A Smart Home Connected To Internet Is Convenient, But Why It's Still A Cause For Concern

IoT devices are marketed as the be-all and end-all of the digital home. After all, they make everything so much more convenient, let you automate routines, and control everything from your phone.

The thing is IoT devices in your smart home also have drawbacks you maybe overlooking in your quest to digitize your life in a hurry.

Practically every home device these days is being connected to the Internet. At least 1.5 percent of Indian homes are expected to be outfitted with smart devices by the end of 2019 and it's expected to hit 9.5 percent by 2023. According to another estimate, there will be over 14 lakh new jobs created in the IoT, AI and cyber security space by 2027 in India alone.

It's not just smart speakers and lights, but also your refrigerator, television, door locks, thermostat, hell even your vacuum cleaner. The thing is, unless you keep them updated, segment their permissions, and secure their passwords, you're opening yourself up to a world of trouble.

1. Outages leave you helpless

Imagine you've got a smart lock on your door, and you have a pet at home waiting to be fed. Now one day, the smart lock goes offline. Maybe it's malfunctioning, or maybe you've just lost power at your home. Either way, it's not budging. Now if you have a manual key you can use to override the lock, that's great. However, many brands don't have this because adding a mechanical component that can be bypassed defeats the smart lock's security purpose. See how much of a problem that can be?

Smart Lock Pro

If you think this is a hypothetical situation, just earlier this month when Google suffered an outage, many Nest users in the US couldn't get into their homes or were locked out until power was restored.

2. Getting hacked means losing control

Having a number of devices in your home linked to the web also allows for them to be hacked. Even if your main smart devices are very secure, your peripheral ones lie a smart light or thermostat might not be. These all tend to be interlinked for convenience, providing an ideal point of attack for hackers, in what's called a lateral privilege escalation

At best, someone will use them to play malicious pranks on you, or add them to a botnet for things like cryptomining. At worst, they could possibly use the access to surveill you, rob your home, or even burn it down.

3. There's a lot of data waiting to be stolen

Whatever your smart devices at home, they're all gathering data from you. That's not such a big deal, except when hackers use them to intercept that data. They can get a hold of everything from your WiFi password, to your subscriptions, and therefore personal information like your name, age, and other identifying information.

Reuters

And in case you don't already know, that then give them the opportunity to steal your online accounts, using your information to answer security questions and get those passwords. Basically, having unsecured smart devices in your home is as good as giving your passport to a random person on the street.

4. Surveillance and creeping

It doesn't even need to be hackers that gain access to your smart devices. Even people you've let into your home can be a danger under the right circumstances. For instance, take this incident from last year that saw a woman being stalked by her ex-boyfriend using her home security system.

Reuters

He was living with her at the time before moving away for work, so he had access to her smart camera, the password for which he promptly changed and kept to himself. That way he could spy on her whenever he wanted, to keep tabs on who she was meeting with in the home and what she was doing. And it's sadly not even that rare a case where smart homes are concerned.

5. Accidental purchases

Having smart devices, particularly smart speakers, also leaves you open to a lot of accidental purchases. These devices are designed to be convenient and make things faster.

Amazon Alexa

What that also means if that your five-year-old can use the home's smart speaker to order 5,000 pizzas to your door or something else like that. And if someone hacks your device, that's even worse. Then they're free to empty out your account buying all sorts of things on Amazon or Flipkart, before you even realize what's going on.