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posted by mrpg on Sunday February 11 2018, @08:35AM   Printer-friendly
from the telescreen-2018 dept.

Kashmir Hill and Surya Mattu, over at Gizmodo, write about wiring Kashmir's apartment with as many "smart" gadgets as possible and then observing the data flow. Some of the telemetry streams are not encrypted, some are. Both are observable by the companies they report to, but even those that are encrypted still tell the network in between a lot about the inhabitants of the house and their activities based on when they happen and their volume.

In December, I converted my one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco into a "smart home." I connected as many of my appliances and belongings as I could to the internet: an Amazon Echo, my lights, my coffee maker, my baby monitor, my kid's toys, my vacuum, my TV, my toothbrush, a photo frame, a sex toy, and even my bed.

[...] What our experiment told us is that all the connected devices constantly phone home to their manufacturers. You won't be aware these conversations are happening unless you're technically savvy and monitoring your router like we did. And even if you are, because the conversations are usually encrypted, you won't be able to see what your belongings are saying. When you buy a smart device, it doesn't just belong to you; you share custody with the company that made it.

That's not just a privacy concern. It also means that those companies can change the product you bought after you buy it. So your smart speaker can suddenly become the hub of a social network, and your fancy smart scale can have one of its key features taken away in a firmware update.

Usability was another aspect. She had no less than 14 different "apps" on her smartphone as well as several voice activated devices that still had comprehension difficulties.

The House That Spied on Me


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 11 2018, @10:01AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 11 2018, @10:01AM (#636321)

    Well, here comes a guess why. The margins in that business, what are they like? Probably rather small, and getting smaller. So at a certain point, If you don't explore every monetization opportunity, down to selling personal details of your customers real-time, you won't make a profit.

    I bought this modem bank thing, to send sms spam, from some hongkong supplier. Three days later, all kinds of international calls and sms started hitting the number that was given to them as contact details. Irony :)

    So why would other OEM's be any different?! They are in the business to make money.

    And IOT garbage, its like always on, always sensing. So always a stream of data to sell?

  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday February 11 2018, @08:54PM (3 children)

    by frojack (1554) on Sunday February 11 2018, @08:54PM (#636441) Journal

    comes down to selling personal details of your customers real-time, you won't make a profit.

    Seriously, if there was a market for this, don't you think it would be a lot more obvious by now? Wouldn't there be hordes of stories exposing the data flow, and nefarious uses of it to market to, or blackmail people with this information?

    Margins rather small indeed, If I and my friends are any indication.
    And the selling on of my data must also be a declining revenue stream since I run AdBlock just about everywhere. I viciously spam filter my email. Avoid dodgy web sites.

    I look around at the things I have purchased in the last three years, and I don't see anything that I spent any money on which were directly marketed to me. I tend to do a lot of searching on the web for product evaluation before making a decision, and often just walk away refusing to buy any of them.

    NOTHING I've purchased in the last several years originally came to me via advertising. I went searching for them. Example: I was in the market for a security cam and went searching and comparing. Was it advertising that got me interested? No. Crime reports perhaps. Police scanner traffic mostly. I don't see any ads for security cams.

    So how would the fact that I now have a cloud connected security cam outside my house be something that can be sold by the manufacturer to anyone else? Who would want that info? Where's the market for my customer info?

    Same for my run tracker, that maps all my runs, my feedly app that gathers my news feeds, my Play Store app and media purchases, my google drive, my MegaSync, Dropbox, SpiderOak, etc.

    Who's buying that data? I suggest there is a lot less of this going on than most people think. There's just not that much of a market for it.

    --
    No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
    • (Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Monday February 12 2018, @12:52AM

      by fyngyrz (6567) on Monday February 12 2018, @12:52AM (#636520) Journal

      I think the answer to this is:

      "Anecdote" is not a synonym for "data."

      ...and also...

      A specific person's behavior is not guaranteed to be the population's behavior.

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 12 2018, @01:44AM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday February 12 2018, @01:44AM (#636525) Journal

      Seriously, if there was a market for this, don't you think it would be a lot more obvious by now?

      You mean the deluge of spam in email and regular mail isn't enough to tip you off?

      I look around at the things I have purchased in the last three years, and I don't see anything that I spent any money on which were directly marketed to me. I tend to do a lot of searching on the web for product evaluation before making a decision, and often just walk away refusing to buy any of them.

      You aren't the entire world. A lot of people don't take that level of care.

    • (Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Monday February 12 2018, @02:32PM

      by nobu_the_bard (6373) on Monday February 12 2018, @02:32PM (#636694)

      Seriously, if there was a market for this, don't you think it would be a lot more obvious by now?

      There's leaks all of the time. Most of them are smaller scale, lower impact, or nobody finds out until months or years later (if they ever find out at all). Only the biggest leaks or serious showstoppers make the news.

      That's why they have to do so much of it. I've seen various calculations that all of your data is worth between $5 and $20 if maximally monetized. That's chump change for the cost, understanding that most single manufacturers aren't gonna get all of that. You need tons of data on tons of users to make money doing it.