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Your Lawnmower could be spying on you!
- Thread starter SupraSabre
- Start date
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
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
Obo
East Coast Canada
Any smart item dose that.... robot mowers, smart vacuums, your smart phone, Google home (or the others.) and even your car.
ReSTored
Site Supporter
My daughter stopped by yesterday and told us a corny joke. I laughed, my spouse laughed, Alexa laughed................ I'm kidding.
We refer to her as our "round friend" so as to not wake her up.
A few weeks ago, as a test of our iphones and Alexa, I mentioned to my spouse how great Australia was, that it would be great to go there on vacation and that we should look into places to stay and things to do. So far none of our devices have displayed anything related to Australia. So..............., who knows how much info they gather day to day.
Bought a new car/truck lately?
ST1100Y
Site Supporter
Obo
East Coast Canada
Even the older ones have been "spying" for a while. The ECU usually stores the last set of data on an ongoing basis. The police can instruct the manufacturer to pull that data in the event of a crash / accident etc, showing throttle position, braking power, etc.
But to your point, newer cars have an EDR (event data recorder aka black box) as part of the airbag system.
The specific data the police can pull includes:
- Speed: The vehicle's exact speed in the seconds leading up to the impact.
- Driver Inputs: Whether the throttle (accelerator) was pressed, and how hard and when the brakes were applied.
- Steering & Stability: The steering wheel angle, and whether Anti-Lock Braking (ABS) or electronic stability control systems were activated.
- Seatbelts & Airbags: Whether the driver and front passenger were buckled up, and the exact timing of airbag deployment.
- Crash Severity: The force of the impact and the direction of the crash forces (Delta-V).
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And this is all he can see from my indoor security camera...
My wife is paranoid of Santa so she has me turn it around looking back into the TV nook. I really only have it there so she can hear the doorbell since the doorbell sounds through that camera.
My Ego lawn mower might possibly have some connection (unlikely) but I never keep a battery installed and it is totally dead without a battery. I don't have a robot lawn mower so no worries there.
I remember that there was a similar problem with the Ring cameras people mounted near their doorbell button, and later the same problem with the Next smoke detectors. In fact, because of a software glitch (that may have been intentional) the smokes were listening in like Alexa. I'm waiting for a problem with dishwashers and refrigerators monitoring our washing and eating habits. On the commercial front, there was a bug in HVAC monitoring software that allowed hackers into a large corporation.
Gotta be careful what you buy nowadays...!
Gotta be careful what you buy nowadays...!
It is for precisely those reasons, among others, that I have avoided any and all "smart" appliances to date. Our latest television has voilated that restriction but still, as far as I know, has no internet-accessible features that let me control it from any device other than its own remote so I don't feel especially vulnerable.
I don't want / need to raise and lower blinds, turn lights off and on, check the contents of my refrigerator, start the dishwasher, washing machine, or dryer, lock / unlock doors, etc. when I'm not physically at home so none of those "features" has any appeal to me.
I might, possibly, be interested in having a remote-controlled holographic image projector that would make my place look like a badly neglected, crumbling ruin on the point of collapse in order to ward of door-to-door canvassers, process servers, and other undesirables.
I don't want / need to raise and lower blinds, turn lights off and on, check the contents of my refrigerator, start the dishwasher, washing machine, or dryer, lock / unlock doors, etc. when I'm not physically at home so none of those "features" has any appeal to me.
I might, possibly, be interested in having a remote-controlled holographic image projector that would make my place look like a badly neglected, crumbling ruin on the point of collapse in order to ward of door-to-door canvassers, process servers, and other undesirables.
Somehow, they think that the "data" that I generate as I live out this miserable life is valuable...where did I go? What did I search for online? What did I buy? What did I read? What did I post? Who did I chat with?
Just like everything else, everything around us has been monetized in order to extract as much money from our being as possible. Do I get a cut of that? NOPE. Do I get a discount for picking a certain seat on an airplane? NOPE (well, that's bc my wife gets to pick and she chooses to sit next to me anyways).
And if we don't consent to it all, we pay more or even get blackballed from doing business with entire websites/companies. Maybe we should retaliate to them by mowing our lawns in an utterly random fashion and random times, 2am anybody? (don't lie, some of you are up then anyways). All we need is a catchy name and acronym. Anyone?
Just like everything else, everything around us has been monetized in order to extract as much money from our being as possible. Do I get a cut of that? NOPE. Do I get a discount for picking a certain seat on an airplane? NOPE (well, that's bc my wife gets to pick and she chooses to sit next to me anyways).
And if we don't consent to it all, we pay more or even get blackballed from doing business with entire websites/companies. Maybe we should retaliate to them by mowing our lawns in an utterly random fashion and random times, 2am anybody? (don't lie, some of you are up then anyways). All we need is a catchy name and acronym. Anyone?
A friend of ours bought a new dishwasher last year & it has wifi... I'd love to take it apart to look for and remove the microphone but she won't let me.
ST Gui
240Robert
I do like having some automation and remote control over my lights and have considered the same for shades for a couple of windows. There will be some data mining of course. Privacy is pretty much a figment these days. I'm not careless but unless you're in a shack up in the woods with kerosene lamps and zero electronics — you're on the grid. There's always some mitigation against total submission to the Data Gods but mostly it's just kidding ourselves. So I give up some info for functionality. I am Borg.
Chipolo keeps sending me emails like this:
I have a Chipolo locator tag on my keys for my BMW. Just in case I misplace them. I know where the keys are right now...in the garage so why do I need Chipolo to monitor that?
I'll turn the location on my phone on when it is for my benefit, not theirs. And then I'll turn it off...for my benefit, not theirs.
I think I'm rather boring. I go to church, to Damascus House and occasionally to Costco and Home Depot. When I'm not in the area, I go bore holes in the air doing my best to kill bugs on my visor. You wouldn't think that could be important enough to monitor and sell. But some of the richest people in the world have made their money tracking where I kill bugs. And a lot of companies spend their money to buy that info. I can't imagine a good ethical socially acceptable reason for knowing what I'm doing every moment of my life.
If I wanted everyone to know what I was doing every moment of my life, I'd post on a Facebook account and make YouTube videos in the front seat of my car.
Chris
I have a Chipolo locator tag on my keys for my BMW. Just in case I misplace them. I know where the keys are right now...in the garage so why do I need Chipolo to monitor that?
I'll turn the location on my phone on when it is for my benefit, not theirs. And then I'll turn it off...for my benefit, not theirs.
I think I'm rather boring. I go to church, to Damascus House and occasionally to Costco and Home Depot. When I'm not in the area, I go bore holes in the air doing my best to kill bugs on my visor. You wouldn't think that could be important enough to monitor and sell. But some of the richest people in the world have made their money tracking where I kill bugs. And a lot of companies spend their money to buy that info. I can't imagine a good ethical socially acceptable reason for knowing what I'm doing every moment of my life.
If I wanted everyone to know what I was doing every moment of my life, I'd post on a Facebook account and make YouTube videos in the front seat of my car.
Chris
I don't know how these locator tags work in the real world but....my hearing aid phone app also has a locator. I misplaced them and tried to use the locator. It told me the hearing aids were in my house. Duh... I knew that, but where? It does not beep as you get closer, it simply shows the approximate location.
Andrew Shadow
Site Supporter
In most cases what we get is to use the software in exchange for providing that information, that is the price that we pay. In my opinion the problem is that there is no alternative. We don't have the option of not allowing our information to be harvested and still be able to use the software, and we also don't have the option of paying to use the software and not having our information harvested. More often than not our choice is between using the software or not, and in many cases not using it is almost impossible. How it would be verified that our information is not being harvested is another issue.
Unfortunately that often makes no difference. A bunch of university students, along with their professor, conducted a study as a project to test what cell phones are doing and when they are doing it. In almost all cases turning off the location tracking made no difference, the phone still tracked every where that it went. Many of the apps on phones do the same thing even when they this function is supposed to be disabled. They even discovered that many models of phones continue to track significant amounts of information even when the phone was completely turned off. There were even a couple of phones that tracked minimal information like location when the battery was removed. They did so with a small internal non-replaceable battery that is supposed be there to keep certain memory functions working. Of course, when asked to explain, the phone manufacturers had all kinds of excuses and said the study was flawed and the results erroneous.
I don't mind the lawnmower spying on me... it's when it starts stalking me that I'll be worried...