Good points in the article. You think all is well, like what can my lawn mower do that's bad? Report if I let my lawn grow to long?
Like the articles says though, to call home, it needs access to your local network. And that's the Trojan Horse that gets inside the gates of Troy. Now there's a back door to hack your bank passwords, etc. It's hard to break through from outside through the modem/router your Internet provider gives you, through the virus protection you have, through the VPN that some of us use. But when your lawnmower gets hacked...It allows access around all that.
I'm a little leery about letting any of these things know anything about me. We think Alexa isn't collecting data because we haven't called Alexa...but how does Alexa know you want her if she isn't listening all the time? My BMW makes it seem like my phone can't connect unless I enable location access all the time...but it actually works fine without it. So why do they want my location? A lot of apps want it. And when the app wants to know even where you're sleeping...there's something wrong about that.
Give me the good ol' days when we could all live simpler lives and the reality we have today is only in sci-fi stories.
Chris