The House That Spied on Me
gizmodo.com
The House That Spied on Me
1–10 of 73 posts
Re: The House That Spied on Me
#2This was brilliant and disturbing. The legal implications are crazy---even if the owner of the house has agreed to the EULAs of all the devices, their visitors have not. Is their a legal obligation to notify visitors that data about them is being generated, collected, snooped through, and potentially sold?
If people could be made more informed of what their devices are saying (and to whom) perhaps they'd be more reluctant to "smartify" their homes. Transparency would enable more informed decisions.
Re: The House That Spied on Me
#3As annoying as the "smart homes are annoying" posts are becoming, I really enjoyed the format and the depth of this article. And I didn't know one could buy internet-connected vibrators. That's... odd. I also don't know why these folks were surprised their devices were constantly communicating to their home servers.
My stance on the smart home and privacy phenomenon is optimistic. I think apple will eventually have a fully integrated smart home ecosystem similar to their standard ecosystem now, which will make the process easier in general. Perhaps we can one day have a single device to control every other device, or a few devices which perform multiple functions (such as a bundled music player, television, light controller, air monitor etc) and that such a device or devices will be bundled such that the meta data will contain only information that the device is being used but not which function is employed. Surveillance is unstoppable at this point, and this means that everyone has the ability to watch everyone else, and I think this is a good thing. We already have a good sense when those in our social group are lying, or hiding things, or even when they need help. If governments and citizens alike understand what each party is up to, we can have a fully accountable society, and of course eventually we must negotiate the relevant social rules that keeps this accountability relevant and practical. This is something I believe we have to work with. We have to take responsibility and understand what is going on, and to also take the power into our own hands and create balance. We can figure this out, and I don't believe that necessarily involves destroying the structure of how our governments and corporations do business. It's simply more efficient to restructure, not to totally resist but also not to be completely complacent. and that's all I have to say.
Re: The House That Spied on Me
#4> Almost every TV on the market now is connected—because otherwise how do you Netflix and chill?
If you buy a "smart" TV, refuse to connect it to the internet and just get an Apple TV/Chromecast/whatever.
Re: The House That Spied on Me
#5As annoying as the "smart homes are annoying" posts are becoming, I really enjoyed the format and the depth of this article. And I didn't know one could buy internet-connected vibrators. That's... odd. I also don't know why these folks were surprised their devices were constantly communicating to their home servers. My stance on the smart home and privacy phenomenon is optimistic. I think apple will eventually have a…
"everyone has the ability to watch everyone else"
is it entirely symmetrical ?
Re: The House That Spied on Me
#6> Almost every TV on the market now is connected—because otherwise how do you Netflix and chill? If you buy a "smart" TV, refuse to connect it to the internet and just get an Apple TV/Chromecast/whatever.
The problem with "smart" TVs is that infrequently there is no choice but to get those and try to minimize the damage. Despite all their advantages "dumb" TVs are getting less and less popular.
Re: The House That Spied on Me
#7This was brilliant and disturbing. The legal implications are crazy---even if the owner of the house has agreed to the EULAs of all the devices, their visitors have not. Is their a legal obligation to notify visitors that data about them is being generated, collected, snooped through, and potentially sold? If people could be made more informed of what their devices are saying (and to whom) perhaps they'd be more relu…
> 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 aware that it sends out data (if you're on the same network and can observe the packet headers, maybe also somehow see some details where it talks to). Or see that this store front screams something on an inaudible frequency and worse - that your phone had just replied something as you walked by.
Which is probably not going to happen, not only because it's extremely complicated from the technical side, but because people would freak out over such tech even more than over Google Glass ;)
Re: The House That Spied on Me
#8> Almost every TV on the market now is connected—because otherwise how do you Netflix and chill? If you buy a "smart" TV, refuse to connect it to the internet and just get an Apple TV/Chromecast/whatever.
The problem with "smart" TVs is that infrequently there is no choice but to get those and try to minimize the damage. Despite all their advantages "dumb" TVs are getting less and less popular.
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.
Re: The House That Spied on Me
#9It's all extraordinarily creepy because you expect your home to be the safe haven of privacy, but considering how ubiquitous smartphones are and how much of our lives already happens digitally, you could somewhat cynically argue that the privacy loss is comparatively small (because you have very little to begin with nowadays).
But if smart utilities take off, maybe some privacy label for consumers would be nice. Maybe in the future it's a selling point if when device is dumb as opposed to smart and connected. I also somewhat dislike the conclusion of the article that smart homes for everybody are inevitable or necessary. The utility, at least right now, of smart devices seems to be limited, so you don't have even to be a crazy hermit to boycott a smart home.
Re: The House That Spied on Me
#10> Almost every TV on the market now is connected—because otherwise how do you Netflix and chill? If you buy a "smart" TV, refuse to connect it to the internet and just get an Apple TV/Chromecast/whatever.
or use a white listing firewall where your data only goes to approved companies. but as you dont or do know how they use the info - its best to desolder any antennas or network interfase.