Until recently, the simple key lock of the front door can be enough like a secure measure in order to avoid intrusions inside your house. Bus since the advent of internet and virtual assistances like Alexa or Cortana, those physical security measures are not enough. Since the tv to the fridge, from the bell to the microwave, all the object used everyday can be connected to the internet by opening new horizons and deficiencies. But, like always, the step from analogical to digital present us some problems connected with privacy and informatic security.

Actually, if from one hand the idea of look after our house, also when we are elsewhere, by an internet connection among inner video cameras and our smartphone assures us, but from the other hand we need to ask ourselves if someone is trying to access to our video cameras in order to breach our privacy.

In addition, frequently, those “smart” objects are connected each other’s by creating a sort of “digital ecosystem”. This interconnection opens new borders and potential deficiencies that, starting from one connected object, they rapidly expand to all the member states, with, sometimes, catastrophic results.

One of the most exciting case is “Ring”, a society acquired in 2018 by Amazon, which offers products like intercoms and video cameras connected to Internet. The society is facing, in USA, a class action after specific breaches of the security which have involved serious problems to consumers.

Those products are available also in some States of the European Union, like France and Germany. Since than those intercoms and smart video cameras included also a speaker or were connected each other with a voice assistant, hackers harassed victims with death threats, racist epithets, and, in one case in which the virtual assistant and one of the video cameras, which were installed into a 8 years old girl’s bedrooms, they were trying to cajole this girl.

The company argued that these breaches were exclusively attributable to consumers because they used weak passwords and did not activate two-factor authentication for access.

But problems concerning security of the Ring system were so huge that, first that the police took down the gang, a group of hackers have created a podcast were spectators can directly assist to Ring video cameras and serious threats, or tacky jokes, committed to the victims.

Therefore, without necessarily having to do without the potential benefits guaranteed by a “smart” house, it is necessary that the efforts for greater security and respect for privacy come from both the consumer and the manufacturer.

On the one hand, the manufacturer must ensure and keep up-to-date the IT defense scope of its products, taking into account, inter alia, aspects of personal data protection, for example by developing its products in accordance with the principle of “Privacy by Design” ex art. 25 of the GDPR, on the other hand the consumer should be made aware of the basic rules of “computer hygiene” such as, for example, the use of complex passwords that are updated, at least every three months avoiding, among other things, to use them for multiple devices and finally implementing two-factor authentication.

SOURCE: FEDERPRIVACY