No one is a hero to their toaster (Image: Nick Veasey/Getty)
A smart toothbrush that tells you how you are brushing. A thermostat that lets you control the temperature of your home when you are out. A slow cooker that alerts you when dinner is ready.
More and more of our gadgets are connecting to the internet, letting us interact with our homes from afar. They promise to save us money and improve our health. But are they opening the door to third parties like power companies and Google? If so, the secrets of the home may not be secret for much longer.
"With a smart system, the whole point is that when you use it, it learns about you over time," says James Scott of Microsoft Research in Cambridge, UK, who designs smart home gadgets. "That learning intrinsically involves some sort of logging."
This is essential ...
To continue reading this article, subscribe to receive access to all of newscientist.com, including 20 years of archive content.