Yes! This Is Also An Excellent Point! The Issue Here Is Not One Inherent In Smart Devices, Its Created

Yes! This is also an excellent point! The issue here is not one inherent in smart devices, it’s created because of how they’re designed and built. It would be very possible (and in some ways easier) to build devices that did not suffer from these issues. If it’s not possible to connect to the device from outside your home network, there’s no way anyone else could get to it! I don’t do this kind of work personally, but my (semi-educated) guess is that the “phone-home” functionality is a substantive proportion of those devices software and it really doesn’t need to be (most of the time).

The issue is that it’s hard (on a technical level) to separate “bad” internet usage (i.e. to send usage data or to grant remote access) from “good” internet usage (i.e. sending a firmware update or re-ordering more soap). While there’s a certain degree that you can manage that on a personal level, at some point you simply have to trust the manufacturer to not be evil. Which... yeah they’re evil :(

So how do we fix this? Well, you can just not buy smart products (that’s what I do!), but what they’re huge quality of life improvements? Or maybe you just think they’re fun and want to play around without putting your privacy at risk.

The only really good solution to all these issues is that companies need to stop creating products that do these things. And the only way to force that to happen is through legislation. We need more legislation like the GDPR in the EU which explicitly describes your privacy rights on the internet (among many other excellent features).

So! Next time you see a call-to-action to “call your legislator” to “protect internet privacy” -- actually do it. It really does make a difference :)

hell world hell world hell world

WHY DOES YOUR SOAP NEED INTERNET

day 5.

wow that sure is a lot of blogs im following... no way ill regret this when i next look at my dash ahaha

Why is the venn diagram of people who enjoyed/want to see She Ra vs people who didn’t/don’t the exact same venn diagram as the people who are queer/out vs cishet?

Like. Am I really that intensely queer?

((don’t answer that))

So I’ve been doing this whole new-to-tumblr daily journaling thing for a week now, and I feel like I’ve gotten a pretty good handle on how things work here! I’m having a great time, I’ve found some really cool stuff, and I’m just generally enjoying myself :D

Now that like more than 2 people follow me, I just wanted to ask ✨the crowd✨ if any of y’all have tips or suggestions for how to get the most out of this platform! Literally any kind of tumblr related advice, cool fandoms, tags to check out, accounts you think are great, hard-to-discover features, things I should post about, anything you think would be handy for a new user like myself ^.^

blog is pretty now i can go back to thinking about other (probably more important) things >:)

And here’s the thing! It’s not only something that can cause you problems if you’re late to pay bills or have abusive partners/family or are doing something the government may not take kindly to!

Let’s say, hypothetically, you do literally nothing. Well, turns out there’s a bug in the fridge software that sets the temperature to 60 degrees when it receives some unexpected input from your fridge app. Or the manufacturer pushes out an involuntary fridge update and now, while the update is downloading, sorry! your the fridge doesn’t open until the update is done.

And these are only the issues that affect you. Generally, Smart Device manufacturers do not think for even one second about the security of their devices. So, this means that hackers will see well known and publicized security holes that have been easily available for literal years but the manufacturer is simply too lazy to fix, use those holes to get into devices, and use those devices as bots to attack whoever they please (and, as a bonus, it look like it’s coming from your home!)

You’d think that this sounds like something out of a horror movie but this is the reality we live in RIGHT NOW. Many of the largest botnets (e.g. the Mirai botnet) in the world consist largely of compromised smart/IoT (internet of things) devices.

So uh just give it some thought before you buy the SmartChair3000 -- it’s probably not as cool as it sounds :P

hell world hell world hell world

WHY DOES YOUR SOAP NEED INTERNET