Rotate the Pod Door, HAL
I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave
The FREDI baby monitor has been ranked creepiest connected home gadget on offer this festive season in a survey by Mozilla. According to Mozilla, the babycam uses a default password of "123" that users aren't forced to change, it doesn't use encryption and has a history of being hacked – earning it a "super creepy" tag from …
They'd flag themselves for:
* doing DNS over JSON over HTTPs with Cloudflare
* putting more and more privacy invading features into the web (e.g. Blutooth, WebAssembly)
* trying to coax people into having accounts with them to share their browser history
and probably lots more privacy threatening stuff going on at Mozilla.
Welcome to the Internet. If you've done nothing wrong there's nothing to worry about ... until there is, at which point all hell breaks loose.
When will people realise that IoT *is* Big Brother except it's corporates and criminals in the harness with the state trying desperately to hold onto the reins of an ever accelerating wagon.
That's all true, but mozilla still has the browser that is less privacy-invading than the main competitors. Of the browsers that real users (read not us) install, firefox is the one I'm most comfortable with. In addition, firefox being open means that most of the browsers that are better are forks or redistributions of it.
Starting with the connected water bottle, why on earth do people spend money on stuff just because it's "connected"? I don't need machinery to tell me when to drink, I don't need to monitor my pet's dish (and open a point of attack into my network) and the only thing I use Alexa for is the "Alexa play Despacito" meme, which doesn't require an actual Alexa. This is good because I don't want voice controlled crap eavesdropping on me.
As an aside my finest meme was when I walked into the kitchen wearing tracksuit pants and Adidas sandals, Slav squatted next to my teenaged daughter and said "Alexa Amazonova, to be hardbass playing".
The Hidrate [sic] Spark's website is that great border area between serious and satire:
"Syncs with Fitbit, Apple Watch & Health, Under Armour Record, Nokia Health Mate, and Google Fit.
These are optional fitness integrations. The bottle and app can be used without them."
"Proven to be accurate within 3% compared to manual recordings during a medical study."
"Keep an eye on friends and make sure they stay hydrated."
"Never lose your bottle. See your bottle's last synced location in the app."
And then a "benefits of water" section that interestingly enough fails to list "postpones death, but doesn't avert it".
Now, why haven't I seen this in my local pub? Or any pub for that matter?
And the obvious integration with the pub's Ordering and Loyalty apps, and your bank's mobile payment app (in a way that doesn't preclude you from hydrating your mates when the banking behind that app inevitably goes on the blink).
I don't need to monitor my pet's dish
You obviously don't have cats.. (or do have cats that don't have a problem informing you, loudly and often, when the food level drops below 25%).
In our multi-cat household we have 4 that (mostly) eat only kibble[1] and 3 that eat mostly cat[2] meat (although will eat biscuits as well since they are available). The meat only gets given them in the kitchen, but we have two large bowls of kibble upstairs for the more shy cats.
[1] Expensive stuff (for sensitive stomachs) - two of our cats were very, very ill when they came to us as rescues (green runny stuff coming out of the backsides of a 8-month old mother cat and her five three-week old kittens in never a good sign - especially when the mother isn't cleaning the kittens. One kitten died within a day or so but the other 4 survived. We ended up keeping the mother cat[3] and one of her kittens[4]). They were left with very sensitive stomachs and so need specific foods to stop them being ill again.
[2] And not cheap tinned stuff - certainly not! Which means bulk buying of pouches when on special offer in the local supermarkets. Several of them do supplement their diets with warm, fresh meat.. And then insist of telling us about it, at high volume, at 3am..
[3] Which really, really didn't impress our senior female cat since the mother cat was (theoretically) above her in the pecking order. Even after the mother-cat was spayed, she still had to give boss-female a wide berth..
[4] Naturally, the one that the mother-cat liked the least. The one who, if cats had autism, would be diagnosed as somewhere on the spectrum. She's a remarkably pretty calico cat though (to go with our remarkably pretty tortie).
in the usual fashion, I assume the "creepy" from the headline refers to Mozilla installing another "helpful" this or that tracking, unremovable bit. Surprisingly, when I made a bold step past the headline, I discovered a different reality awaits!