight to a city and suddenly you see banner ads to book a hotel in that city. It’s not a coincidence.
Unfortunately though, online privacy issues are not just limited to data mining.
Companies that sell smart TVs have already been caught selling viewer data to advertisers. And with the growth of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning there are more questionable security practices to worry about than ever before.
Online privacy is being compromised everywhere we look. Of course you might think it’s no big deal for a company to gather information about your travel plans, but I’m sure there’s a lot of information about you that you wouldn’t want to be known.
The dark side of sexbots
Think about these online privacy issues in the context of sexbots. Think about the kind of (extremely) personal information the manufacturers of sexbots might know about you. How comfortable would you be with this type of data mining?
Maybe you want to give sexbot manufacturers the benefit of the doubt. Sure, that’s fine. Many in the sex industry take discretion very seriously.
So allow me to introduce another terrible issue. Data breaches!
Yup, hackers have made brisk business out of exposing company data over the years. They would be salivating (no pun intended) to find and expose the data that’s collected by sexbots.
Think the Ashley Madison breach was bad? That would be a picnic compared to the potential ramifications of a sexbot breach.
Practice safe sexbotting
It’s not all bad news for sexbots. As with anything else with technology, privacy and security can be protected by being proactive. As they say, knowledge is power.
Whether it’s sexbots or any other connected device it’s important to know all about privacy settings (if they exist) and adjust accordingly. It’s equally important to not let your guard down and give up more data than you want made public.
As a general rule, anything you wouldn’t want everyone to know should be off limits to the sexbots. Protect your data in private like you would in public.
So if you want to use sexbots (and I really don’t want to know if you do) then go ahead, just be aware of the potential consequences that can come from these technologically advanced sex toys.
Otherwise you could be setting yourself up to expose more of yourself than you bargained for by using that sexbot.
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