Smart homes efficiently provide security, comfort, convenience, and energy-saving benefits. Smart Internet Devices lets you control your house appliances linked with smart smartphone apps. Smart home enables you to monitor and manage lighting, security cameras, heating systems, etc. But, these benefits come with several concerns. In this article, we will explain both convenience and privacy concerns that come along with smart homes. And later, we will share tips to weigh down negative concerns.
How A Smart Home Works?
Smart homes include various smart devices of different sizes connected to the internet to control functions remotely. These smart devices have revolutionized how we interact with our environment, providing unprecedented convenience and efficiency, for example, managing lights and heating systems, security cameras, and other appliances. These functions have brought so much ease into human life.
It would help to link your smart devices to the compatible home automation hub with your standard WiFi protocols; Bluetooth can operate through your smartphone, tablet, or home network router.
Benefits Of Integrating Smart Homes Technology
Before discussing the privacy concern, we should see the benefits smart home offers to homeowners to balance out the comparison.
Makes Life More Convenient
With the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT), we can now simplify our lives and bring more convenience to them. To provide home protection, various reliable smart locks are available on the market that can collect and analyze data about door opening and closing schedules and lock doors automatically. Thus, homeowners can watch their door status from apps and control it remotely.
Google Home and Amazon’s Alexa are popular smart home assistants that help remotely manage lighting, heating, and entertainment. Smart plugs, switches, and bulbs are a necessity for smart lighting. However, smart thermostat analyzes characteristics from in-home sensors and control temperature, which covers smart heating equipment.
Smart TVs and speakers are the final two devices that represent smart entertainment. There are many fascinating things available for affordable costs with these digital helpers.
Brings Comfort and Better Health
A person needs enough sleep to be comfortable and healthy. People need to get restful sleep to perform well the next day. They employ such innovative techniques to make their lives easier. The Human-centric lighting HCL system best improves human functions, sleep, and enhanced vision since light affects body clocks and circadian rhythms.
People want to achieve comfort and security, so they like to have their smartphones connected to a single system, which can help them monitor security cameras, smoke or fire detectors, and door alarms to avoid unpleasant events.
Conserves Energy
Energy-efficient smart home systems help homeowners feel more responsible and save money. Smart Homes become beneficial by conserving energy and bringing better energy efficiency. It also lowers costs for homeowners and reduces stress in managing their homes.
For example, Smart Thermostat is designed to learn user preferences, automatically adjusting the temperature to save energy. Lighting also works by sensing no individual in the home or room. It turns off quickly to save the light.
Smart Home At The Expense Of Privacy?
By 2025, more than 21.3% of households worldwide will start using smart home devices for good causes. But with the rise of smart home technology, many studies have proven that these benefits come at the expense of cybersecurity and privacy.
According to research, people do not completely trust the smart device companies. 93% of Consumers have concerns about sharing their personal information with those companies. We will address several security risks in the connected smart home below.
IoT Devices Can Get Hacked
Devices often lack security measures when released to the market. User guides occasionally don’t cover privacy issues or provide enough information to ensure the device is secure. For instance, security cameras and baby monitors have been hacked, enabling criminals to spy inside a home.
IoT devices are vulnerable to hacking because of weak privacy settings. By setting a preventive privacy policy, one can secure the positive use of smart home devices.
Reveals your Personal Information
Smart devices are not the only thing at risk if your home network controlled by the main internet account is also vulnerable. Your data, like your email, social media accounts, bank accounts, etc., also become susceptible to cyberattacks. If someone gets access to any of that, they can intrude into your mobile to obtain personal information or even your home. So, a thief can monitor your device usage patterns to determine when you are gone from home.
Involvement Of Third Party Companies
Your Smart Devices can record your chats and preferences, which third-party companies could utilize. Google or Alexa voice-activated AI assistance requires information to be sent to remote servers for further processing. Such companies claim that they won’t ever compromise your privacy, but there is a chance that your data could be mishandled or exploited.
As long as you address security issues closely and take smart measures to ensure your home is safe and secure, you can benefit from the advantages of the smart home.
How You Can Make Your Smart Home Secure?
To overcome privacy concerns and to get the most out of the convenience of smart homes, you should follow some valuable tricks shared in this article. Striking a balance between comfort and privacy is crucial as we traverse the world of smart homes. Here are some actions you may take to use smart home features while maintaining your privacy.
The first and foremost step for securing your smart home is to opt for a separate network from other networks. For IoT devices, homeowners should use guest networks to isolate other networks. If you take preventive measures, then it will secure your data like email, social media accounts, or documents from hackers to exploit.
Investigate the Privacy Policy
Manufacturers and service providers of smart devices offer privacy policies. Homeowners should read them carefully about what data they collect and how they will use it. And most importantly, who has access to it?
Enable Two-factor Authentication
Along with using strong passwords, homeowners should enable two-factor authentication for login. So that you can avoid hacking your intelligent system, including your security cameras.
Robust and Updated Security Software
It would help if you always used strong, updated software and firewalls to patch security vulnerabilities. Service providers will also offer those updated versions whenever available.
Continuous Review of Permissions
Every application asks permission to access specific data from your device or mobile. You should always check permissions and disallow sharing sensitive or unnecessary information to align with your preferences.
Use Of Secure Network
A strong and unique WiFi password with a robust firewall router can achieve Network Security. You can also change the name and password of the network every six months for extra protection.
Bottom Line
It has been estimated that there are 300 million smart homes worldwide, specifically in the US, with 60.4 million households actively using smart home devices in 2023. People get endless benefits from IoT devices to make their lives better. However, Users of smart home appliances have an immense responsibility to secure their data. So, it’s up to you to guarantee your home with your IoT home to achieve better control, security, and privacy.
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