A sex toy company has agreed to comply with a lawsuit filed against it by women who alleged that its We-Vibe vibrators, which can connect to the internet, collect “highly sensitive” personal information without their consent.
According to the National Post, Ottawa-based Standard Innovation Corp. has agreed to destroy the information it has collected through a mobile phone app connected to its We-Vibe vibrator and stop collecting the data in the future. The company also agreed to pay 5 million Canadian dollars ($3.75 million) in a compensation fund that will pay up to $10,000 US to buyers who used the We-Connect app, and $199 US for those who simply used the vibrator.
The lawsuit was filed by two anonymous women last year after a demonstration by two hackers in New Zealand that showed that the internet-connected We-Vibe 4 Plus was sending personal information to Standard Innovation's servers whenever the sex toy was in use. During a presentation at the Def Con hacking conference in August 2016, the hackers showed that Standard Innovation was receiving minute-by-minute data about the vibrator's temperature, as well as information about changes in its intensity.
The company then announced that the data was being collected for “market research purposes to better understand which settings and intensity levels are most pleasurable.” The data was sent by the We-Connect app, which connected to the We-Vibe 4 Plus vibrator so that it could remotely control the intensity of the sex device.
The two women filed a lawsuit against Standard Innovation a month after the Def Con presentation, claiming that the company failed to “inform or warn” its users about the data collection.
