As the holiday season has zoomed in to full swing, one of the things I’ve been hearing and thinking more about is my family’s digital privacy. My husband and I have been evaluating what digital devices we currently have in our homes and thinking about what devices we would consider purchasing for ourselves and giving as gifts. At the end of the day, we want to know that what happens in our home stays private and that information we provide to companies is not shared without our knowledge and permission. And we want to know what we can do as consumers to protect ourselves.
As helpful as our connected devices can be, it can be a “creepy” feeling to think a device in our home might be spying on us, listening to what we say at the dinner table or watching us as we move around the house. We can’t help but wonder whether this information is being shared with advertisers or others.
At the same time, we love the convenience of being able to ask our Google Home Mini to play Christmas music while we’re working on our holiday cards or asking for the weather as we head out for the day. And recently the whole family has loved training our dog Panda to use PetChatz to keep in touch with us while we’re at work and school.
Now as a part of the PetChatz team, I’ve had the opportunity to learn and understand how we protect our customers’ privacy. As PetChatz users, we can have complete confidence that our security and privacy is critical to every member of our company’s team and protected by our business practices. Information you provide to our company as well as video and audio captured by PetChatz devices are securely stored and never sold. Employees cannot and would not access video or audio, without your express permission and then only for troubleshooting purposes.
We’re proud of the fact PetChatz again this year received a “five-star” privacy rating from Mozilla on their “*privacy not included” gift giving guide. In addition, we’ve recently updated our privacy policy so that it is clear it applies not only to our website but to our product and our app. Rest assured, we do our very best to ensure your privacy is protected.
I also thought it would be good to share a few things I’ve learned in terms of steps our families can take at home. To ensure that others cannot access connected devices and information transmitted via your Wi-Fi network, experts suggest taking some basic precautions including:
- Changing the default name of your home network to something unique, but that does indicate your name or location;
- Setting a strong, unique password and changing it periodically;
- Activating network encryption; and,
- (If the house will be empty) Disconnecting our Wifi while we’re out of town for extended periods.
Here at PetChatz, we’re a dedicated team of pet lovers. We’re committed to pioneering technologies that enable ‘being there from anywhere’. Last but certainly not least, we keep your security and privacy in mind every step of the way as we develop our products and continue to innovate.
So please do consider PetChatz HDX as a great gift for the pets and pet lovers in your life – we look forward to welcoming you, your friends and your loved one to our PetChatz Pack!
Happy Holidays!
