These days, even your teddy bear may be trying to catch you.
As the inevitable breakthrough of “smart” features and products continues to convert everything from your refrigerator to your thermostat into a connected device, it pays to take a moment to consider what you are giving up in exchange for this future aspirant. Jetsons Fortunately, Mozilla has done a lot of that work for you with a new guide dedicated to how insecure smart devices are.
It’s just in time for the year-end shopping season, which means you have no excuse to buy your parents one of these potentially compromised electronic devices as a holiday gift. And, if you send them the guide, they will not have an excuse to buy one for you either.
The privacy guide not included, published on November 14, analyzes a range of products and evaluates them according to a series of basic safety standards. After all, you must know if a company is posting your tracking data on your physical condition or if your sex toy connected to the Internet can be easily hacked.
According to Mozilla, there are five minimum things that a product or a company must do to avoid being a complete disaster of privacy for its customers.
“The product must use encryption,” the guide explains, “the company must provide automatic security updates, if a product uses a password, it must require a secure password, the company must have a way to manage the security vulnerabilities that are found in their products, and the company must have an accessible privacy policy. ”
The categories of classified products (toys and games, smart home, entertainment, portable devices, health and exercise, and pets) cover much of the space of connected devices, and make it clear that Mozilla is not playing well.
Take, for example, your description of Amazon Echo Show and Dot. “Now you not only have to ask yourself if Alexa is listening to you, you can ask her if she is also watching.”
An ingenious infographic breaks it down even more.
Mozilla also adopted the unique approach of asking people to vote on the chilling factor of a product. For example, 61 percent of people who voted in the Amazon Echo Show and Dot said it was “super creepy,” and 80 percent said they “are not likely to buy it.”
It is important to note that Mozilla did not just do this in smart device manufacturers. Rather, the nonprofit organization was actually trying to return some power to consumers.
“We hope this guide will help consumers make smarter, more informed decisions about holiday shopping,” Mozilla’s vice president of support Ashley Boyd said in a press release, “at the same time that it inspired them to demand that businesses consider a priority to offer products that protect your privacy and security. ”
We hope that consumer demand, armed with the Mozilla guide, does not fall on deaf corporate ears.