Will tomorrow’s smart living room be a spy in your house?

16

October

2019

5/5 (1)

Nowadays, smart home devices are becoming more and more popular among households. In the future, around 30 million U.S. households will add smart home technology to their house (Mordorintelligence, 2019). Furthermore, the growth rates of smart home markets in North America and Europe are prospected to be high. Tech giants like Google and Amazon have brought different types of smart home devices on the market, that are most often voice-controlled devices. Examples are Google Home and Amazon Echo (Alexa). These devices are driven by IoT (Internet of Things), in which the smart home device is interconnected with all kinds of other devices in your home. These days, smart home devices are connected to your TV, music system, thermostat, doorbells, and in the near future with your fridge, oven, and kettle (Luimstra, 2019). These will be all controllable with simple questions and commands given by the customer.

Obviously, the implementation of a smart home device could give the customer various advantages. At first, the customer will be given more convenience in and outside the house. Several devices in your household will be more easily being controlled, often with small voice commands. Whether you want to know the best route to your destination when leaving your house, or you want to arrive in a house that’s heated up, or you want to know what movie to watch after the serie you’re almost done with: it’s all possible with a smart home device (Marr, 2019). Secondly, since many voice-assisted home devices are connected with your energy regulator, smart home devices are an ideal way to save on your future energy expenses. According to your preferences, preprogrammed temperatures and lighting schedules can be implemented, which are also easy to modify after. Lastly, smart home devices tend to increase the safety of your house. Smart doorbells are able to livestream the person that’s at your door, which gives a customer more information about people with possible bad intentions (Luimstra, 2019).

However, the safety of smart home devices (and mainly the voice-controlled ones) has been criticised lately. All information that smart home devices need are saved in the cloud (Marr, 2019). While this is convenient, it also creates an easy point for abuse of your personal information. Voice-assistant devices are known to be easily activated by a so-called ‘wake word’, like the word ‘Alexa’ for Amazon’s voice assistant (Karch, 2019). If activated, all information is recorded and saved in the cloud, and is therefore also accessible for hackers or other wrongdoers. Furthermore, the smart home devices have voices that are increasingly sounding like a normal human voice (Weinberger, 2019). Since we emotionally attach value to voices, this could become a problem when a voice-controlled smart home device will talk to outsiders or family people. So, while the positive aspects of smart home devices are obviously present, its negative threats related to security and trust into these systems may not be neglected. Will voice-controlled smart home devices become almost 100% safe? Are we able to distinguish between voices of smart home devices and the voice of one of our relatives? These question are ripe for future discussion.

References:
Karch, M. (2019). Is Your Smart Device Spying on You? How Can You Stop It?. [online] Lifewire. Available at: https://www.lifewire.com/is-your-smart-device-spying-on-you-4141166 [Accessed 15 Oct. 2019].

Luimstra, J. (2019). De slimme IoT-huiskamer: groot goed, of potentiële spionage?. [online] Sprout. Available at: https://www.sprout.nl/artikel/technologie/de-slimme-iot-huiskamer-groot-goed-potentiele-spionage [Accessed 15 Oct. 2019].

Marr, B. (2019). The 7 Most Dangerous Technology Trends In 2020 Everyone Should Know About. [online] Forbes.com. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2019/09/23/the-7-most-dangerous-technology-trends-in-2020-everyone-should-know-about/#16a928687780 [Accessed 15 Oct. 2019].

Mordorintelligence. (2019). Smart Homes Market | Growth, Trends, and Forecast (2019 – 2024). [online] Available at: https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/global-smart-homes-market-industry [Accessed 15 Oct. 2019].

Weinberger, D. (2019). Can We Trust Machines that Sound Too Much Like Us?. [online] Harvard Business Review. Available at: https://hbr.org/2019/05/can-we-trust-machines-that-sound-too-much-like-us [Accessed 15 Oct. 2019].

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Unprecedented Safety Crisis- Samsung urges customers to stop using Galaxy Note 7

11

October

2016

5/5 (7)

Samsung Electronics Co Ltd has halted production of Galaxy Note 7 and said on Monday night it would ask all carrier and retail partners to stop sales and exchanges of its flagship smartphone while a thorough investigation is taking place into why new replacement devices are catching fire as well.

Should customers keep using their Note 7?

No, the world’s top smartphone company urges customers to stop using it, after fresh reports of fires in replacement models raised new warnings from regulators, airlines and phone carriers.

“Consumers with either an original Galaxy Note 7 or replacement Galaxy Note 7 device should power down and stop using the device”, the company said in a statement.

Customers are also encouraged to exchange their Note 7 for a Galaxy S7 or a Galaxy S7 Edge, or ask their point of purchase for a full refund.

As it could be expected, airlines, forced to follow the FAA requirement, prohibit these products’ check-in and onboard use.

What is the future for Note 7?

Jan Dawson, tech industry analyst at Jackdaw Research, said in a tweet that this was “terrible news for Samsung” and the Note 7 is “likely dead”.

However, as analysts say a permanent end to Note 7 sales could cost Samsung up to $17 billion, the company has not shut down production entirely, but said earlier on Monday it would be “temporarily adjusting the Galaxy Note 7 production schedule in order to take further steps to ensure quality and safety matters”. That means halting production of certain components of the phone suspected for causing fires, including batteries.

But after all this, it’s not clear who would ever still want to buy one new Galaxy Note 7.

Samsung is taking a hit

To recap, the premium device was launched in August and was supposed to compete with Apple Inc’s latest iPhone for dominance in the smartphone market. However, within days of the launch, photos of charred Note 7s began appearing on social media, and Samsung has since recalled 2.5 million Note 7s.

The Note 7 crisis seems likely to generate serious concerns about Samsung’s other phones, especially if the safety issue relates to components other than the battery, which could result in huge financial and reputational costs.

The timing couldn’t be better for competitors.

There is no doubt that Apple’s rival iPhone 7 Plus could take benefit of Samsung’s safety issues. “While we have been relatively conservative in thinking through any beneficial impacts to Apple from Samsung’s issue, we do believe that after multiple safety concerns around the device, the longer term brand damage should now be assessed,” said analysts at Credit Suisse in a note earlier on Monday. “We believe the Note 7’s ongoing issues could help market share shifts for Apple.”

However, Google that has just launched its new Pixel handsets seems likely to attract more Samsung’s customers- they are used to paying high prices for a premium device and most importantly they already use Android. Switching from one mobile platform (Android) to another (iOS) is a pretty big deal. Apart from the design, you need to port over all your data and there is no guarantee that you will get all the apps you want.

 

 

Sources:

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-samsung-elec-smartphones-idUSKCN12A2JH

https://www.ft.com/content/f126c8fc-8e92-11e6-a72e-b428cb934b78

UNPRECEDENTED CRISIS: Samsung reportedly halts Note 7 production after replacements also explode

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Safety versus privacy

9

October

2016

5/5 (2)

Narcos is currently one of the most popular series of Netflix. The series tells the story of notorious drug kingpin Pablo Escobar, and how he tries to avoid getting arrested by the drug police. On the contrary, the drugs police do everything in their power to catch Escobar. However, back in those days it was not that easy. Escobar and his men used satellite phones that could be taped. However, the taped conversation only had value when the reception was good and when the police was able to recognize someone’s voice. I couldn’t stop thinking how different the same situation would be nowadays.

Tracking only the metadata of someone’s phone for one week can tell you someone’s life story. The Correspondent, a Dutch online newspaper, tracked the phone of Ton, and you will be surprised what they knew about him after a week. The name of his girlfriend is Merel and they send each other 100 Whatsapp messages per day on average. Ton also has a sister, Annemiek, who is still studying. Ton likes to read about sports on several news apps and is particularly interested in cycling. Furthermore, he likes to read Scandinavian thrillers, is interested in philosophy and religion, and most likely a Christian based on his search results on Google and Yahoo. He knows a lot about technology, uses three e-mail addresses, works at Bits of Freedom, and often works till late. He normally goes to bed around midnight and so forth! It is frightening to see that so much information can come from meta-data collected in one week.

Where the Correspondent got permission from Ton to track his data, the National Communications Security Agency (NCSC) of the Netherlands is entitled to track all people’s meta-data. And of course, for the sake of safety they have collected data from everyone and over a long period of time, also called data mining. Their intention is to build data-warehouses where they can store the data forever. Next to collecting data, the NCSC also has advanced tools to analyze the data. In special cases, they are allowed to go further than only analyzing meta-data and may also look into the content of the data.

However, collecting data of everyone and saving this forever is in conflict with the privacy rights. The public opinion about this matter is not clear. When Snowden reveals data collection secrets of national security agencies, everyone believes that they are collecting too much data and are violating the privacy rights of the citizens. However, when there is a terrorist attack everyone claims that we should give up our privacy rights for the sake of safety. But there is no clear debate going on. Would you have given up your privacy rights to get the notorious drug kingpin Pablo Escobar?

Sources

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