As smart-home devices become more advanced and viable, they also become more ubiquitous. You can have all kinds of smart setups in your home, from security cameras to Internet-of-Things-compatible appliances to smart speakers taking your commands. That said, when certain things become more ubiquitous, some believe there’s an unspoken obligation that you need to embrace those things wholly and unquestioningly. If smart-home setups are the next big thing, you might as well go whole hog from the word go, right?
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Doing this, however, presents some risks. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the notion of a smart-home setup, so long as you do your necessary research and due diligence. It’s in the small nooks and holes of those who do not do their research that cheap, shady, and even outright malicious actors may try to sneak into your home. As with any big purchase, particularly when it comes to electronics, the best course of action is to play defensively and keep an eye out for certain red flags.
Devices from brands nobody has ever heard of or with bad reputations
There are a lot of smart-home devices on the market from a veritable galaxy of brands. This isn’t unusual; it’s a big, profitable sector, and companies big and small want to get in on it. If you go browsing for devices on Amazon, there’s a good chance you will find some from brands you aren’t familiar with. This is where you should do some research to see what the people are saying about those brands to determine if they’re trustworthy.
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If your research turns up a statistically significant portion of complaints, grievances, and concerns about a particular brand’s devices, that’s a good reason to give them a wide berth. More than that, though, you should also be wary of smart-home brands that you can’t seem to find any information on at all. It’s normal if one person hasn’t heard of a brand, but if multiple searches turn up absolutely nothing, there’s a chance that this brand has spontaneously appeared from the ether. That’s a classic scammer tactic, making up a brand name to hock half-baked or non-functioning hardware and trying to entice shoppers with low prices. If you see a steep discount from a complete unknown brand, it’s almost definitely too good to be true.
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Devices from brands with known security issues
Even if you’re considering a smart-home device from a known, well-established brand, that shouldn’t give it an automatic free pass into your home. The fact of the matter is that many software and hardware companies, even prominent ones, have been victimized by cyberattacks, the results of which are usually publicly available. If the brand of a device you’re considering has previously suffered some manner of security breach, you should do some research into the event to determine what exactly happened and what was affected.
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If it was a minor breach and no users were severely affected (leaked payment info, personal details, virus circulation, etc.) and the brand is taking measures to prevent it from happening again, then that’s excusable. If, however, the brand suffered a severe breach resulting in leaked user data, that’s a good reason to be wary of its devices. Moreover, if the brand’s response to said severe data breach was effectively “whoops, our bad” and nothing further, that’s an even bigger red flag. It’s bad enough to know that the company that makes your smart-home device or the device itself may be compromised, but it’s even worse to know the brand is not doing anything about it.
Outdated, unsupported devices
Modern technology moves exceptionally fast. What seems brand new one moment could become outdated and unusable as quickly as a year out from its release. Of course, any reputable tech brand does its best to future-proof its products, building in fail-safes and compatibility with both old and new frameworks. Unfortunately, these efforts can only go so far — sooner or later, every smart-home device will become obsolete, replaced by something newer and more readily compatible with changed paradigms.
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As frustrating as it is to have to upgrade your setup, it is important that your smart-home devices are at least relatively new and up to date with the latest connectivity standards. If you purchase a device that’s severely out of date, it may have difficulty connecting to other devices in your home, or it may have security protocols that are vulnerable because they are no longer supported. Yes, older hardware is usually cheaper, but what you gain in savings, you may lose in peace of mind. The trick is to find the ideal middle ground between cost and functionality, something you can afford but still retains all the necessary features and protections.
Overly-complex systems that are difficult to use
Some tech brands have a bit of a bad habit of trying to reinvent the wheel, unnecessarily iterating on concepts and systems that everyone already understood and had the way they liked. With smart-home devices in particular, this can manifest as strange, unnecessarily complex systems and interfaces.
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If you’re going to have a smart-home setup, you want to be able to control it easily and conveniently, such as with a few quick swipes on a smartphone app. If your devices require some kind of bizarre, unintuitive setup process that’s too difficult to figure out without calling tech support, that’s not a great start. Or, if the companion app is poorly designed and won’t take your commands without jumping through a lot of hoops, then you won’t be able to actually use your smart-home setup when you want or need to. When looking into smart-home devices, seek out opinions from users on how easy they are to utilize. If there are a lot of complaints and confusion, there’s a good chance you won’t fare much better.
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Devices lacking in privacy settings
With the use of smart-home devices comes something of a pact between you and the brand that you’re willing to divulge some aspects of your private life in the name of increased convenience. It’s the nature of the beast, unfortunately, but at the very least, good smart-home tech will give you a degree of control over how much of your privacy you have to give up.
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A quality smart-home device or framework has a laundry list of privacy settings that you can freely tweak. If you don’t want your smart speaker to passively listen for your voice or the sounds of your home, for instance, you should be able to turn that function off without any fuss. However, some lower-quality smart-home devices may be lacking in privacy features. They want to listen to anything and everything that happens in your home, and if you don’t like that, that’s just too bad. Again, you kind of have to make your own stance on how much you value privacy versus functionality, but for what it’s worth, there are probably better devices you can get with more detailed privacy features than whatever you’re trying to use.
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