by Charles Miller

Today's modern smart home appliances are capable of doing things we could never have imagined only a few decades ago. An acquaintance of mine who has an affinity for the newest and the greatest decided to purchase an expensive new counter-top oven. It was a technological wonder that included temperature sensors to cook everything perfectly, cameras to identify what was being cooked, sous vide capabilities for slow cooking, and weight scale for the oven's computer to use when determining cooking time after the camera identified what is cooking. All the features could be controlled and monitored via a smart phone app.

Everything in the preceding paragraph is completely factual and these ovens can be found for sale today. For me, having a smart phone app control the oven is a bit of an issue. It is as if the salesperson who delivers the oven says to the owner "From now on I want you to leave the front door of your house open and unlocked 24/7 so I can come in any time to check on the oven. And I might want to snoop around your other appliances, computers, tablets, cell phones, Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices, etc. without telling you."

The consequences of leaving the front door to your house open and unlocked are easy to understand, and that is why very few people ever do that. However, when it comes to their virtual front door to the internet it seems that many people are blithely or unknowingly agreeing to leave it wide open and unlocked 24/7 then broadcasting to all the cybercrooks and computer hackers of the world "Come on in!"

Please let me be clear, I have no wish to impugn the integrity of the salesperson who delivers and sets up a new counter-top oven; they only want their product to work correctly. Likewise the plumber who installed a new smart water heater connecting it to the internet was only following the installation instructions and did not intend to create a problem. The gardeners who dug up my friend's yard to install an in-ground irrigation system inadvertently caused him months of intermittent internet outages and hundreds of dollars of expense all because the gardener innocently connected the lawn sprinklers to the house Wi-Fi. He only wanted the controller to get current weather forecasts so it would avoid watering the grass while it was raining.

And I could tell you about the HVAC professional and the new thermostat they connected to the house Wi-Fi, but I think you already get the picture. Plumbers, electricians, gardeners, cooks, and professionals of many other disciplines are now connecting to the internet everything from light bulbs to rectal thermometers (yes, seriously!) to salt shakers. Few of these professionals are qualified network engineers, and unfortunately they often manage to get their internet-connected appliance to work by unlocking the virtual front door and leaving it wide open.

There are safe ways to connect IoT devices to your home network, so for more on that be sure to come back next week.

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Charles Miller is a freelance computer consultant with decades of IT experience and a Texan with a lifetime love for Mexico. The opinions expressed are his own. He may be contacted at 415-101-8528 or email FAQ8 (at) SMAguru.com.

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