{"id":2559,"date":"2020-07-28T09:18:48","date_gmt":"2020-07-28T13:18:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zzzptm.com\/wordpress\/?p=2559"},"modified":"2020-07-28T09:18:48","modified_gmt":"2020-07-28T13:18:48","slug":"home-insecurity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zzzptm.com\/wordpress\/?p=2559","title":{"rendered":"Home Insecurity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A major reason people don’t want to buy more home automation<\/a> technology is security. Not only is this a response<\/a> given by 42% of respondents to the question<\/a> “Why don’t you want to buy more home automation<\/a> devices?”, it’s also my<\/em> response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I get a device<\/a> that will be internet-enabled, I agonize about how soon it will be before that device becomes a botnet<\/a> host<\/a> or worse. I do a little pen testing<\/a>, I change default passwords<\/a>, and I’m happy to say that my existing devices<\/a> are either pretty darn secure<\/a> or at least more secure now than when I first plugged them in. While I’m sure that there’s a person with at least above average intelligence<\/a> out there that can pop these devices if given local access<\/a>, I’m also sure that their traffic isn’t exposed to the Internet<\/a> and I’ve got reasonable security<\/a> with these things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That being said, I don’t want to go through that for any other devices. My televisions have to stream content, my security system needs to connect to the monitoring<\/a> back-end<\/a>, and, uh… that’s all I’ve got. My robotic<\/a> vacuum cleaner has no Internet – I paid more for that lack of feature, as it happens. My appliances<\/a> all keep to themselves. I work from home, so my thermostats are right where I’d like them to be, no need to be online with those. It looks like I’m also in line with 49% of respondents who also indicated that they’re not buying more home automation because they don’t see a use case<\/a> for the technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But even if I did, I’d have to ask, “is it secure?” And that’s not just the device itself. Maybe that new Internet-enabled barbeque grill is locked<\/a> down tight, but what about the app<\/a> that runs it? Or the app that runs any other system in my house?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Security doesn’t just mean making sure the kid down the road from me doesn’t pwn me when he does his daily wardriving. It also means that when I do something with it, it doesn’t suddenly affect my Google search<\/a> results or trigger a Facebook<\/a> ad. It’s bad enough that when my kid sends me a link to a stupid YouTube<\/a> video<\/a> that I have to spend the next few weeks telling algorithms<\/a> that, no, I am NOT <\/strong><\/em>a fan of Korean boy bands. I don’t need this to happen because I change my thermostat or order groceries. Yes, there’s also the concern about private information. And while I can change default passwords<\/a> and block ports<\/a>, that does nothing about my info going into advertisers’ data lakes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, what other reason is there to have an Internet-enabled dishwasher except to send me more ads? I mean, if I forget to run the dishwasher before I leave home for the day, I can run it at night. If it’s before a big vacation, I can text the person that’s going to feed my cats to punch the “start” button. I’m happy to pay more for an airgapped dishwasher precisely because I want informational security, not just device security. Remember my comment about the vacuum cleaner? That applies to any other appliance. I want to keep that stuff to myself, thank you very much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A major reason people don’t want to buy more home automation technology is security. Not only is this a response given by 42% of respondents to the question “Why don’t you want to buy more home automation devices?”, it’s also my response. When I get a device that will be internet-enabled, I agonize about how soon it will be before that device becomes a botnet host or worse. I do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zzzptm.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zzzptm.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zzzptm.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zzzptm.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zzzptm.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2559"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zzzptm.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2560,"href":"https:\/\/zzzptm.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2559\/revisions\/2560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zzzptm.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zzzptm.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zzzptm.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}