The TOASTER is watching you!
(...and even your luggage is on your case) Wireless technology means everyday devices can share information about us... but is it going too far?
Your electric toothbrush might be spying on you. If you have a smart TV, it most definitely is – sending or receiving 25,000 messages in 15 minutes, a new study found. Your fridge and vacuum cleaner could be keeping an eye on you too, while even an innocuous-looking suitcase may transmit your every move back to its maker.
(Warning: those of a nervous or paranoiac disposition should stop reading now…)
It’s easy to spot the suspect devices; they are usually the ones that adopt a studied air of nonchalance whenever you glance in their direction. The rest of the time, they’re peering intently at you and noting down everything you do…
Joking aside, this phenomenon – known as the Internet of Things (IoT) – is a serious issue and one of increasing concern to data-protection authorities.
We all know the extent to which Facebook and Google controversially harvest our personal information. But it could be happening on any one of a dozen devices around your home down to and including your fridge or toaster.
The average home now has 10 devices that tell their manufacturers what you get up to.
By 2020, that number is set to rise to 15 – and no fewer than 50 a few years after that. It might be no more sinister than that toothbrush telling its maker how often you brush your teeth. Or a computer sending a report when it crashes.
But it is happening to an extent that some might find creepy if not downright scary.
The latest edition of Which? features a study that found a mindboggling level of surveillance by apparently simple devices.
A smart TV was found to have sent or received around 25,000 packets of information to 700 web addresses in just 15 minutes of viewing.
Which? found that every time you print something, your printer may broadcast the name of every file you print as well as the PC user, ‘unencrypted, to anyone snooping on your network’.
The manufacturer also collects data on your printing activity regardless of whether you sign up for its ink subscription service.
Which? also found serious security flaws in security cameras, which enabled unscrupulous hackers to ‘see live video feeds of other users and even talk to them via the camera’s microphone’.
This is because the company had insecurely stored 200,000 passwords and device IDs.
The makers fixed the flaw in March yet the latest tests for the June issue of the magazine found ‘other critical vulnerabilities’.
Even your toothbrush is implicated in the IoT ‘spying game’.
One of the reasons is to potentially inform your dentist of your habits for the sake of your oral health.
But the app also asks for your exact location and, oddly, for permission to record sound. The Irobot vacuum cleaner was found to send maps of your home and data on the location of your furniture back to its manufacturer.
You’d probably expect that from a device called after Will Smith’s movie about robots taking over.
But even your luggage is ‘on your case’. The latest ‘smart suitcase’ can be unlocked via your smartphone app. Yet others can unlock it too, says Which?.
The case uses a form of luggage lock whose digital data keys were leaked in 2015.
As a non-paranoid consumer, I’m delighted with the benefits of wireless technology.
The ability to turn on and off your heating via an app, for example, is a fantastic convenience.
In the future, we will all undoubtedly live healthier, more hassle-free and longer lives in homes where our health and every whim is monitored and household chores are done by a host of little robots. But the issue is that in creating this high-tech heaven, how much can we trust companies to keep us safe and not to abuse access to our private information? The Which? report highlighted some serious concerns. Its investigators were limited in how deeply they could probe their test devices because of legal restrictions. These presumably include licence agreements and certain EU rules. Yet how well are consumers protected? A spokesperson for the Data Protection Commissioner said the Internet of Things is ‘an important issue and an area of growing concern’. The recently introduced GDPR legislation will improve consumer protection. It could lead to companies being fined a hefty 4% of turnover if they breach data protection rules, which are now stricter than ever before.
‘Users of [internet-connected] devices must be clearly informed about what data is being collected and how it is being used,’ said a spokesman for the Data Protection Commissioner.
Companies must also guard our data and privacy carefully and have a plan in place to swiftly deal with any breaches that do take place. They must also ask permission before carrying out any of the aforementioned snooping.
This happens when you download software or an app – but clicking on ‘I Agree’ without reading what’s involved has become an automatic response for many.
In our paper-strewn past, people wouldn’t read the small print but would at least give a cursory glance to the main body of text.
Nowadays we don’t read any of it!