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points by 0cf8612b2e1e 3 days ago | 0 comments

Fantastic question. There is so much IOT garbage out there that someone might slip into my network, what can I do to easily detect it?

I was aghast when my partner connected a pet watering bowl to the WiFi.

[–] doublepg23 3 days ago

My most worrisome IoT device I have on my network is a digital picture frame my wife connected, but I was surprised the company routinely updates it even though it's on Android 6 (!).

https://support.frameo.com/hc/en-us/articles/23433637149842-...

[–] zahlman 3 days ago

… TIL such things exist. I assume it's networking so that it can grab photos to display from "the cloud" somewhere, and periodically change?

[–] itishappy 3 days ago

Yes. Smart frames often provide an endpoint where friends or family can send photos that will be automatically added to the rotation.

Great gifts! (At least for those unconcerned with privacy or security, which is most people.)

[–] rustyhancock 3 days ago

It's been some time since I ran this myself but I used to have an openwrt router sit behind my ISP modem/router (it was one unit).

Multiple times I caught unexpected traffic and was able to block it piecewise including a lightbulb(!) that was sending mb packets of god knows what home.

If they were ethernet based I reckon some smart VLAN capable switches would be nice even at home to keep them out of each others business.

I moved home a few years ago and now I'm back with the ISP router and do often feel a little in the dark about what my network is doing!

https://openwrt.org/

[–] mrguyorama 2 days ago

Educate your partner.

I had to recently inform my sister and didn't realize just how unaware the general public was of how utterly terrible things have gotten, like with LG TVs or the Meta Quest's access to your family.

When someone tells you "I have nothing to hide, I don't care", let them know that companies like LG make 5x as much money selling your data as selling $1000 TVs, so clearly your data is valuable and you shouldn't be giving it away for free. That's a message normal people can understand.

[–] cowlevel 3 days ago

I suggest you just firewall it away from your important machines and then don't worry about it.