Comment by hilbert42
13 hours ago
IoT, internet privacy, spyware, etc. have been repeatedly in the news ad nauseam since about 2000. If they don't know by now where have they been for the past quarter century?
The first and most obvious question an owner should ask "why does a vacuum cleaner need to talk with the internet?" It's hard to have sympathy for people who go out of their way to act dumb.
This is a failure of regulation, not personal responsibility. Consumers should not have to threat-model their vacuum cleaner. That should be on the manufacturer, and when they fail like this they should be punished severely.
You are correct that a sane government would protect their customers from being secretly surveilled by companies who will do whatever they want with their customer's most private data including selling it to others. Americans should also know that we don't have a government that protects consumers from products that harm them even when that harm is well known. It's unfortunate, but until that changes people do have to threat-model their internet connected devices, just like they have to threat-model their food, their children's toys, their cosmetics, their health supplements, their cookware, their clothing, and just about everything else we buy.
Fair point.