Is your Smart Home Spying on you?
Way back in May '21...
I wrote an article on home automation devices stealing your Internet Bandwidth to communicate with each other.
With the rise of Smart Devices of all shapes and sizes having access to the our home Internet links, where they send data back to the corporate mothership data lake always under the guise of good. However, IF your device can talk outbound it can be found while scanning the entire web too. How much time do you spend updating your Windows or MAC systems (Yes, all of them). Consider having to spend time updating your Smart devices such as your fridge, stove, toaster, and don't overlook your washer and dryer. Sure they can do it on their own, but do you trust what it is doing?
Well it didn't take long, before this sending these datasets outbound went wrong, recently a home owner caught his washing machine sending a massive amount of data outbound. How much you ask? 3.7GB a day, yep from a Washing machine. To be fair the washer did download 100MB of data too.
LG Washing Machine Found Sending 3.7 GB of Data a Day
Do you have a list of permitted items for your home firewall?
- TV's
- Washer
- Dryer
- Fridge
- Garage Door opener
- Security Camera's
- Smart devices (Echo, Giggle home, etc.)
How big is your firewall exclude list at this point? Smart devices are fun but I am of the mindset to limit their capabilities.
Summary
Be very selective when you buy new consumer goods, ensure you know everything about it specifically. IF it is Internet enabled and IF it can be disabled.
You don't want to be voiding a warranty IF you disable that call home feature/function of your appliance. Caveat emptor still rings true!
