Is Your House Spying On You?
A bit of a follow-on to my last blog about smart device security, this month TV maker Vizio was fined $2.2 million for not telling 11 million owners of their internet-connected TVs that it was spying on them, collecting and selling customers' locations, demographics and viewing habit info. They have been ordered to delete everything and quit doing that. That’s the good news – the bad news is that pretty much all of the other TV brands, set top boxes, game machines and other internet viewing gadgets are doing the same thing to some extent. They typically give you the opportunity to opt out of being tracked when you set the device up for the first time, but most people tend to be in a hurry and don’t carefully consider what that particular setting actually means. Bottom line, it’s a good idea for device owners to check the manual or call support for the way to get to the setting and check whether it’s on or off. AND, while you’re at it, if the device has