Hello, I'm Tristan from Smart Home Point.
As you can probably guess from my channel name, I love smart homes. BUT... sometimes,
they're really creepy. Whether it's running facial recognition on people walking past a doorbell,
smart devices selling your data OR useful features which are unfortunately abused for
domestic violence, there's definitely some downsides to smart homes. So this video covers
the "top 4" - or should that be the "bottom 4"? - really creepy aspects of smart homes.
Firstly, everyone loves their Amazon Echo device, right? Around a quarter of all American households
own one, in-fact. But did you know that by default, every time an Echo THINKS that you
spoke to it, it'll record your conversation? And that this is stored for... many, many months? Yep,
under the Alexa app, you can listen back to every time that an Echo device thought you spoke to it.
Some of this is harmless, such as you said "Alexa, lights on".
"Alexa, lights on" But if the Echo misheard you,
it will STILL record this. This means that background conversations are also recorded.
Yikes. What's worse is that this is stored for many months. If you have an Echo in
many rooms of your home, there's probably thousands of your household's conversations
stored on Amazon's servers. Whilst you CAN turn this off, it is worrying nonetheless - especially
since it is ON by default. Come on Amazon, even Google turn this OFF by default!
My second 'creepy' point is that whilst smart cameras and doorbells have a number of positive
features, they also have a creepy downside: they allow people to spy on their neighbors
and passers-by with ease. Their owners can view the video feed anytime they want, from
anywhere in the world. Plus many smart cameras - including those by Ring - record audio by default,
meaning that the conversations of your visitors, neighbors AND people simply walking by are
recorded and stored on Ring's servers for up to 60 days - which is a bit creepy.
"Yeah I can't wait, I've got my little red dress, I can't wait - I'll see you there"
But worse than this is what many of Google's Nest cameras and doorbells do.
They have a facial recognition feature that scans the faces of visitors,
and then logs this in a facial recognition database held by Google. Whilst Google do say
that you should use this feature in compliance with the law - and it's disabled by default in
Illinois due to state regulations there - this is still a worrying feature. You could
visit someone as a one-off, and your face is now held in some facial recognition database.
Actually, that isn't a problem - your face is probably ALREADY stored in this database,
because simply walking past a random Nest Hello doorbell will lead to your face being analyzed
and stored away. And it's not like you can opt-out of this, either!
Are you still with me? Third, Amazon Echo devices have a "drop in" feature
which is kind of like an intercom, enabling simple two-way conversations. This has got a
number of positive uses - such as for a makeshift baby monitor or to chat to someone in the house
quickly - BUT it also allows for eavesdropping. You aren't able to accept or reject the "drop in"
request - it'll just start listening - and it's not always easy to tell when an Echo is in "drop
in" mode, meaning that this feature can be abused. Indeed, this feature has unfortunately been used
by abusers to monitor their domestic violence victims, to see what they're saying. Which is
not a nice thought of course, but it's definitely worth highlighting because it is a real risk.
For example, I am currently in my bedroom. I might be talking on the phone about someone I
live with - without realising that the Echo that's hidden from view over there is in "drop in" mode,
in other words someone else could be listening in on my conversation.
Thankfully this 'drop in' feature CAN be disabled from within the Alexa app by going into your Echo
device and then clicking "Communication", and it might be worth doing this unless you can imagine
yourself really needing this feature. Finally, if you have loads of smart devices
that help control all aspects of your home, you're... kinda allowing third
parties to collect data about all aspects of your home - including your household's
daily routines, when you leave the house and come home, and a lot more. This is often harmless data,
but sometimes it can be abused. In 2018, the New York Times reported on a smart thermometer that
essentially sold data to Clorox when certain areas had a spike in fevers - and then Clorox took out
targeted adverts (for products like disinfecting wipes) in those areas. But that's not all,
your old smart devices - including light bulbs - can contain your WiFi password, so simply
throwing them out could allow hackers (or your techy neighbors) to uncover your WiFi password.
In addition, many common smart products - even those sold at Walmart and BestBuy - regularly
transmit data back to servers in China. Whilst this isn't the case with Echo and Ring
devices, a lot of more budget smart products DO continue to send your data back to China.
Now this might be innocent, such as sending fairly anonymized data back, but you can't always be sure
what data is sent back - and how it's used. Aannnd, I think I'll stop there for today!
There ARE more downsides to smart homes, but I think I've covered some of the main
creepy aspects to them. Despite all this, I will continue buying more smart devices in the future.
For me personally, as long as I stick to the main smart home brands (such as Google Home,
Echo, Ring etc) AND I can configure creepy features to make them... uncreepy...
then I'm happy. I think it's just worth educating yourself about the POTENTIAL downsides to smart
homes, and how to guard against them. In that sense, I hope this video has helped.
If you have any questions, please let me know in the comments below. If you enjoyed this video,
please click the thumbs up button and don't forget to subscribe. Thank you!