SHOULD YOUR HOME REALLY BE SMART ?

Increasingly, we have heard people and tech reviewers upgrade their homes to smart homes. There's a lot of credible motive behind it. It seems to tick all boxes and is hard to find fault with. It makes your life a lot easier and you can do things from thousands of miles away. On your way back home from a tough day at work? Ask your car's infotainment to turn on the living room's AC. Never able to find time to do laundry? You can now configure your washing machine to start, run and stop at a specific time. Smart homes are extensions of a trend to make everything "smart" whether it's our car's assistance system or food tracking. We want to be able to implement the technology of our smartphones everywhere and make life simpler.

My readers from the West may be more familiar with the concept of smart homes especially

those residing in metropolitan cities with a big workforce. That’s understandable. Highly-paid employees have a busy life and rarely have enough time to do household chores. The cost of building a smart home is considerably cheaper in the US than it is in India. I am sure a few thousand dollars seems like chump change to someone who earns more than 200,000 $ in New York. Smart homes in India are an extremely tiny market. Even the wealthy don't turn their homes smart because it is not a concept that they very much appreciated. Moreover, unlike in the USA where even the rich don't have house help, house help is common even in middle-class Indian households which eliminates the need for automation of the basic tasks such as washing clothes.

But the smarter your life is, the dumber you are acting. You are setting yourself up in a position that’s hard to escape for life. It'll become harder and harder for you to manage your tasks without it. You don't have to be so dependent on something that it takes over you. Smartphones may make your life so much easier but they are a hacker's candy house. Just imagine - every room and every possible corner of your house is bugged. Electronic devices are electronic at the end of the day. I don't want to make all of it sound like a conspiracy theory by the tech companies but they know everything about you. More and more tech dependence is the only way this has been possible.

Audio-enabled and recognition smart home devices such as HomePod, Amazon Echo and Google Home are the worst. They actively hear whatever you speak and it is continuously recorded. How is it that they can hear when you say "Hey Siri" unless the mics are active all the time? All of this makes you an easy target to be spied upon. I always say that if privacy is your top concern, analogue is the way to go. Someone may be able to hack into your camera without your notice but if you want to prevent this from happening, don't install software that lets you know when the camera is active. If the hacker is good enough to hack your camera, he must also be good enough to be able to disable the software light. But there's no power in this world that you can spy on you through your camera if you have a shutter cover. Yes, you don't get to see those anymore and existed on laptops and desktops 7 years back but you can always buy an external one and place it.

I am not saying that you should leave your smart home and go live under a rock. I am just saying that you should try to distance yourself as much as possible from technologies that have the potential to be manipulated. Phone-operated curtains are totally fine, for example, are fine because they just receive simple commands. Nothing too complex. I see people having smart speakers and motion detectors in bedrooms and bathrooms and that is concerning. Everything you say to your wife can be heard by a data scientist 4000 miles away. The thought itself is very concerning. It's not just what you say or argues about in private and public conversations, home is after private property and a private area of expression and habits. There are intimate and close relations with people in the house. You would not want a smart speaker to record you with your spouse. Believe it or not, this has happened. You need to be aware, cautious and beware of taking such steps.

I can't think of a place more personal and intimate than the bathroom. Fitting a smart speaker there is more like signing your privacy's death certificate. The same goes for home cameras. Most of us cover the boundary of our homes with cameras but some even fit them inside their homes. This gives the camera company opportunity to access all aspects of your day-to-day life. Before purchasing a smart home product, scrutinize the privacy aspect. The tech that depends too much on your location, position, camera, mic and files must be avoided. Chinese products are again the worst criminals of the lot. It's the very function and purpose of any Chinese product to steal data and spy on the user. BOYCOTT AND AVOID CHINESE GOODS !!!!!

SUBSCRIBE TO MY FORMS AND YOU WILL BE THE FIRST TO KNOW WHEN A BLOG GOES UP AND LIVE

If you made it this far, a sub to my updates would be a ………. SMART DECISION !!!!!

JAI HIND