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The House That Spied on Me

gizmodo.com

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Re: The House That Spied on Me

#41

Post by gowld »

acomjean wrote: post #22

these smart homes bring up ethical dilemas. I worked for a company and someone got a home automation kit. It monitored comings and goings. They looked at the logs and realized the dog walker one day did a really short walk. How do you broach this? Do you bother for an otherwise responsible walker. I worked for a power monitoring company that put a box in your house, monitored power use for each circuit breaker. The C…

Employees/vendors/contractors are usually under surveillance for their work activities. That's accountability.

Re: The House That Spied on Me

#42

Post by kakarot »

Fnoord wrote: post #32
drdaeman wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If people could be made more informed I'd really really really like to see some AR glasses that would somehow visualize all sorts of invisible things: radio traffic (incl. special indication of weak encryption and non-encrypted communications), ultrasound and infrared tags, location of detectable microphones and cameras - all sorts of things like this, whatever can be detected. Like, look at the smart TV and be awa…

Hmm, triangulation is what happened to give Strava user's home location away with privacy zones. I also read the other day how multiple mics ("smart speakers" etc) can help locate someone's movement throughout a house. There's also smartphones who have infrared cameras on them like the CAT S60. And there's research where Bluetooth and WiFi can be used to assess if someone's home, and where their WiFi devices are loca…

We are FUBAR'd, why deal with mics and smart speakers when you can sell privacy-invading Wi-Fi routers?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LTr02cJkiA

Re: The House That Spied on Me

#43

Post by whatshisface »

gowld wrote: post #41
acomjean wrote: post #22

these smart homes bring up ethical dilemas. I worked for a company and someone got a home automation kit. It monitored comings and goings. They looked at the logs and realized the dog walker one day did a really short walk. How do you broach this? Do you bother for an otherwise responsible walker. I worked for a power monitoring company that put a box in your house, monitored power use for each circuit breaker. The C…

Employees/vendors/contractors are usually under surveillance for their work activities. That's accountability.

That's not accountability to the people at risk. Trust me, you do not want to have to go to the courts for damages, especially if they were completely nonmonetary...

Re: The House That Spied on Me

#44

Post by whatshisface »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #39
autokad wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When obama said we need a more 21st century efficient power grid, i thought that sounds great. i thought that meant better equipment and lines that doesnt waste as much electricity, nope. it meant 'smart meters' that can tell all sorts of things about us. they didnt want to save electricity, they wanted our data. The city wanted to install one of those smart meters in my home, i refused. but I was told that unless i…

Question: what does the smart meter tell them that monitoring your usage otherwise wouldn't?

Dumb meters integrate (sum) power over the entire time between manual readings. Smart readers can report far more granular data.

Re: The House That Spied on Me

#45

Post by whatshisface »

JoshMnem wrote: post #35
Momquist wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is why both android and ios are NOT the mobile os of the future. I too would like a more open OS for mobiles, but you have to realize that the majority of users doesn't care about this. They are unconcerned about most privacy issues, don't need to ever tinker at a low level with their devices, and they are the ones ultimately deciding on what the future will be. What matters is the UI, and that the various fea…

> the majority of users doesn't care about this Only because they don't know what is going on.

Most people I talk to have a sense that all of these big companies (and the government) are violating them, but they feel completely helpless and so ignore the issue. It's extremely similar to people in a third world country that know their foods are being adulterated but can't afford imports and still have to shop.

Re: The House That Spied on Me

#46

Post by tombrossman »

technofiend wrote: post #31
bittermang wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I rolled with the Badger for a while, but I've moved away from it and toward a more network wide approach. Can't install plugins on my devices, and I don't want thirteen different browsers on my tablet. And my Xbox is stuck with Internet Explo-- I mean Microsoft Edge -- so I need a more comprehensive solution. And this article only points out more reasons why that is becoming necessary. But my stack is ugly and kludg…

Maybe the pihole is for you, then? Certainly the price is right to try it. https://pi-hole.net/

Pi-hole is absolutely the way to go. Not only for the ad-blocking, but for checking to see where your devices 'phone home' to (and optionally blocking that, too).

I've got it running in a Linux container on a Turris Omnia and it blocks over 90% of requests, with nothing to install on the devices.

Re: The House That Spied on Me

#48

Post by JoshMnem »

whatshisface wrote: post #45
JoshMnem wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the majority of users doesn't care about this Only because they don't know what is going on.

Most people I talk to have a sense that all of these big companies (and the government) are violating them, but they feel completely helpless and so ignore the issue. It's extremely similar to people in a third world country that know their foods are being adulterated but can't afford imports and still have to shop.

They only have a vague sense, but they don't understand the direct consequences of specific actions.

There's also a belief in the false idea that, "they already have all of my data, so there is nothing I can do about it."

It's arguable that one needs a mobile phone to participate in modern life (and the situation with mobile phones requires fixing as well). It is not arguable that people need to be able to talk to a box that makes them a coffee or turns on a light. I think that most people would not choose the IoT device if they really understood how it works.

Re: The House That Spied on Me

#49

Post by mindslight »

mortenjorck wrote: post #11
Thriptic wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The TV still works if it's not connected to the internet. Just buy a smart TV, never connect it to the internet, and get third party streaming sticks instead.

I wouldn’t be surprised if at some point, the first time you turn on your new TV, you’re prompted with an unskippable “Create your Vizio account” screen or some such nastiness.

Just like rooting/reinstalling your phone, it's important to set it up properly right after you buy it - no excuses of trying out their gimmicky crapware, figuring it out later, etc. This way, you're well within the return window and won't be stuck with defective merchandise.

Re: The House That Spied on Me

#50

Post by kageneko »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #39
autokad wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When obama said we need a more 21st century efficient power grid, i thought that sounds great. i thought that meant better equipment and lines that doesnt waste as much electricity, nope. it meant 'smart meters' that can tell all sorts of things about us. they didnt want to save electricity, they wanted our data. The city wanted to install one of those smart meters in my home, i refused. but I was told that unless i…

Question: what does the smart meter tell them that monitoring your usage otherwise wouldn't?

I seem to recall a paper about using the noise in the electrical system of a home to determine what appliances were plugged in and turned on at any point in time.

Sidhant Gupta, Matthew S. Reynolds, and Shwetak N. Patel. 2010. ElectriSense: single-point sensing using EMI for electrical event detection and classification in the home. In Proceedings of the 12th ACM international conference on Ubiquitous computing (UbiComp '10). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 139-148. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/1864349.1864375

https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1864375

That said: I used to work for a smart meter manufacturer and (AFAIK) we didn't do anything like that. Granular readings were the most important part. Our meters could report in 15 minute buckets, which was useful for tiered billing. Most of the push back against these meters were because they use radios to report readings back and there was concern about radiation. There were people who were building faraday cages around the meters.

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