smart home – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Stories filed under: "smart home"

FTC Pushed To Crack Down On Companies That Ruin Hardware Via Software Updates Or Annoying Paywalls

from the you-don't-own-what-you-buy dept

We’ve noted for years how you no longer really own the things you buy. Whether it’s smart home hardware that becomes useless paperweights when the manufacturer implodes, or post-purchase firmware updates that actively make your device less useful, you simply never know if the product you bought yesterday will be the same product tomorrow.

Now a coalition of consumer groups, activists, and lawmakers are pushing the FTC to crack down on “smart” device manufacturers that suddenly pull support for products or make them less useful — either by simply removing features or hiding them behind annoying new subscription paywalls.

In a letter sent last week to key FTC officials, a coalition of seventeen different groups (including Consumer Reports, iFixit, and US PIRG) requested that the agency take aim at several commonplace anti-consumer practices, including “software tethering” (making hardware useless or less useful later via firmware update), or the act of suddenly locking key functionality behind subscriptions:

Both practices are examples of how companies are using software tethers in their devices to infringe on a consumer’s right to own the products they buy. While the FTC has taken some limited actions with regard to this issue, a lack of clarity and enforcement has led to an ecosystem where consumers cannot reliably count on the connected products they buy to last.

The letter cites numerous instances of consumer harms Techdirt has covered at length, ranging from Peloton’s recent decision to charge used bike owners a $95 fee for no coherent reason, to the “smart” baby bassinet maker that recently decided to paywall most of the device’s most popular features.

The letter correctly points out that this environment, where consumers are constantly shelling out significant money for devices that can be killed or rendered less useful (often without clear communications to end users), is resulting in a “death by a thousand cuts” for consumer rights. And, the groups note, it’s likely to only get worse without clear guidance and enforcement by the FTC.

The FTC has occasionally made inquiries in this space, but often only superficially. For example the FTC launched an investigation into Google’s decision to turn Revolv smart home hardware into useless crap but then took no substantive action and implemented no meaningful consumer reforms.

But the (intentionally) underfunded, understaffed, and endlessly embattled agency only has so many resources, and struggles to tackle even far more pressing issues like widespread monopolization or privacy violations. Still, some federal guidance and a few warnings would probably go a long way in a “smart” hardware sector that’s become a hot mess in the cloud computing age.

Filed Under: bricked, consumers, ftc, hardware, ownership, smart home, software, subscriptions

Snoo ‘Smart’ Baby Bassinet Sees Key Features Paywalled, Loses Functionality If Bought Used

from the your-product-is-now-worse.-you're-welcome. dept

Tue, Aug 27th 2024 05:21am - Karl Bode

For many many years now we’ve noted how internet-connectivity (and greed) have changed the consumer equation sometimes for the worse, resulting in people no longer truly owning the things they buy. Expensive gadgets can become less useful (or bricked completely) in an instant due to an inconveniently timed merger, company closure, greed, or just rank executive incompetence.

Case in point: owners of the 1700Snoo“smart”babybassinet(acribwithspeakersthatcanrockandplaysoothingsoundsforyourbaby)weren’tkeentofindoutthatoverthesummerthecompanypaywalledmanyoftheSnoo’s“premiumfeatures”[behinda1700 Snoo “smart” baby bassinet (a crib with speakers that can rock and play soothing sounds for your baby) weren’t keen to find out that over the summer the company paywalled many of the Snoo’s “premium features” [behind a 1700Snoo“smart”babybassinet(acribwithspeakersthatcanrockandplaysoothingsoundsforyourbaby)weren’tkeentofindoutthatoverthesummerthecompanypaywalledmanyoftheSnoo’s“premiumfeatures”behinda20 monthly subscription fee tethered to the device’s smartphone app.

Customers who bought a Snoo from an “authorized” outlet before July 15, 2024, were able to get the premium features free for nine months. But if you bought the speaker used, your only option to get the device’s full array of features is to shell out an additional 20eachmonth—ontopofthe20 each month — on top of the 20eachmonth—ontopofthe600 to $1000 the devices sell for used.

Ars Technica notes that users are, needless to say, not enthused about the changes:

“Just saying. This is bullshit. The current owners and users of Snoo should have been grandfathered in and continue to have access to basic feature like motion lock (the one I use most) and future new accounts should get a clear notification that without paying 20/mothey’rejustbuyinga20/mo they’re just buying a 20/mothey’rejustbuyinga2,000 basket.

Time to review bomb their app.”

As a result, the company’s app has been receiving a beating on app stores, with users noting that not only are the changes terrible for customers, they weren’t communicated clearly. The Snoo parent company Happiest Baby Inc. is also taking a steady beating over at the Better Business Bureau.

Companies think they’re cleverly boosting revenues by paywalling features or penalizing used owners, but they’re just taking an axe to the foundations of previously popular brands, especially if they’re too greedy with monetization or don’t explain the changes with any coherence.

Of course it’s a problem that’s soaring among small and big companies alike; Amazon is also taking heat this week for removing a key feature of its Echo Show 8 — the ability to display digital photos — and replacing them with ads. “Smart” sous-vide machine maker Mellow has also been taking a beating the last month for suddenly making its device useless unless users downloaded an app and paid a monthly fee.

I suppose executives making these kinds of decisions think they’re cleverly monetizing existing sales in creative new ways, but they’re really just burning consumer trust to the ground. And it’s not clear how many stories like these you’ll have to see before execs figure out its a pointlessly destructive affair.

Filed Under: automation, baby bassinet, consumers, don't own what you buy, hardware, ownership, smart home, subscriptions
Companies: snoo

Misunderstanding Locks Amazon User Out Of ‘Smart’ Home Voice Control For A Week

from the not-so-smart-huh dept

Thu, Jun 22nd 2023 10:46am - Karl Bode

The “smart” internet of things era was supposed to usher forth a new era of convenience. Instead, it often manages to advertise how dumber technology can be the smarter option, and you’re not being particularly innovative if your product actually makes life harder. From “smart” door locks that are easily hackable to hackable “smart” TVs that are so smart they spy on you, there are near daily examples showing how connecting old tech to the internet and calling it innovation — may not be innovative.

And if you still choose to wander down the smart home rabbit hole, it’s very important to build flexible, interoperable home networks that don’t rely too heavily on a singular point of failure or control.

Take this poor sod’s experience as the latest example.

Microsoft engineer Brandon Jackson recently found himself locked completely out of the voice controls for his Amazon-controlled smart home automation system. In a blog post, he details how his loss of control made it impossible to use voice controls to manage any of countless home security and automation devices:

I have a smart home, and my primary means of interfacing with all the devices and automations is through Amazon Echo devices via Alexa. This incident left me with a house full of unresponsive devices, a silent Alexa, and a lot of questions.

Now he’s quick to note he still had control over most of the individual devices, but only because he’d implemented a lot of third party systems and hosting options to ensure reliability and interoperability. So it’s not like he froze to death in his underpants hiding in the garage in terror from the smart vac, like some sort of Black Mirror episode.

Why was he locked out? Jackson notes that somehow an Amazon delivery driver misinterpreted an innocuous remark (“Excuse me, can I help you?”) as a racist slur of some kind. That quickly escalated with Amazon, and the company took the extreme step of locking him out of all Alexa home voice controls entirely before Jackson was even allowed to explain himself.

Given the current political and cultural moment where people are being murdered on doorstops and driveways by imbeciles, Amazon’s sensitivity here is somewhat understandable. Jackson ultimately regained control after things were cleared up, but it unsurprisingly led him to question his reliance on a single monolithic company when it comes to home automation and control:

Let me be clear: I fully support Amazon taking measures to ensure the safety of their drivers. However, I question why my entire smart home system had to be rendered unusable during their internal investigation (Clarification, I wrote this from the perspective of the average user. My entire system was fine but only due to me self hosting many services and that should not have to be the norm/expected of everyone). It seems more sensible to impose a temporary delivery restriction or purchasing ban on my account. Submitting video evidence from multiple angles right after my initial call with the executive appeared to have little impact on their decision to disable my account.

Of course, there’s numerous other reasons to not have your home automation and security systems too heavily reliant on monitoring by Amazon, including the company’s lazy and all too casual data and information sharing habits with law enforcement.

The Rupert Murdoch news machine was quickly excited by a story with racial elements (but not really) that vilified big tech, but the broader issue remains more about the cautionary tale of putting your home systems under any kind of monolithic, centralized control. It’s precisely why technologies like Matter are trying to expand interoperability and end reliance on any single point of failure (with mixed results so far).

For its part, Amazon acknowledged the error and promised to do better:

“We work hard to provide customers with a great experience while also ensuring drivers who deliver Amazon packages feel safe,” Spokesperson Simone Griffin said in a statement. “In this case, we learned through our investigation that the customer did not act inappropriately, and we’re working directly with the customer to resolve their concerns while also looking at ways to prevent a similar situation from happening again,” she added.

Again though, the best way to avoid monolithic giants like Amazon having too much control over your home is to… simply not give monolithic giants like Amazon too much control over your home. Amazon’s interest in controlling and monetizing every last aspect of your daily behavior simply are never going to consistently be in line with the goal of individual autonomy.

Filed Under: alexa, amazon doorbell, content moderation, internet of things, iot, privacy, racist, security, smart home, smart tech
Companies: amazon

Amazon Annoys Ring Owners Further By Making Very Basic Features Subscription Based

from the you-don't-own-what-you-buy dept

Wed, Mar 8th 2023 05:26am - Karl Bode

The relentless push to make every last feature in every tech device you own part of a subscription service shows no sign of slowing down. Fitness companies like Fitbit have increasingly shoveled basic health monitoring features into their subscription plan. Companies like BMW have increasingly tried to make basic concepts like heated seats a subscription-only feature.

The push, a natural response to Wall Street’s insatiable demand for improved quarterly returns at any cost, understandably isn’t popular with consumers. Especially if the tech powering the feature is already embedded in the tech you’ve purchased — and in the retail price you paid for it.

Amazon’s Ring is finding this out the hard way. Recently, Ring (Amazon) announced on its website that new owners of the company’s Ring Alarm security system will soon have to pay a subscription fee to do basic things like… receiving notifications:

Amazon-owned Ring is making several free features part of its paid subscription program starting on March 29th. As of that date, if you have a Ring video doorbell or camera, you will no longer have access to Home and Away Modes in the app without a paid subscription, starting at 3.99amonth(3.99 a month (3.99amonth(39.99 a year). Modes is a simple way to tell all your cameras to stop detecting motion when you’re home and start when you leave.

Even basic features, like being able to arm or disarm the alarm or connecting it to your Alexa voice assistant will now require a subscription plan to function as of March 29th. While the change won’t impact existing Ring owners yet, customers on Reddit feel like it’s only a matter of time:

As one Reddit user pointed out, there are no guarantees Ring will continue to allow legacy users to have features they paid for. “Based on this type of behavior, I assume they will be boiling us frogs at some point. This is the misdirection stage,” he wrote.

Given recent tech industry history, they’re correct to worry. And these changes come, of course, fresh on the heels of customer annoyance at a slew of significant price hikes last year. Ring doorbell and security owners now pay either 4amonthfortheRingProtectBasicplan(usedtobe4 a month for the Ring Protect Basic plan (used to be 4amonthfortheRingProtectBasicplan(usedtobe3 a month) or 20amonthforaRingProtectProplan(usedtobe20 a month for a Ring Protect Pro plan (used to be 20amonthforaRingProtectProplan(usedtobe10 a month).

Granted that creates a competitive opportunity for companies that don’t want to aggressively nickel-and-dime loyal customers. In the health smartwatch space, Garmin has made inroads on companies like Fitbit by not making every stupid, basic function a subscription service (for now). In the home security and camera space, both Abode and SimpliSafe have done things like introduce free tiers or avoided charging extra for home monitoring in a bid to counter Ring’s dominance.

Still, given how creepily cozy Amazon and Ring are with law enforcement, it’s increasingly tempting to just cobble together your own home security systems and cameras in a bid to claw back some control.

Filed Under: ring, rip off, security, smart doorbell, smart home, subscription services
Companies: amazon

It Took Months For Anker To Finally Admit Its Eufy Cameras Weren’t Really Secure

from the let's-just-pretend-this-never-happened dept

Thu, Feb 2nd 2023 01:23pm - Karl Bode

Last November, The Verge discovered that Anker, the maker of popular USB chargers and the Eufy line of “smart” cameras, had a bit of a security issue. Despite the fact the company advertised its Eufy cameras as having “end-to-end” military-grade encryption, security researcher Paul Moore and a hacker named Wasabi found it was pretty easy to intercept user video streams.

The researchers found that an attacker simply needed a device serial number to connect to a unique address at Eufy’s cloud servers using the free VLC Media Player, giving them access to purportedly private video feeds. When approached by The Verge, Anker apparently thought the best approach was to simply lie and insist none of this was possible, despite repeated demonstrations that it was very possible:

When we asked Anker point-blank to confirm or deny that, the company categorically denied it. “I can confirm that it is not possible to start a stream and watch live footage using a third-party player such as VLC,” Brett White, a senior PR manager at Anker, told me via email.

Not only that, Anker apparently thought it would be a good idea to purge its website of all of its past promises related to privacy, thinking this would somehow cause folks to forget they’d misled their customers on proper end to end encryption. It didn’t.

It took several months, but The Verge kept pressing Anker to come clean, and only this week did the company finally decide to do so:

In a series of emails to The Verge, Anker has finally admitted its Eufy security cameras are not natively end-to-end encrypted — they can and did produce unencrypted video streams for Eufy’s web portal, like the ones we accessed from across the United States using an ordinary media player.

But Anker says that’s now largely fixed. Every video stream request originating from Eufy’s web portal will now be end-to-end encrypted — like they are with Eufy’s app — and the company says it’s updating every single Eufy camera to use WebRTC, which is encrypted by default. Reading between the lines, though, it seems that these cameras could still produce unencrypted footage upon request.

I don’t know why anybody in tech PR in 2023 would think the best response to a privacy scandal is to lie, pretend nothing happened, and then purge your company’s website of past promises. Perhaps that works in some industries, but when you’re selling products to techies with very specific security promises attached, it’s just idiotic, and kudos to The Verge for relentlessly calling Anker out for it.

Filed Under: cameras, encryption, eufy, privacy, security, smart home, video, video surveillance
Companies: anker

‘Matter’ Standard Hopes To Clean Up The Messy Smart Home Space

from the jumbled-mess dept

Fri, Oct 7th 2022 07:39pm - Karl Bode

If you’ve ever tried to build a “smart home” you’ve probably run face first into no shortage of problems.

Gear is expensive, overly complicated, and more often than not different devices don’t play well together. It’s a sector filled with various walled gardens by gatekeepers looking to lock you into one ecosystem, placing the onus on consumers to figure out which devices work together, and spend countless calories trying to fix interoperability issues when they inevitably arrive.

The resulting mess has slowed adoption by those who (quite understandably) find dumb home tech (ordinary door locks, for example) to be the smarter option.

While various standards have tried to unify the space, they’ve not been particularly successful. In part because the central control of all these devices has been fractured across different standards and technologies (Zigbee, Z-Wave, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth) all jostling for primary control despite none of them working particularly well.

Enter Matter, a new open-sourced connectivity standard created by over 200 companies that’s attempting to bring some sanity to the space. Version 1.0 of the standard was launched on October 4, opening the door to a certification process for gear makers:

“What started as a mission to unravel the complexities of connectivity has resulted in Matter, a single, global IP-based protocol that will fundamentally change the IoT,” said Tobin Richardson, President and CEO of the Connectivity Standards Alliance. “This release is the first step on a journey our community and the industry are taking to make the IoT more simple, secure, and valuable no matter who you are or where you live.

Why should you care? If you care about your home tech working well, Matter — assuming it can find widespread adoption — should help simplify absolutely everything. The standard provides a way for smart home tech like your smart fridge and your door lock to talk directly to each other, either over Wi-Fi or a Thread, an IPv6-based low-power mesh networking protocol.

As a result, setup for everything based on the standard should be simpler. Less reliant on everything first heading to the cloud, you should also have greater control over what your devices are actually doing. And, it gives gatekeeper power a swift kick in the ass, letting you control multiple smart home devices using a variety of different systems and voice-enabled assistants.

That’s of course assuming it all works. The standard has major support from Apple, Google, Amazon, and Samsung, which certainly helps. Still, a lot of platforms and products aren’t going to support it, placing the onus on consumers to do their research when shopping for smart home gear over the next few years.

Right now, supported tech included smart plugs and switches, smart thermostats and HVAC controls, smart light bulbs, smart sensors, media devices and smart TVs, and connected locks. The Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) says it’s working to expand both the number of supported devices, and the categories of supported smart home tech.

There’s still going to be no shortage of interoperability headaches when it comes to building a smart home, but if all goes well Matter should be a significant improvement for the space overall.

Filed Under: home automation, interoperability, matter standard, open source, security, smart home, smart locks, smart tv

Cloud-Based Smart Home Gadgets Keep Getting Bricked Because You No Longer Own What You Buy

from the I'm-sorry-I-can't-do-that,-Dave... dept

Fri, Sep 2nd 2022 12:32pm - Karl Bode

We’ve noted more times than I can count how you no longer really own the things you buy. Whether it’s smart home hardware, or routers that become useless paperweights when the manufacturer implodes, or post-purchase firmware updates that actively make your device less useful, you simply never know if the product you bought yesterday will be the same product you think you own tomorrow.

The latest case in point: numerous folks had grown to really enjoy using a smart home device dubbed SmartDry. SmartDry attaches to the inside of your dryer’s drum and connects to your smartphone, and can inform you when clothes are actually dry (saving you money), when your vents need cleaning or there’s a gas buildup (saving your life).

Unfortunately, the company behind the device is shutting down, leaving fans of the product with a useless bauble:

The problem is that SmartDry alerted you to dry clothing by connecting to your home’s Wi-Fi; the device sent a message to parent company Connected Life’s servers and then relayed that message to your smartphone. But Connected Life Labs is closing, discontinuing SmartDry, and shutting down its servers on September 30. After that, “cloud services will cease operations and the product apps will no longer be supported.”

DIY enthusiasts could buy a ESP32 development board, load some custom code, and set up their own smart home assistant, but few folks will actually be doing that. It’s a bummer to the many folks, including the hearing impaired, that say no other device offered quite the same functionality.

SmartDry didn’t cost much (about $25), and its failure creates a market opportunity for some other smart home device manufacturers. Still, it’s just the latest in a long line of devices heavily reliant on one company’s cloud infrastructure that can quickly become both useless and environmentally wasteful should the original company run into troubles:

Cloud server dependence is a recurring problem with smart home devices. Smart home company Insteon seemed to vanish without warning in April. Insteon later blamed the pandemic and supply chain shortages. In June, a group of dedicated customers purchased Insteon and revived its services. Most of the time, shutdowns are more routine, like when a service is cut after an acquisition, or a large company loses interest in its smart home experiment.

So the real innovative opportunity lies in creating more resilient systems that can still function even if the manufacturer collapses. Enter the open source Matter platform, which is expected to launch this fall, and not only unify the fractured standards in the smart home space, but let all of your smart home devices communicate on a local network, without without the need for a controlling gateway and hub.

Filed Under: bluetooth, cloud, dryer, ownership, smart home, smart home standards, smartdry, wifi
Companies: connected life

Open Source 'Matter' Hopes To Make Sense Of The Fractured, Messy Smart Home Sector

from the simplify-all-the-things dept

Mon, Dec 20th 2021 01:32pm - Karl Bode

If you’ve spent any meaningful time trying to build a “smart home” you’ve probably run face first into no shortage of problems. Gear is expensive, frequently complicated, and more often than not different devices don’t play well together. It’s a sector filled with various walled gardens by gatekeepers looking to lock you into one ecosystem, placing the onus on consumers to figure out which devices work with other devices and ecosystems, forcing the end user to spend countless calories trying to fix interoperability issues when they inevitably arrive.

The resulting mess has slowed adoption by those who (quite understandably) find dumb home tech (ordinary door locks, for example) to be the smarter option.

While various standards have tried to unify the space, they’ve not been particularly successful. In part because the central control of all these devices has been fractured across different standards and technologies (Zigbee, Z-Wave, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth) all jostling for primary control despite none of them working particularly well. Enter Matter, a new open-sourced connectivity standard created by over 200 companies that’s attempting to bring some sanity to the space.

Matter is an emerging communication protocol leaning on numerous existing technologies — Thread, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and ethernet — with the goal of letting all of your smart home devices communicate with each other locally, without the need for a controlling gateway and hub. The Verge has a great breakdown on how the standard hopes to accomplish this (namely by being IP-based and integrating with existing technologies):

“Its unique feature is it?s an IP-based technology, meaning it uses the same mechanisms to communicate as the internet. So, there is no dependency on bridges or hubs, and yes, you will (eventually) be able to get rid of all those white boxes hooked up to your modem.

To simplify adoption, Matter will start as an application layer on top of existing IP technologies, including ethernet, Wi-Fi, Thread, and Bluetooth (for device provisioning). This means Matter is not reinventing the wheel; it?s adding better technology to the highways our smart homes are driving on.

Granted this isn’t our first rodeo with these kinds of efforts, as this old XKCD comic attests:

This time though there seems to be an underlying understanding that simplifying this mess is in everybody’s interests, from the biggest companies looking to sell more smart home gear, to the smaller players developing innovative new solutions. As such Matter is being directly supported not just by Amazon, Apple, Google/Nest, and Samsung, but a long line of other smart home and IOT companies like Wyze, Ecobee, iRobot, and others. Matter should find its way into products starting sometime near the end of next year, at which point you’ll be able to see if the underlying promise materializes.

Filed Under: home automation, matter, open source, smart home, standards

You Don't Actually Own What You Buy Volume 2,203: Google Bricking Revolv Smart Home Hardware

from the permanent-software-downgrade dept

Tue, Apr 5th 2016 09:34am - Karl Bode

Google (Alphabet) isn’t making any friends on the news that Alphabet’s Nest is effectively bricking working smart home hardware for a large number of users. About seventeen months ago the company acquired Revolv, rolling the smart-home vendor’s products in with its also-acquired Nest product line. Revolv hardware effectively lets users control any number of smart-home technologies around the home, ranging from home thermostats and garage door openers, to outdoor lights and security and motion detection systems. But according to an updated Revolv FAQ, all of these systems will no longer work as of May 15, 2016.

In other words, the FAQ notes, users who thought they bought smart home hardware will soon own very pricey bricks:

Needless to say, there’s a growing number of people annoyed with the fact that a $300 smart home hub will soon be totally useless:

“On May 15th, my house will stop working. My landscape lighting will stop turning on and off, my security lights will stop reacting to motion, and my home made vacation burglar deterrent will stop working. This is a conscious intentional decision by Google/Nest. To be clear, they are not simply ceasing to support the product, rather they are advising customers that on May 15th a container of hummus will actually be infinitely more useful than the Revolv hub.”

What’s more users claim this wasn’t really communicated, but was only something a user realizes if they happen to wander over to the Revolv website:

“That?s a pretty blatant ?fuck you? to every person who trusted in them and bought their hardware. They didn?t post this notice until long after Google had made the acquisition, so these are Google?s words under Tony Fadell?s direction. It is also worth pointing out that even though they have my email address, the only way a customer discovers this home IoT mutiny is to visit the Revolv web site.”

Obviously this isn’t new, it’s the new normal. Consumers are pretty constantly buying hardware they think they own, either to have that hardware made less useful (as we’ve seen with some game consoles), or in this instance stop working entirely thanks to later software updates. There’s any number of things Google could have done to avoid customer ill will, from a slight discount off of Nest or other products, or even, hey, an e-mail reminding users that the smart home hubs they paid $300 for would soon be little more than a lovely paperweight.

Google obviously wants these users to spend money on new Nest hardware, but lately that doesn’t seem like such a solid bet. Initially the darling of unskeptical media reviewers (thanks to the company using some very Apple-esque marketing tactics), Nest has been plagued in more recent months by a series of software updates that have caused the IOT devices to occasionally stop working (as in, a thermostat that won’t heat your house). Company leadership has also recently been criticized as tyrannically bureaucratic, and the company has taken heat as an under performer while losing executives at a notable rate.

So sure, go ahead and buy all new pricey Nest hardware for your smart home. Surely it will still actually work in a year, right?

Filed Under: iot, smart home
Companies: google, nest, revolv