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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday October 08 2017, @10:22AM   Printer-friendly
from the insert-witty-something-here dept.

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

At this point we've pretty well documented how the "internet of things" is a privacy and security dumpster fire. Whether it's tea kettles that expose your WiFi credentials or smart fridges that leak your Gmail password, companies were so busy trying to make a buck by embedding network chipsets into everything, they couldn't be bothered to adhere to even the most modest security and privacy guidelines. As a result, billions upon billions of devices are now being connected to the internet with little to no meaningful security and a total disregard to user privacy -- posing a potentially fatal threat to us all.

Unsurprisingly, the sex toy division of the internet of broken things is no exception to this rule. One "smart dildo" manufacturer was recently forced to shell out $3.75 million after it was caught collecting, err, "usage habits" of the company's customers. According to the lawsuit, Standard Innovation's We-Vibe vibrator collected sensitive data about customer usage, including "selected vibration settings," the device's battery life, and even the vibrator's "temperature." At no point did the company apparently think it was a good idea to clearly inform users of this data collection.

Source: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20171003/13375238336/sex-toys-are-just-as-poorly-secured-as-rest-internet-broken-things.shtml


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  • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Monday October 09 2017, @09:02AM

    by TheRaven (270) on Monday October 09 2017, @09:02AM (#579203) Journal

    IoT is the latest buzzword for the same concept that was Ubiquitous Computing (ubicomp) a decade ago and has had many other names. The basic idea isn't too bad: devices exchanging data can optimise for local conditions better. It's quite hard to see the benefit of a networked sex toy, but maybe you'd want your phone and doorbell to go on silent mode while it is in use (and maybe the volume on the music to turn up, if you have thin walls).

    The problem is that most of the companies involved have neither any idea how to build secure networked devices, nor any real idea of why anyone would want one.

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