After years of financial struggles, iRobot – the brand behind the first commercially successful robotic vacuum cleaner, the Roomba – has been taken over by Chinese contract manufacturing company Picea.
Shortly after the news broke, company co-founder Helen Greiner said in an interview with Bloomberg that she found it “bizarre” that there hadn’t been a big public outcry that iRobot’s data and information “will belong to a Chinese company” [quote at 7.50].
Cohen referred me to the security notices posted on the company’s website (I couldn’t access the US policy at the time of writing, but the UK policy was available to read), and assured me that customers could easily remove their names from iRobot’s list if they wanted to.
“We protect their data. It’s all encrypted and that’s how we do business,” he told me. “We’re the most secure of anyone, and we’ve actually won awards for our ability to protect the data, to protect [against] breach, but more importantly, to protect the data in terms of where it is stored.”
No change
Another statement sent to me from iRobot on the subject reads: “No changes have been made to how iRobot collects, maintains, stores or uses personal information in connection with the Reorganization Transaction, and we do not anticipate any such changes. Any updates to our existing data processing or security activities will always be made in accordance with our Online Privacy Policy (can be found here) and applicable laws.”
Cohen also confirmed to me that current Roomba owners would not have to worry about product and app support for their robovacs, and that it would be “business as usual” in the immediate aftermath of the acquisition. Beyond that, he feels very optimistic about iRobot’s future with Picea. Watch this space.
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