Smart Homes: What They Are, Pros, and Cons

Navigation

• Some Smart Home Technology
• Pros of Smart Home Devices
• Cons of Smart Devices
• Hacking Smart Devices and How to Protect Yourself From Being Hacked
• Bibliography

Some Smart Home Technology:

• Smart Lighting: switches lights on, off, and dims them. Can be controlled by smartphone or tablet or by speaking if you have smart speakers.
• Smart Speakers: The best known and most often used smart speakers are Amazon's Alexa and Google Echo. The speakers let you control other smart technology with your voice. For example you can ask them to dim the lights and if you have smart lighting it will dim them. They also are connected to the internet, so you can ask them questions, they will look your question up on the internet, and then answer you.
• Smart Thermostats: You can voice control it or tell it (using a tablet or smartphone) at which times and where to hear or cool your house. Example: You can set your house to cool of every day, but tell it to turn everthing of the week you are going on vacation so that you don't have to worry about saving energy later.
• Multi-room audio systems: You can stream music on them using Spotify or other apps. You can also imprive the sound of your TV by also streaming the sound through the speakers.
• Home Security Cameras: Cameras you can put outside or inside your house so you can see what is happening inside or outside your house from your connected tablet. The best known of these is the Ring Door Camera.
• Smart Fire Alarm: like most fire alarms (it beeps) but it also alerts all smartphones that you authorize ans contacts.
• IFTTT: Stands for "If This Than That". It allows different smart devices to connect and work together. (Null)
• Smart Locks and Smart Garage Doors: You can also lock and unlock your front, back, and all connected doors from your device using smart locks. Your garage door can also be made to open and close by using smart garage door openers. (Simpson)

Pros of Smart Devices:

• Convenient - This kind of technology makes peoples' lives easier. People will no longer need to get up tp turn lights, thermostats, and other things on and of. You can control everything just from your device or by speaking to your smart home speaker. This saves the user's time and energy.
• Safety - Smart home cameras and fire alarms make the home safer. Whether there is an actual threat outside of your home, or you just want to know how your kids are behaving for the babysitter, your cameras will prove very useful. Having fire alarms that also alert your phones in an emergency also benifits your family's safety. ("Smart")
• Saves Energy - Smart devices save your energy by being easy to control from any location. For example, if you left on a vacation and forgot to turn your AC off, you can turn it of remotely, or more conviently, tell it to turn off ahead of time. If you are using Bluetooth to connect your smart devices with your mobile device, the connection will stop if you are too far away, but using loT devices ensures that you can connect even if you are very far away as long as the smart system is connected to your device with WiFi. ("How")

Cons of Smart Devices:

• Installation - Installing most smart devices is very complicated and takes a lot of time. ("Smart") Some of the devices have to be set up by proffesionals which can become very expensive. ("How")
• Needs Internet - These devices completely rely on the internet and will not work without it, so if a person loses power, he will need to do everything that usally is controlled by AI manually. Also, having a lot of smart devices on your internet will slow your internet down. ("Smart")
• Data Collection - Smart home devices such as Google Home and Alexa process and save the things you save to them. Even though a lot of the data is used to help you, but some of the data collection is bad. This data is feed into a large pool of data where everything is further processed by AI. These recordings can be used for targeted advertisement and there is also a danger in the recordings being hacked. Click on this Youtube video to learn more. Link . (English)

Hacking Smart Devices and How to Protect Yourself Against Being Hacked:

• Dangers of Being Hacked - if one your smart devices is hacked, it will be a lot easier for the hacker to hack into your other devices, especially if there is a shared password.
• Story and Words From and Ethical Hacker - Ethical hacker Rob Simon was employed by News 5. He started out in a van not far from the house he was trying to hack. He quickly hacked into the house's smart thermostat by trying out commonly used passwords. He then explained the dangers of hacking into something as simple as a thermometer. "Maybe (the homeowner is) scheduling a lower temperature than you would typically use for, say, about a week," said Simon. "It might be possible that that user is going to be on vacation during that time. So, they might not be home." (Walsh)
• What Can be Viewed if You're Hacked - personal information (such as other passwords bank account information). If a hacker hacks into your cameras or/and your smart locks, the the hacker can watch you, see when you leave your house, and then open your door by hacking into a smart lock and then getting in.
• How to Protect Yourself : Passwords- Make your passwords random sequences of letters, numbers, and other characters. Also change your passwords at least once every six months and have different passwords for different devices.
• How to Protect Yourself : Wifi - do not use public websites since it is very easy to hack into them. Only use private wifi and private hotspots to use or check on your smart devices.
• How to Protect Yourself: Updates - Sometimes updates have important security updates that make your devices harder to hack, so it is important to install updates.
• How to Protect Yourself : Installation - Even though you may feel that by installing smart home devices by yourself you will save money, most devices, especially cameras should be installed by professionals. (Simpson)

Bibliography

• 1 - Null, Christopher, "Smart Home Guide For Beginners". Tech Hive , Dec 2020, https://www.techhive.com/article/3297744/smart-home-guide-for-beginners-how-to-make-your-home-more-convenient-to-live-in.html
• 2 - "Smart Home Technology:Pros and Cons" Axiomq, February 2020, https://axiomq.com/blog/smart-home-technology-pros-and-cons/
• 3 - "How Do Smart Homes WOrk? Advantages and Disadvantages of Smart Himes". Builders and Developers,PVS, November 2018, https://pvsbuilders.com/advantages-and-disadvantages-smart-homes/
• 4 - Simpson, Rick, "How to Prevent Your Smartphone From Being Hacked" Vector Security, May 2020, https://www.vectorsecurity.com/blog/how-to-prevent-your-smart-devices-from-beinghacked#:~:text=The%20Risks%20of%20IoT%20Device%20Hacking&text=See%20how%20one%20ethical%20hacker, passwords%2C%20home%20calendars%20and%20more. &text=Here%2C%20hackers%20take%20control%20of,to%20crash%20targeted%20business%20websites.
• 5 - Walsh, Jonathan, "Ethical Hacker Shows How Easily Smart Devices Can Be Hacked" News 5 Cleveland, November 2019 https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/investigations/ethical-hacker-shows-us-how-easily-smart-devices-can-be-hacked-and-give-access-to-your-personal-info
• 6 - English, Trevor, "What Data are Voice Assistants Collecting and How to Protect Yoursef" Interesting Engineering, January 2020 https://interestingengineering.com/what-data-are-voice-assistants-collecting-and-how-to-protect-yourself