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Comment by adrianN | Hacker News Reader

Before you do this, please make a law that forces the manufacturers to replace the devices free of charge when they get bricked due to a security problem.

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Having a known security bug unpatched for longer than x days should be grounds for a warrenty refund. That should get companies moving when there is a real world cost for not dealing with security bugs.

Class action lawsuits can be pretty effective at achieving this.

In the UK I would argue that's already covered by consumer law, if the insecurities can be considered a "manufacturing defect".

Sounds like a grand way to ensure that nobody is willing to take the risk of building internet-enabled devices in the first place.

You mean like how no one builds medical devices?

Great comparison. I'd really like my wifi-enabled light bulbs to cost $27,499 each.

Might be somewhat ironic comparison. Apparently the problem of garbage companies doing garbage devices exists in medical space as well; see e.g. [0].

Also, it's not about making wi-fi light bulbs cost thousands of dollars, but if yours were on the cheap end, they are most likely garbage products with highly intentional planned obsolescence, and subsidized by data collection app you have to install, which is the whole point of making them in the first place. If such business model were to become unprofitable, I believe it would be a great win for the society (and the environment).

[0] - https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/nov/26/uk-firm-sold...

It's all part of a trade-off. Does the world need wifi-enabled lightbulbs that increase the size of criminal botnets? If not, then our options are to either stick to non-wifi-enabled lightbulbs, or ensure that our wifi-enabled lightbulbs cannot become part of botnets.

Manufacturers already have to replace devices when they're bricked by a hardware problem. They have various quality control processes in place to try to prevent this from happening. I don't see why it should be any different for security - or make a huge difference to the cost.

Sounds like a good way to not have an army of botnets threatening the rest of the Internet because people are too lazy to walk to the switch...

Great, the IoT is bullshit. A NoT is much better.

Mission accomplished. IoT is a euphemism for e-waste.

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