Are there any examples of consumer-level #IoT devices that increase your level of privacy?
I cannot think of any.
- Does anyone other than us weird computer scientists think privacy and security are problems?
- Will consumers readily give up all privacy to use a new toy?
The next post, below, is about consumer product manufacturers putting Wi-Fi into everything – from children’s toys to coffee markets, refrigerators, washing machines and products that do not seem to offer real consumer benefits for being always connected.
The obvious benefits include:
- Manufacturers learning about how their products are used, identifying failure or maintenance problems, and learning how to build better products from that information,
- Collection of marketing data to use in selling more stuff to consumers.
The actual product features do not seem to offer real benefits to the consumer, though. Yet the consumer has likely given up a bit of privacy to enable these capabilities.
