by By: Malia Kappelman
Oura Ring is a brand of smart ring made to track sleep, stress, activity, and overall health while relaying the data to the app on your phone. Using sensors on the bottom of the ring, it is able to track your temperature, movement, and blood oxygen. With many similar devices that can be worn to track your health, Oura was the first to make a Bluetooth ring with this function. What drew customers in was the sleek design, choice in color that could look like normal jewelry, and the fact that there was no screen that connected to your phone notifications.
On social media, this product became something that was trending because of the sleek design, but it has now received a lot of attention for a very different reason. Oura has had a partnership with the U.S. Department of Defense since 2019, but earlier this year, it was made public that there was a 96 million dollar contract between Oura and the U.S. Department of Defense. This was to specifically share the fatigue, readiness, and stress monitoring features of the ring. This led to public backlash online becuase customers were concerned that their information was now going to be sold to the government for an unknown reason without their consent.
Oura also offers cycle tracking, by taking your temperature each morning. This opens another huge concern for woman specifically and their data being shared with the government.
Within days of the announcement, Oura Ring’s CEO came out with a statement where he emphasized that there was not any personal information was being shared from their customers. He stated that this partnership was a part of the wellness and safety initiative and did not have anything to do with surveillance.
“It’s a component of their solution. That contract is still running, and that news — that relationship — became blown into a ‘massive partnership’ with Palantir … We have a small commercial relationship. The systems are not connected. There’s no way Palantir has access to your data. No one in the government can see your data. No one at Palantir can see your data. Totally overblown,” – Tom Hale (Oura Ring CEO)
Even with this statement made, there are customers canceling their subscription, worried about their personal data, and moving to other health trackers on the market. Though this statement explains that none of the data will be shared, the social media narrative has completely changed from something stylish and healthy to something that puts your personal information at risk.
As an Oura Ring user, I agree with a lot of the public options, but I am also interested to see how the company tries to regain a lot of their customers trust. The ring is an investment and not something most people would just throw away or stop using based on social media rumors.
Refrences
Thank you for shedding light on this topic. I going to be honest, I had heard some stuff about this, but brushed it off because I am not an Oura ring user. Recently I had thought about getting one or asking for it as a Christmas or birthday gift, but then your blog post reminded me why I had originally been skeptical to give it a bunch of my information. If it is an option, I will probably not have it track my cycles, because that’s not something I need the government knowing.