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What If We Put Warnings on IoT Devices?

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Re: What If We Put Warnings on IoT Devices?

#71

Post by lucb1e »

DonHopkins wrote: post #2

WARNINGS: WARNING: This product warps space and time in its vicinity. WARNING: This product attracts every other piece of matter in the universe, including the products of other manufacturers, with a force proportional to the product of the masses and inversely proportional to the distance between them. CAUTION: The mass of this product contains the energy equivalent of 85 million tons of TNT per net ounce of weight.…

Just a sidenote, this is not original content and no source is mentioned. From a quick ddg search, this seems likely to be the original (1991):

https://stuff.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/netsam/warning...

Re: What If We Put Warnings on IoT Devices?

#73

Post by lucb1e »

npsimons wrote: post #65
lucb1e wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it should not need an external service to operate. If it does then I'm not buying it. And how do you know, pre-purchase, whether it does?

> And how do you know, pre-purchase, whether it does? By requiring a warning label on it, as the title suggests. Doesn't seem like such a silly idea now, does it?

Jacquesm said it as if he already followed this rule and everyone could choose to do so. But there being no warning labels makes that kinda hard...

> Doesn't seem like such a silly idea now, does it?

I never said that.

Re: What If We Put Warnings on IoT Devices?

#74

Post by etatoby »

yellow_postit wrote: post #31
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #13

In California, there is a law that basically everywhere (e.g. all apartment complexes) must have a sign that specifies that the compounds used on site can cause cancer or birth defects or whatever. But because the signs are pervasive, they are basically useless. This feels kind of like that.

Also like the pervasive “this site uses cookies” warnings in Europe.

If that abomination didn't exist, it would make for a great satire post.

Re: What If We Put Warnings on IoT Devices?

#75

Post by seanmcdirmid »

freehunter wrote: post #66
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say allowed or not. Sure, you should know that there are 15 ug of theomacrotasium among a hundred other things in your environment, but then what? Information overload means our decisions can get worse, not better, when presented with more of it. What would be more meaningful: certifications that act as abstractions for complex problems. Organic kind of acts like this already, and of course there are multipl…

How about a warning that says "The battery in this cell phone contains an amount of theomacrotasium known to cause cancer if ingested." That's a completely actionable warning. Don't eat the contents of the battery of your cell phone. Or how about "This carpet contains formeldahyde, which is known to cause birth defects in pregnant women. Limit exposure to this carpet for a few days after installation." That's a good…

Hey, if it's just one thing, great! Now, how do you do that for a hundred things? Again, warnings work great for very small numbers of N.

We have to find a middle ground between "has chemicals that may cause cancer" and "a hundred specific chemicals in X quantities that may cause cancer." Abstraction is very necessary as a pragmatic solution, even if full disclosure makes sense as an ideal.

Heck, most places are just doing CYA, they have no idea what specific lists of chemicals their contractors use. For the IoT case, no one has any idea how their devices can be exploited, and merely admit the possibility of exploitation. But that is another issue.

Re: What If We Put Warnings on IoT Devices?

#76

Post by seanmcdirmid »

freehunter wrote: post #61
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if they did, would it matter? It would be some chemical term, like the one you see in an ingedient list, that is meaningless to most people. And these are places, not products...with gardens. Even if they use organic pesticides, they probably still have to put up the warning.

>And these are places, not products Those places have products that contain the toxic chemical, An apartment building is not poisonous by itself, they contain products that contain the harmful chemical. That's what they should be warning you about.

Ya, but what products? I'm sure California understood that it would be difficult for property managers to do a complete audit, so allowed this warning as a cop out (it might be that they have none of those chemicals, but who knows, we will put up the warning just in case).

Re: What If We Put Warnings on IoT Devices?

#77

Post by dozzie »

TremendousJudge wrote: post #54
npsimons wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This feels kind of like that. It might feel like that, but it isn't. Everything[1] causes cancer. Not everything needs to have an Internet connection to a service to function, not essentially at least. It's only these people looking to monetize or "h0ok all teh th7ngs up!!1!eleven!" that are shoveling crap that no one asked for, but everyone is too lazy to object to. I've got a pair of wireless earbuds, completely…

Right now I'm writing my bachelor's thesis on IoT platforms. I think the real problem is that there's no real established pattern for authentication (the way there is for things like signing up for a web app). You ship devices and there isn't a 'one true way' for authenticating them against your platform, authenticating the user, partnering the user with the device, and then encrypting all traffic from the device to…

> I think the real problem is that there's no real established pattern for authentication (the way there is for things like signing up for a web app).

No. The real problem is that a device you bought requires internet access for no good reason, spies on you ("collects information") with no good reason, and becomes useless garbage once the company that sells it goes out of business or decides to terminate the product line or just grows to dislike you, all that for your lightbulb in the toilet to dim to the beat of played music.

For IoT to be useful at all, the devices would need substantial configuration possibilities, like where and with what protocol send data to, or better yet, whom to allow to fetch data from the device. But this would be only for hobbysts, as general public is not interested in tinkering.

Re: What If We Put Warnings on IoT Devices?

#78

Post by bo1024 »

jacquesm wrote: post #10

Simple rule: I buy it, I own it and it should not need an external service to operate. If it does then I'm not buying it. None of those grafted on services for me, I really have yet to see anything that was so compelling that I would give up and consent to essentially renting a device and having an account with some service to make it useful. That way you also don't need to warn anybody about the lousy security, I'm…

Also sums up my philosophy, at least ideally. (I dread the next time I have to buy a car...)

Re: What If We Put Warnings on IoT Devices?

#79

Post by freehunter »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #76
freehunter wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And these are places, not products Those places have products that contain the toxic chemical, An apartment building is not poisonous by itself, they contain products that contain the harmful chemical. That's what they should be warning you about.

Ya, but what products? I'm sure California understood that it would be difficult for property managers to do a complete audit, so allowed this warning as a cop out (it might be that they have none of those chemicals, but who knows, we will put up the warning just in case).

It always trickles down. The property managers know who built the buildings. The construction company knows what companies produced the construction materials. The company that made the construction materials knows what chemicals are in them. That's the person who writes the warning, and the construction crew tells the property manager, and the property manager keeps a list in their office for public viewing.

Re: What If We Put Warnings on IoT Devices?

#80

Post by dsfyu404ed »

jmcgough wrote: post #50
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #13

In California, there is a law that basically everywhere (e.g. all apartment complexes) must have a sign that specifies that the compounds used on site can cause cancer or birth defects or whatever. But because the signs are pervasive, they are basically useless. This feels kind of like that.

I've actually always appreciated that we have that... coming from a less liberal place, it made me feel like the state really cared about peoples' safety over the safety of corporations, and it's usually easy enough to find more information online about the compounds.

Trying using a CA compliant gas can to fill up your CA compliant riding mower then put said mower in reverse and back it out of wherever it's parked. For bonus points do so without a helper. Stickers and warnings are one thing. Mandating consumer safety features can go wrong easily.

In some areas "this product not for sale in CA" is a marketable feature. On small engines it means it's tuned to run well instead of minimum emissions. For gas cans it means you don't need three hands to pour from them. For riding mowers it means you don't need to go out of your way to engage several redundant safety mechanisms in order to operate it (In addition to reasonable safeties like a seat switch and shifter that can't easily be bumped).

I can't think of one off the top of my head but I'm sure there's equally "pants on head" consumer safety laws about things other than garden/lawn equipment and/or in states/countries other than CA.

(BTW, this is post is the cliff notes of a conversation I had with my coworkers at a tech company so it's not like we're a bunch of hicks complaining that the guards on our saws prevent us from fitting oversized blades.)

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