Software developer. Having my home constantly phoning home to megacorporations sounds creepy, but more importantly, none of these smart home products solve a problem. They just add additional points of failure to appliances that have historically been sufficiently reliable.
I work in retail, which is the reason why my house is shit.
My strategy is just be unpredictable af. Use FOSS as much as possible. Dont use google services except maybe google maps. Make an active effort to decouple accounts. Treat phone number 2fa like the plague.
I can confirm. I don’t want technology in my house I don’t have full control over. All these “smart devices” that run through smartphone apps in the cloud can fuck themselves. The amount of access most people give these corporations into their lives is insane to me.
I think of the cost. My smart home stuff gets hacked on it’s own network and then? Oh no, you can turn my lights off
I use ZWave with Home Assistant for every light switch and fan in my house. It integrates with Google Assistant, but not bound to it. Google’s server connects to my Home Assistant device for control, not the other way around.
The most troublesome devices I have are are some light+fan modules that use WiFi because they run on Tuya. There is really no other alternative and it fails all the time.
Avoid WiFi devices as much as possible, especially those that require Internet. Even Bluetooth is better.
Never use SmartThings. Samsung’s AWS-based servers may go down in Europe and lock you out of control. They’re just overall flaky to the point I’ve had to reverse engineer some protocols to control my previous home’s mini-splits locally. My current Samsung fridge stops reporting to Home Assistant randomly and I’ve given up trying to maintain it.
When you see how the sausage is made you don’t want it. Software engineers know how many corners are cut
I like that my dishwasher tells me when it’s done via app, and I can’t live without my robot vacuum cleaner.
Still, they’re on a separate vlan so if they get infected, the malware will look around like the John Travolta meme.
Keeping internet of shit devices on separate vlan is a good practice, but the apps on your phone still gather your data.
For the robot vacuum, when it brakes, you can look into valetudo supported models. It’s a firmware hack that kills the cloud component and exposes it through a local http server, works very well. As for the dishwasher you could probably use a localy controlled smart socket with power monitoring to send a notification via home assistant when the power draw goes below certain threshold. Either zigbee/z-wave socket if you have other smart devices on these protocols, or a wifi tasmota device can work.
This may be a bit too far for some, but I believe we should keep our data safe, and if this is what it takes, then I am doing it.
We have only one “smart home” tool (except for our smart TV, smartphones and tablets). A Blink camera to watch the aquraium when we are on vacation (when we aren’t it’s not plugged in). When we went on a 3 week vacation this summer I unplugged the Fritz!Box router just before leaving, because “Ah, why leave it on?” Noticed it 300km later. I don’t think we’ll ever be a smart home.
I have a train line up the road from me. It has warning lights and automatic barriers and there has never been an accident there as far as I know.
I work in IT so I look both ways before I cross it.
You know what they say, the S in IoT stands for Security!
moved landline to Gvoice 15 years ago and set it to dnd. house phone never rings. get a transcript of any voicemail.
Kind of, but with OPNsense for the router.
I know some software engineers like that. Some of it is knowing that the companies that make iot devices don’t give a crap about security. Some of it is plain ol paranoia. Mechanical door locks can be picked does that mean you invest in guard dogs? Crime is a thing but so is misanthropy. I think we should take reasonable precautions but believe that there are more good ppl than bad.
Mechanical door locks can be picked, but it must be done at the lock in plain view rather than at a distance sitting in a car while you do the majority of the work and then casually walking up and opening the door. Locks are more of an inconvenience than a deterrent, so it should be made as inconvenient as possible. Connecting them to the internet is the exact opposite of that.
But more realistically someone robbing your house is going to ring your doorbell to see if someone is home, then just walk around checking for unlocked windows.
Bear theory.
My house doesn’t need to be impenetrable, it just needs to be more of a hassle to get into than yours.
True, but again it’s about making it as inconvenient as possible. Manually locking windows and making sure they are locked is effective. In some places they put security bars on the windows. Tall fences can also create obstacles as well.
You won’t stop everyone that wants to break in, but you can create enough trouble to keep out most people. Making it convenient for yourself by connecting everything to the internet just makes it convenient for everyone else too.
actually good mechanical door locks can only be picked by a handful of people in the world with special tools most of whom are locksmiths
the word “picked” does a lot of heavy lifting here.
Most professional thieves won’t care about damaging your lock. It’s called “breaking” and entering for a reason.
And those locks cost hundreds a piece. A “there is a security system here” sign would do more useful work. And a locksmith will tell you that picking is what you try AFTER you just try bypassing the lock entirely. Aka shim the door or break a window. Exactly what a burglar will do if they really wanted in. You do know that your garage door can be disabled with a coathanger threaded inside and grabbing the release hook, right? Or a jack wedged under with a crowbar, right? Or your decorative gnome in the front yard thrown through a window? Locks are a deterrent.
It’s not just poor security that’s easily hackable, it’s mainly the unreliability and frustration of having to continue to work when you get home to fix your dam light switch because it doesn’t work because it got out of sync when the microwave is turned on. No thanks.
In a meeting with a (business) customer regarding security precautions, my coworker had a great suggestion: we buy a mountain in
SwitcherlandSwitzerland, build a bunker there for the servers and hire a private army for protection. The customer liked the idea…
