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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.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 12 2018, @02:07AM (1 child)
Searching the Ubuntu packages I find this:
bottlerocket - Utility to control X10 Firecracker devices for home automation
Back around 2000, I was at a company that controlled a whole bunch of X10 devices off of a telnet-to-serial converter box.
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Tuesday February 13 2018, @12:22AM
Yes, x10.com was handing out those firecracker devices for free with purchases for a while. I bought my stuff prior to that offer -- but it all still works. I might have gotten one for a light bulb or something but I had bought so much stuff during a sale I ended up with more than I could feasibly use once I figured out how to make things work.
There was a y2k bug... it worked on jan 1st 2000 but not Jan 2nd, so when I went out of town after making sure it all still worked on Jan 1st after a party... well I came back a week later and everything was dead, dying, or dessicated. Or all of that. Man was I upset. They released a y2k patch for the "activehome" software and life was good after that.
There are some fancy x10 software packages out there that let you do some pretty amazing things with the right hardware and sequence of events; it also requires some ingenuity and creativity to sort of plan it out. That if this then that thing I mentioned is sort of like the x10 macros--except x10 doesn't require you to give up your privacy in exchange for a little convenience.
My x10 stuff still works 18 years after a y2k issue (so does that windows 98 laptop...) I don't think most of the requirements my refrigerator demanded from me to get online will even be around in 18 years. (the refrigerator itself replaced one that came with the home; it was at least 20 years old... so that problem may be very relevant. There is no promise that the services you expect to be there will even be working 5, 10 or 20 years from now. Look at the sonos and nest hardware that are seeing premature end of life simply because its too expensive to keep lights on, and a revenue loss if there is no forced upgrade.)