Nest Halts Sales Of Protect Smoke Alarm Over Safety Concerns About ‘Wave To Dismiss’ Feature

Nest CEO Tony Fadell has just issued a notice recommending users disable the Protect smoke alarm’s ’wave to dismiss’ feature. In testing, it was discovered that people could accidentally trigger the dismiss feature, delaying a smoke alarm.

Sales of the Nest Protect have also been halted.

He recommends that users disable the feature for now, and says Nest is going to update units that will allow the feature to work correctly. In addition, if your Nest Protect is connected to the Internet via Wi-Fi, it will have the feature disabled automatically.

Until the feature has been corrected, users can tap the button on the unit to silence alarms.

“At Nest, we conduct regular, rigorous tests to ensure that our products are the highest quality,” says Fadell. “During recent laboratory testing of the Nest Protect smoke alarm, we observed a unique combination of circumstances that caused us to question whether the Nest Wave (a feature that enables you to turn off your alarm with a wave of the hand) could be unintentionally activated.”

Fadell says that the testing will take two to three months, and that they will update consumers as they progress.

“We’re enormously sorry for the inconvenience caused by this issue,” he continues. “The team and I are dedicated to ensuring that we can stand behind each Nest product that comes into your home, and your 100% satisfaction and safety are what motivates us. Please know that the entire Nest team and I are focused on fixing this problem and continuing to improve our current products in every way possible.”

In a related FAQ, Nest says that it had observed the issue in testing and has had no reports of it from any customer. There are also instructions provided that will allow users to disable the feature even if the units are not connected to the net.

The post notes that if any consumers do not want to keep the Nest Protect, a complete refund will be offered. Somewhat ironically, the Nest Wave feature was promoted heavily as a benefit of owning a Protect unit.

On the plus side, because this is a device that has built-in software and connects to the net, it can be updated remotely to fix software-related issues. But recently, an issue with a Nest Thermostat software update caused problems with Wi-Fi and batteries in some units, highlighting the delicate nature of software that powers our environmental systems — and that we trust with our safety.

The Nest Protect was the company’s second product after the Nest Thermostat. Nest announced plans to be acquired by Google for $3.2 billion in cash in January.

Google Pays Another Tiny Fine In Europe — $1.4M — For Street View Privacy Concerns

Google has paid a €1 million ($1.4 million) fine in Italy levied by the country’s data protection watchdog for complaints relating to its Street View street-level image capturing cars that date back to 2010.

At issue was a failure by Google to make its Street View cars clearly identifiable. In 2010, the watchdog ruled that the Street View cars must carry signs or stickers to indicate that they were capturing photographs.

It had also stipulated that Google must to publicize the locations its cars would be visiting ahead of time, on its website and in local news media — so Italians could choose to avoid the risk of being photographed.

The fine also relates to Google’s Street View cars accidentally recording communication data as they went about their mapping business in the country. Last April Google was fined around $190,000 in Germany over similar Street View privacy concerns relating to the harvesting of additional data such as Wi-Fi passwords.

The Italian watchdog said it received many complaints about the privacy infringement of Google’s Street View cars, and yesterday said it had imposed a fine of €1 million on Google — which the company paid a few weeks ago.

The regulator said Google has since promptly adopted the requested measures.

In determining the level of the fine to impose on Google, the data protection authority said it took into account the company’s “consolidated revenue of over $50 billion”. But, even so, $1.4 million is another drop in the ocean for a company whose market cap broke $400 billion earlier this year.

In a statement given to Reuters, Google noted that the fine related to a case dating back to 2010, and added: ”We complied with everything the [regulator] required of us at the time.”

Google has also previously been fined in Europe on privacy grounds relating to its early 2012 decision to unify the privacy policies of more than 70 different products.

Google was fined around $200,000 in France in January for privacy infringements relating to that decision. Spain also levied a $1.3 million fine back in December for the same issue.

Even cumulatively such amounts pale into insignificance for a company of Google’s size — underlining the regulatory difficulties of reigning in any overreaching behaviour by the U.S. tech giant.