♪ Every breath you take, every move you make, every bond you break, every step you take, I'll be watching you ♪

Well, turns out The Police were not singing a haunting love song – they might have predicted the era of wearables.

Your every breath, movement, heartbeat, step, and sleep cycle get logged into the smart band around your wrist. Being watched, recorded, analysed, and largely monetised.

If you are wearing a smart watch or a fitness tracker, chances are everything you do with your body is being recorded.

Although they are practically health monitoring systems that can track stress, blood oxygen, glucose, and even distress levels in you, it is basically a goldmine of information.

Every device that it is connected to and every gadget that it is linked to, it is taking in data from all of them.

But, here is the golden question!

Where does all this data go? Who really owns this data?

Your Body, Not Just Your Business

Something that we failed to realise is the power of data that is a product of our personal information.

We are not just letting our smart watches track our fitness, but letting them create data that could be worth millions of dollars.

Leaving so many breadcrumbs only for the developers of such companies to profit.

The global retail revenue from smart wearables is projected to hit the $186.14 billion mark by 2030. Wearable health data could also unlock more than $300 billion in value for the healthcare sector alone.

However, with more and more advancements in technology, the capacity of these wearables to be more intrusive only increases, and that threatens the privacy rights of individuals and raises important questions regarding the data being collected.

Although companies like Apple maintain a seemingly strong privacy policy with high protection of user data, the new changing privacy policy at Meta could indicate that your personal information is at high risk.

The problem is that this data often exists in a legal grey area, unlike how traditional health data gets stored in hospitals.

The Hitch in the Invisible Contract

So, how does your personal information reach third parties? How does your privacy get compromised?

Oftentimes, your fitness band that tracks your heart rate patterns or your sleep cycle shares it with a third-party wellness app.

Your anonymized details are perhaps, later sold to an employer wellness program. This program integrates your data to offer incentives.

Although this may sound dystopian, a majority of popular health wearables have vague policies when it comes to privacy and do not guarantee the deletion of personal data upon request.

With the intervention of AI in the game, the data also gets interpreted, not just recorded.

The result? Your smart watch could probably predict your onset of depression far before your service dog. Ironically, this insight would be exploited rather than used to help you out.

The Blurring Line Between Body and Technology

Wearables, smart rings, smart tattoos, implantable chips – the list is long and not so "fictional" sci-fi stuff anymore.

The market is filled with prototypes and products already in development and upgrades.

Our bodies are turning into browsers, where our behaviour, location, and engagement in real time are all tracked. Too bad our bodies do not have incognito modes.

The data ownership and regulatory landscape is fragmented, as we lack clear frameworks for monetizing data. Although the data shared across third-parties are anonymous, when combined with location data, it turns out to be highly valuable for targeted marketing.

The only question that we can ask is if we can unplug from this surveillance when it is connected to our bodies.

Data Autonomy or Thanks for the Free Gold?

So, is there a way to reclaim data autonomy?

Frameworks like the EU's GDPR and California's CPRA give users more rights to their own data.

However, there are limitations; we need clearer mandates around data portability, the right to delete, and accountability to algorithms, especially in biometric technologies.

As consumers, we can advocate for stronger legal protections and clearer corporate accountability to shape future data ecosystems.

Only informed consumers can drive companies toward ethical stewardship of wearable data, turning the goldmine into a shared asset rather than a predatory commodity.

With this goldmine of data growing, it will create a paradigm shift by defining who truly owns the goldmine of data – the user, the manufacturer, or others?

Giving users more control and having stronger laws could be one way to ensure that wearable data helps people without manipulating the gold mine of knowledge they have been sitting on.

Edited by Harshajit Sarmah