In the 21st century, the existence of 'Data Paparazzi’ is released. The normal paparazzi take photos of celebrities and sell it to gossip magazines. But the data paparazzi collects information whatever they can collect via devices and sell it to anyone who is willing to pay. The seller can be the advertisement agency, IT corporations or someone who is into you.
I am sure you have one of these digital devices - smartphone, tablet, fitness watch or AI speaker. Our devices collect and forward information to all sorts of external parties such as our electricity supplier, our fitness watch vendor or smartphone vendor. By listening to our voice or executing some commands, it takes that information to execute our orders through the internet. Smart devices can be connected to everything.
Data from one device may not cause problems but combining data from several devices could infer your pattern. With more devices coming into homes, concern about personal data is increasingly being raised. Each new device may introduce a new security risk. One day you will confront the situation to choose either avoiding security issues or getting value from devices.
I interact with at least 5 devices daily - two smartphones, one tablet, personal laptop and work laptop. I myself select the connectivity, Wi-Fi. Each device contains critical information following their own purpose, the network security is a key requirement in the IoT environment. 5 devices shall be doors the data paparazzi visits me.
The paparazzi are individuals who are overly interested in celebrities and may try to gain as much information about them as possible, even using illegal means.
The data paparazzi is nothing different. In the IoT space, the data paparazzi is doing the same thing. A smart home can easily get attacked. By controlling your door, they could invade your home. Accessing the internal network makes your photo revealed in public. The secret photos you took yourself might be in public by data paparazzi. They can spy on the owner and even control other devices from the backend.
You will ask that “How can I protect myself?”.
There’s no silver bullet solution. But applying these rules, we can minimize security issue.
1. When you set up file sharing, give access rights based on need-to-know basis.
2. Select well-designed products. Please check if you can get professional support when you confront trouble
3. Patch(Upgrade) software up to date. Old versions might have several well known security holes.
4. Change default device password.
5. Wipe the device before recycling.
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This posting is a summary for the article, ‘Smart home privacy: How to avoid ‘data paparazzi’.
https://www.ericsson.com/en/blog/2021/1/smart-devices-and-privacy