UK owners of smart home devices being asked for swathes of personal data
UK owners of smart home devices being asked for swathes of personal data
Which? said firms are gathering far more data than needed for products to function
From the article:
The consumer champion Which? found companies appear to be gathering far more data than is needed for products to function. This includes smart TVs that ask for users’ viewing habits and a smart washing machine that requires people’s date of birth. Rocio Concha, director of policy and advocacy at Which?, said: “Consumers have already paid for smart products, in some cases thousands of pounds, so it is excessive that they have to continue to ‘pay’ with their personal information.”
A recognizable privacy rating should be developed and mandatory at least for hardware products.
I honestly like this idea. The DuckDuckGo mobile browser already has this for websites, but I feel like its not really that meaningful and way too generic and forgiving. Also it's chromium-based
You could check out ghostery bowser if it’s available, it has a pretty robust design for trackers. Idk if it would be a privacy score, persey but it tells you all about the trackers it sees on the site, what they are for, how often they are seen, etc. (like a space dot com article had 71 total trackers: 46 advertising trackers, 9 site analytics, 6 cdn, 3 auto video player, 2 misc, 2 essential, 2 social media, and 1 hosting). If you click into the details it gives a hefty report of who is collecting the data, so it breaks down who each of the 46 advertising trackers are, for example.
It’s not forgiving at all, in my experience. But the iOS ghostery dawn browser hasn’t been updated in a while (in favor of their safari extension) and I’m not sure what the android version is like.
Might be worth a look if that’s something you are interested in. The dawn browser also lets you open everything in ghost tabs by default, and when you clear those, it clears all trackers that may have been set. It also seems to spoof location information, because every site I visit thinks I’m from a different part of the country.
It amazes me that anyone will fill in their actual date of birth on an online system outside of a government or bank system. Just put a fake one in, no one is going to check! Jeez.
I use this for just about every non-official (e.g. govmt or banking) account I set up.
The vehicles these people own are rather implausible! In 3 tries I got a Ferrari F355, 1994 Renault Espace, and 1995 Toyota Previa.
Why would anyone connect an appliance to the internet?
Some people see a product described as 'smart' and their common sense immediately leaves their body.
I had the same thought when the salesman tried to convince me to buy a smart washer and dryer. Why do I need to be able to control them with my smartphone? Someone would still need to be present to load/empty them so then they can also turn it on.
Honestly, I wouldn’t mind getting a notification when my washer is done. If I’m doing too many things at once, I can forget that I had laundry going and it ends up sitting there until it gets musty and needs a re-wash.
That said, I did disconnect my smart tv from the internet when I found out it was sending data, including captured ambient audio, to the tv manufacturer. I just use an apple tv. I know that I’m still populating data for each of my streaming services, but the tv manufacturer has no need for my watching habits, much less people talking in my living room.
The one that I’ve never figured out was the refrigerator that connects to twitter.
It's absurd. Obviously some devices "need" it, like smart doorbells and the like, but I'll die a painful death before I connect my TV or refrigerator to the internet.
Hell, I want a garage door opener that I can monitor remotely, but I'm not willing to compromise my home's security just because I second-guess myself on occasion.
So apart from annying peeping sounds when the cleaning is done, you will also get an annoying notification with statisctics of how much water was used and how much CO2 you used sent to your email.
Petition to rename devices that require online functionality to be considered smart devices as "dumb devices", ala the dumb terminals of yesteryear.
Non-digital, smart (electronics on the device processes all the data and responds to them in some automated fashion), and dumb (sends data and recives commands from external device or service). I personally love it, seems like actual terms and not just marketing BS.
I'm so glad to have Home Assistant and ESPHome as an alternative to these evil devices.