Get Smart Technology Out of Your Home Before It's Too Late

Some reasons why you shouldn't trust in-home smart tech like locks, vacuums, or thermostats

About a month before I left Tampa, I got locked out of my apartment. It’s not because I’d lost my keys or left them inside.

The apartment community I lived in was completely digitized. It wasn’t something I learned about until move-in day as I’d found and secured the apartment online when I was still living in Rhode Island.

If anything, it just seemed annoying at first. I had to have my phone on me at all times in order to use the Chirp Access app. Without it, I was unable to enter:

• Our gated community

• The side entrance to the community

• My apartment’s front door

• The pool

• The gym

• The business center

I had asked for a physical key after I moved in, but the front office made it seem like I’d never use it. After all, since I needed the app for everything else, there was no point in a key.

Eventually, I got used to it.

But here’s the thing about these digital locks: They’re powered by electricity and an internal battery. If you get stuck outside your apartment and either of those systems break, you’re shit out of luck. And that’s how I got locked out of my apartment.

I took one of my dogs out for a walk and came back to the lock malfunctioning because the battery was on its last leg. There’s nothing within the lock — no sound nor an external status light — that tells you when this is about to happen.

Thank goodness it was in the middle of the day during the week. If it had happened over the weekend when the office was closed and the closest maintenance person lived an hour away, I would’ve been in trouble.

This, of course, got me thinking about other smart tech that people choose to use in their homes (or get stuck using because they’re renters like myself). There are a lot of risks we need to worry about beyond the systems themselves failing.

Surveillance

The first issue is government or big tech surveillance.

For instance, something like a Chirp lock could be exploited by the government to spy on its citizens’ movements and routines. They’d know when you’re home and how frequently you leave.

Even if the makers of the Chirp app can be trusted not to hand over your data to someone else, we know the same can’t be said of smartphone companies.

Privacy

Smart speakers like the Echo and voice assistants like Siri also present a privacy/surveillance risk.

If you’ve ever touched the wrong button or area on your phone’s screen before, you know how happy Siri is to pop up and listen to you (or at least that’s been my experience). The same goes for Alexa. My ex-boyfriend got one for Christmas one year and she was listening to and recording us all the time. I pulled up the transcript to show my boyfriend and he unplugged it and threw it in the back of the closet the next day.

(And if you don’t believe that Amazon isn’t going to increase its range of listening through the acquisition of iRobot, think again. A recent study shows that robotic vacuum cleaners have listening capabilities as well.)

It doesn’t matter what these companies tell you about keeping what you say in the privacy of your home a secret. Big tech works for and with the government. They’ll turn on their users in a second if it benefits them.

Security

Hackers could also take advantage of the data from a digital lock and similar devices used within the home.

With Chirp, in particular, users have the option to create a custom passcode they then type into the lock on their front door. This is an alternative to pulling out their phone, opening the app, and tapping the button to open the front door.

If the user isn’t smart enough to use an original passcode, a hacker could figure out how to use it for other things (like withdrawing funds at the ATM).

Hackers and other bad actors could use the data from your app or device to break into your home. This vulnerability was detected in a smart lock device called F-Secure a few years back. A similar one was found in Zipato smart hubs.

Entry/Usage

If social credit scores and monitoring become a thing, what’s to keep the government or even your landlord from preventing you from getting inside your home if you’ve been outspoken in the “wrong” way. Or if your contributions to social causes like BLM haven’t been high enough this month. Or if you haven’t received your bimonthly COVID jab.

The same goes for using your smart in-home devices. And it doesn’t even need to done because you were a bad comrade.

Xcel Energy locked thousands of its Colorado customers from lowering the temperature on their thermostats. Heat wave be damned. Their justification for preventing customers from cooling off their homes was an "energy emergency."

I suspect we’ll be seeing these smart tech companies enforcing their will in the name of so-called emergencies. And not just in our homes either. Think about all of those electric cars that states like California want to be on the road. There are so many reasons the government could use to prevent your car from charging and heading out on the road.

Final Thoughts

I realize there’s a lot we can gain from AI and automation. I just don’t believe it has any place in our homes. The risks are just too great. That and we’re living in a time where many of our fellow citizens don’t see anything wrong with sacrificing their freedoms for convenience and ease.

If you can, reduce your reliance on in-home smart technology now. If you can get rid of it altogether, even better.

And for those of you who are like me and depend on rental communities to provide you with a place to settle down, do your research ahead of time. Avoid places with smart locks, thermostats, and other such tech. It might seem fun and novel at first, but you never know how it’ll turn against you (or be turned against you) down the road.