Most of us wouldn’t welcome a microphone into our bedroom. Earlier this week, the internet broke into a panic after it was pointed out that Sleep Number mattresses contain microphones that can record while you sleep. Now, the mattress company is denying that it is spying on its users and chalked the issue up to a mistake in the wording of its privacy policy.
The line in question that appeared in the fine print of the company’s privacy information was as follows: “Once You create a User Profile, We also may collect Personal Information, which may include, among other types of information … Audio in your room to detect snoring and similar sleep conditions.” That line caused an uproar, as people became concerned that listening devices may be installed inside the mattresses — something that is certainly not made clear when you purchase a product from Sleep Number.
Despite the worries, Sleep Number said the whole fiasco was just a big misunderstanding. The company said that none of its products record audio and the line in the privacy policy was an error, according to Gizmodo. The line has since been removed from the privacy policy, though it can still be found in archived versions of the page.
The line about audio seems to be in relation to the x12 model mattress, which the company no longer sells. That mattress offered voice command controls that owners could use to adjust the bed. Sleep Number claims that none of its x12 mattresses recorded, captured, or stored audio from voice commands — neither locally nor in the cloud. None of the company’s other mattresses have microphones or other audio devices installed in them, according to Sleep Number.
While it may not be the case that Sleep Number beds record audio from your bedroom, the company has previously explored the idea of snore detection in the past. The company’s Sleep Number 360 bed at one point was going to have a feature that would adjust the bed automatically if it determined a person was snoring. That feature never came to fruition, though the text in the company’s privacy policy covering it apparently remained until this recent incident.
