Are Your "Smart" Appliances Spying on You?

Think not? Think again.

Nov 29, 2024

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Is your air fryer or Roomba vacuum spying on you?

UK consumer rights group Which? has studies so-called smart devices — from air fryers and kitchen appliances to your smart vacuum — and learned they are “leaking” and using your user data, from sucking up precise location information to recording audio from your phone for no specific reason. Even worse, they found that Aigostar and Xiaomi brand “fryers both sent people’s personal data to servers in China” — info that is included in the privacy notice that no one reads.

Internet security company Malwarebytes says “it is getting harder to buy any type of product today that doesn’t connect to the internet, request your data, or share that data with unknown companies and contractors across the world.”

Malwarebytes reports that

… consumer devices somewhat invisibly collected user data and then spread it in unexpected ways. This includes kitchen utilities that sent data to China, a smart ring maker that published de-identified, aggregate data about the stress levels of its users, and a smart vacuum that recorded a sensitive image of a woman that was later shared on Facebook.

These stories aren’t about mass government surveillance, and they’re not about spying, or the targeting of political dissidents. Their intrigue is elsewhere, in how common it is for what we say, where we go, and how we feel, to be collected and analyzed in ways we never anticipated.

What can you do as a consumer? We get no referrals here from Malwarebytes; however, we use their antivirus / anti-malware products and find them reliable. Malwarebytes recommends:

When buying any kind of smart device, it’s worth doing these things:

Question the permissions an app asks for on your phone. Does it serve a purpose for you, the user, or is it just some vendor being nosy?

Read the privacy policy. The vendors are counting on it that you won’t but there are times that privacy policies are very revealing.

Ask yourself if the appliance needs to be smart. What’s in it for you, and what’s the price you’re going to pay?

An easy solution is not to install the app, and don’t provide manufacturers with personal data they do not need to know. They may need your name for the warranty, but your gender, age, and—most of the time—your address isn’t needed.