ANYTHING cloud-connected - your doorbell, your security system, even your f**king post-2006 car - is suspect.
And is highly likely to be actually spying on you.
I’ve been working with computers since 1982, on the Internet since 1988, on the Web since 1992, and in the IT industry since 1997. The proportion of average people who don’t realize how much of their stuff is exposing them, and by how much, is frankly astounding. It’s almost 100% of normies. Even IT people who have no clue is in the majority. And the security on this stuff that tracks you tends to be - except in rare circumstances - absolute dogshite. Sometimes it comes without any security at all, such as all devices sold having admin credentials baked in, or all remote-access credentials being identical and non-user-editable.
This is why almost all of my stuff is hardlined, I have no IoT devices at all, and the wifi for my family’s devices is physically separate from everything else.
Much later into the career than you but honestly in the same boat. I don’t fucking let any of that shit into my house, I don’t use any of the big tech companies software, FOSS on everything I own and I honestly have become so disillusioned with mainline consumer tech because it’s honestly mostly trash imo. The older I get the more I realize I just want a fucking laptop with a decent keyboard, decent screen and good battery life.
ANYTHING cloud-connected - your doorbell, your security system, even your f**king post-2006 car - is suspect.
And is highly likely to be actually spying on you.
I’ve been working with computers since 1982, on the Internet since 1988, on the Web since 1992, and in the IT industry since 1997. The proportion of average people who don’t realize how much of their stuff is exposing them, and by how much, is frankly astounding. It’s almost 100% of normies. Even IT people who have no clue is in the majority. And the security on this stuff that tracks you tends to be - except in rare circumstances - absolute dogshite. Sometimes it comes without any security at all, such as all devices sold having admin credentials baked in, or all remote-access credentials being identical and non-user-editable.
This is why almost all of my stuff is hardlined, I have no IoT devices at all, and the wifi for my family’s devices is physically separate from everything else.
Much later into the career than you but honestly in the same boat. I don’t fucking let any of that shit into my house, I don’t use any of the big tech companies software, FOSS on everything I own and I honestly have become so disillusioned with mainline consumer tech because it’s honestly mostly trash imo. The older I get the more I realize I just want a fucking laptop with a decent keyboard, decent screen and good battery life.