Does “Smart Home” equal “Public Home”?

Companies, privacy watchdog organizations, and many private citizens are figuring out the implications of the recent action by the Trump administration. This act was to roll back the FCC regulations regarding what internet providers can do with your internet use, browsing history, and data.

An interesting article by Stacey Higginbotham discusses the question of what this “freedom to use private data” means, specifically for the smart homes and smart things (IoT) sector.

Because ISPs know your IP address and can associate it with your physical address, many of the installed devices on your home network are indelibly tied to your name. 

So the ISPs know you have a Nest, a Wink hub, a Chamberlain MyQ garage door opener, and now if they want they can share that information with marketers. What's more concerning is whether or not an ISP can see the specifics of your home IoT devices. Do they know when your motion sensors are triggered or what temperature it is inside your home?

Stacey also explains exactly what can and cannot be discovered by your internet provider, about what’s going on in your smart home. An interesting read!

She recommends this:

Look for connected devices that encrypt your data from the device to the cloud. 

This provides us with an opportunity to inform our users that our Aware by BuildingLink® sensor systems for residential buildings does just that!  All our sensors use 128 AES encryption on all data packets to and from sensors to hub, and our hub-to-cloud connection utilizes an SSL protocol. Our aim is to build solutions for our clients that are useful, easy to deploy, but also very secure.

We'd love to hear more about your sensor needs. Please feel free to contact us at aware@buildinglink.com.