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Comment by taneq | Hacker News Reader

I know the default stance here is "everything should be internet-connected and everything should stream all available data back to the mothership whenever possible" because generally we're the ones building the things and receiving the data (and data is great, who doesn't love data?!)

But from the point of view of the person buying and using the things, this is just getting creepier and creepier.

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For the life of me in my household nothing else than my computers will be connected to internet, not because I'm a security and privacy oriented person, but because it's essentially unnecessary. I think IoT is creepy futile tech living on hype, and it also vastly increases the attack surface of a house (i.e. an attacker can theoretically remotely inspect or damage it).

But these comments, the sort I make now usually attract lots of downvotes and criticism becomes invisible. Especially common phenomenon with the IoT stories and Tesla ones, praise or go away.

> I think IoT is creepy futile tech living on hype, and it also vastly increases the attack surface of a house (i.e. an attacker can theoretically remotely inspect or damage it).

That is exactly what I have been thinking!

A while ago I heard that some home automation systems allow locking/unlocking the doors remotely. My first thought was burglars were going to have a field day[1], but now I think more along the lines of ransomware - "If you really just want to go to bed, why not just pay the 100 Bitcoins?"

[1] Especially if you consider that once they have owned your home automation they can monitor if you are at home.

Actually people are both at the same time. The more you have to develop this stuff the less you use it. 90% of the developers I know don't have a smart phone, no facebook account, don't use gmail as mail client, etc.

I'm a JavaScript developer and I disable JavaScript on the web by default, because deep down I know it's what makes Web 3.0 suck.

Yeah, the more people know about this stuff the more likely they seem to be to turn it off.

I'm amazed that you know that many people with no smart phone or facebook account, though - I know one person who doesn't have facebook, and no-one (as of a couple of years ago) who doesn't have a smartphone.

There are quite a few people who are looking out for the mistakes too - the population of hacker news includes security testers, lawyers and the like.

At least this company is taking steps to improve things, which is a vast improvement over, say, V-tech, whose initial response to finding data had been taken was to update the terms and conditions stating that they had no responsibility for keeping data safe.

It is scary how much data we send around though, even when you are trying to keep the worst offenders out of your house.

If someone were to remotely access one of these devices and use it posing as the owners lover, would that constitute rape?

The reality is that most IoT products are really just 'How do I get you to pay a subscription for something you never paid a subscription for'. The solutions, thus far, have been lackluster. They're like the infomercial products from the 90s.

It reminds me of that one that connects with fake genitals in second life to simulate in time with virtual activities.

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