If there is such a warning, it should be along the lines of:
"This device is inherently insecure and could be remotely operated by persons unknown anywhere in the world."
What If We Put Warnings on IoT Devices?
91–100 of 159 posts
Re: What If We Put Warnings on IoT Devices?
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
For sure, that’s what killed the Pebble watch for me. I got it home, opened the box, thinking I had a new watch! Nope. You have to connect it to the internet and let it phone home first. It would not tell time, permit you to manually set the time, or let you explore that watch at all, until it spoke with it’s mothership. I put it back in the box, and tossed it in the closet, and it’s still there, and now it’s complet…
If it is in a mint condition with boxing, hold on to it, in a decade or so I believe it would be worth a lot.
As long as it isn't the Pebble Time Round, and the battery doesn't swell and require replacement...
Re: What If We Put Warnings on IoT Devices?
#93Simple 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…
> 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.
I do for a few things. I pay T-Mobile so I can make phone calls with my cell phone. I also pay Netgear for some Arlo cameras.
I'm more willing to get devices that have external services if the company offering them will likely be around for the life of the device. For my phone, I'm happy if T-Mobile lasts two years and for Netgear, I'm counting on around 5 years.
Re: What If We Put Warnings on IoT Devices?
#94Ugh, hey Troy, thanks for making the post NSFW with that featured vibrator image...was it really necessary to make the point of the article?
Yes. Yes it was. Its a piece of plastic, how is this NSFW? Grow up.
So you're allowed for browse for vibrators at your work place? Interesting.
He could've used any other image from the post as the featured one.
Re: What If We Put Warnings on IoT Devices?
#95A little ironic: I tried to share this article on the #offbeat Slack channel at my work, but the automatic preview image Slack generated for it (from the top cover image of the article, which you can't really see most of, unless you view the image separately) is a (pretty NSFW) fake front-of-the-box for a "We-Vibe" IoT vibrator: "We can see how kinky you are". Not what I was planning to share with my coworkers. I'd r…
Haha, same on FB, tried to see how to change it, in the end just went for the vibrator image without any text around it (because it is cropped of). Living on the edge.
Re: What If We Put Warnings on IoT Devices?
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. A couple years ago I bought a network-attached hard drive with some kind of cloud backup service bundled (the current marketing-speak seems to be "personal cloud"); fortunately I did a little extra reading before opening it, because it wouldn't even let you set it up for local access without registering an account on the cloud service.
For sure, that’s what killed the Pebble watch for me. I got it home, opened the box, thinking I had a new watch! Nope. You have to connect it to the internet and let it phone home first. It would not tell time, permit you to manually set the time, or let you explore that watch at all, until it spoke with it’s mothership. I put it back in the box, and tossed it in the closet, and it’s still there, and now it’s complet…
What a waste! Here in the EU you have 8 days to sent it back without any reason. That is a nice rule for this type of nonsense.
Re: What If We Put Warnings on IoT Devices?
#97A little ironic: I tried to share this article on the #offbeat Slack channel at my work, but the automatic preview image Slack generated for it (from the top cover image of the article, which you can't really see most of, unless you view the image separately) is a (pretty NSFW) fake front-of-the-box for a "We-Vibe" IoT vibrator: "We can see how kinky you are". Not what I was planning to share with my coworkers. I'd r…
I sort of wish Slack had a way to disable the preview image feature; I've run into this several times where a reasonable, work-safe article was processed into a picture not-so-suitable for Slack.
It mostly seems to be cases like this one, where the first image is concealed or contextualized in the article but treated like a normal header image by Slack. I think one that got me worst was a piece responding to someone else's content. Slack simply pulled the quoted text and picture at the top - which looked like sharing the original article, instead of a response to it.
Re: What If We Put Warnings on IoT Devices?
#98I'm of the opinion that products which require a separate service to perform their advertised functions (i.e. a "cloud" service-- be it "free" with the product or subscription-based) should be clearly labeled as such. I know that I don't actually own anything that I can't self-host (or pay whoever I want to host it), but it's clear that most people don't. Public education on this front seems valuable to me (but, then…
Yes. There's this doorbell (400-1500 USD) that connects via internet to a central host, and then notifies you on your smartphone. Seems sort of a neat idea, but a house lasts several decades - is that startup and its server going to be around that long? http://www.doorbird.com
Well, a doorbell is not exactly a part of the foundation and it is easily replaced. My house from the 1930's has seen several doorbells already.
Re: What If We Put Warnings on IoT Devices?
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 min…
Man, I hate those gas cans. I've used a bunch of different cans with "safety" nozzles, and every time I get gas on the equipment, the can, the ground, my hands, etc. They're much worse than what we had before.
Re: What If We Put Warnings on IoT Devices?
#100It would be interesting to have a word for devices that is sort of like 'organic' for food. It would indicate that the device is self-contained and has no connectivity.
Botnet free