Is Your Smart TV Watching You?

The dangers of home automation – your smart TV could be watching you.

16:26 21 November 2017

Making your home smart requires automation. You need to connect your devices so they can automate tasks and make your life a little bit easier and convenient.  However, smart home automation, like many new developments, comes with terrifying warnings to their users. This is because their components, which include cameras and microphones, can be hacked and used to spy on you and your family.

 

According to a new study from Deloitte, such security concerns is one of the factors that hold back people from automating their homes. “Despite an interest and willingness to pay, as awareness of IoT grows so do concerns about security and privacy. More than 40 per cent of respondents agree that smart home technology reveals too much about their personal lives and nearly 40 per cent worry that usage can be tracked.

 

“In addition, fewer than one in five consumers believe they are very well informed about the security risks associated with connected home devices; and nearly 40 per cent believe they are not properly informed at all.”

 

Nest, one of the biggest names in home automation, is aware of such challenge. Lionel Guicherd-Callin, Nest’s head of product marketing in Europe, said: “It’s a challenge to help consumers understand how to be private, how to be secure, so there is lots of authentication to be done on that front. It’s an industry-wide challenge – not just Nest.

 

“You could make parallels with smartphones and computers – every piece of technology, where you have different price points and lack of standardisation. We take that very seriously, both from the privacy point of view but also on the security.”