Smart Home - Smart for Your Protection?

Video doorbells alert you to movements outside of your door. Home security cameras watch your home inside and out. Alexa can listen for breaking glass or a smoke alarm going off. You can set your smart lights and thermostat on a timer or adjust them from your phone from anywhere.

All of that sounds like a great way to protect your home and save you money. But there is a privacy trade-off. Alexa and Siri are always on but don’t record unless you use their wake words. My Alexa will wake when there’s a commercial that talks about Alexa on TV. Someone could hack your home and see inside (see link for suggestions on protecting your cameras).

Do you trust your smart devices to protect your privacy?

  • Yes, I trust them to protect my private information
  • I trust some of them, but not all
  • No, I don’t trust smart devices to protect my private information

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What concerns do you have about your “smart” devices and how do you work around those concerns?

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If I can remotely control devices in my home, then someone else can, too. Anything can be hacked, especially consumer grade electronics. I deal with this by not having “smart” controls in my home and by disabling any voice activated features on my electronics.

I’m a Luddite; so sue me.

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Have you seen the articles on how Google and facebook are scanning images of guns that people post on line and using optical character recognition to capture visible serial numbers of the firearms and record them in a searchable database? I rest my case on why I don’t trust any of this stuff.

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My concern is it being hacked…

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Every IT will tell you - “if you want privacy, unplug device from network”.
But today’s World cannot exist without “smart” devices, so WE have to do everything to keep privacy out of others.
CCTV is great, but only if you don’t keep footage “in the cloud” (like most of companies offer). I like “Smart Home” devices but if they are controlled locally, no Alexa, no Siri, no Google Home (cloud services).
My biggest concern:

  • car’s app which control your car’s features (always works over the cloud)
  • bluetooth “smart” door locks (they can be hacked in few minutes)

We make life easy… but it comes with consequences.

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Don’t trust in the least. All this technology is amassing an incomprehensible power of obtaining and organizing and storing identifying information on everyone. It produces wonderful conveniences, but at the price of all privacy. Just imagine the value to governmental agencies of having access to this power of information at their fingertips should it decide individuals should relinquish their “arms”, for example. Technology has become a major tool to be used in the process of control. Convenience is the honey that helps us to accept it. Yep - I have a foil hat.

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Sure it can, we’ve gotten along pretty well for a long, long time without them. However, “They” want us to believe that we can’t do without all the convenience e, the 24/7 connectivity, the instant gratification.

Once you drink their FlavorAid, they’ve got you.

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Nope, it can’t :wink:
Look at our new generation:

  • no books (all in cloud)
  • no notebooks, no pencils (all in cloud or job done in PC text editor)
  • no talk (text msg, media msg)
    These above are forced by High Schools :confused:

What IS the biggest inconvenience for people? NO INTERNET…

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Your argument only demonstrates that people CHOOSE to not do without it, not that they CAN’T. Books in the cloud are still books, typed notes are still notes which serve the same function as handwritten, and texting is talking, albeit in a slightly different dialect.

Civilization would not collapse if these electronic conveniences were to disappear tomorrow. It might slow down a tiny bit, but it will still keep rolling along.

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Don’t trust them in general, especially any Amazon tools. We actually received an Echo device a couple years ago for Christmas and it sits unplugged in a drawer somewhere and was never connected.

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Agreed, would not. But it’s not the concern.
Every year we are more controlled, we have less privacy. How does it end up? To be honest, I don’t now. I’m learning myself and my Family how to live with this and how to make life better. (not particularly easier).

Hopefully I won’t see in my life how my kids would become so lazy and ask Alexa to send a cup of coffee from kitchen to their beds :wink:

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Every year we allow ourselves to be controlled. Trust me, if enough people quit buying their products and paying for their services they would pack up and go in a hurry. They are in it for the money, nothing else. No money=game over.

PS: The only reason I even have a cell phone is because there are virtually no more public pay phones. Did just fine with those for decades.

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:+1:
I’m missing my old one… :pensive:

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My twin sons just got out of HS a year ago and they were all hard copy books, notebooks, pencils, and one of them prefers talking to texting.

I think the only thing they cannot live without is GPS. Map reading is a lost art.

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:+1::clap:
I’m glad to hear it… Looks my IL wants to be “modern tech” State …

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^^^ what he said. :flushed:

Actually I think it would collapse - in the same way my great granddaughter used to… it would collapse into a huge hissy fit in a pile on the ground. Tantrum mode on, with rioting to follow.

Then there’d be screaming, and looting, and all manner of bad behaviors.

And if it were a permanent problem, those who endured would sort it out. But there’d be a lot fewer of us.


I’ve got extra tin foil hats if anyone needs one… :wink:

When civilization has that tantrum, feel free to stop in.
We’ll have popcorn and watch EOTWAWKI movies on DVD…
… they’ll be right next to the player in my faraday cage. :laughing:

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Is it bad that I secretly hope for a massive solar storm? :rofl:

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@Zee. Faraday cage…nice.

I can’t quite tell if you’re pro or con on this one😉

I get the EOTW, but what is AWKI?

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