Making Your Smart Home More Privacy-Secure

Hi everyone! I'm Bob, and like many of you, I love the convenience of smart home devices. But after learning more about privacy and transparency concerns, I decided to take back control and make my smart home more secure. Here's what I found:

First, a few HELPFUL links

Privacy Not Included

Reviews of most IT devices (smart home, cars, toys, etc) and how they respect the users' privacy.

Read more

Electronic Frontier Foundation

To go further on privacy and how you could improve your smart home resilience.

Read more

Privacy & Security Brainiacs

A sum-up leaflet of the most important privacy and security tips for your smart home.

Read more

GDPR Enforcement Tracker

A database that tracks the latest fines ordered on non-compliant organizations and companies.

Read more

Now let's take a look at your settings

Most platforms allow you to adjust settings regarding data collection and its usage. But more often than not, it is hidden in the tranches of the app in question...
This section aims to give a list of a few easy settings to opt out of in order to limit the data being accessed!

1. Data Collection

   See if you can turn off features that collect unnecessary data, like location tracking or microphone access.

   • Turn off "Allow Apps to Request to Track" in Tracking settings
   • Consider sharing only approximate location data rather than precise data with apps
   • Opt-out of microphone, camera, location and file access when possible
   • Opt-out of voice recognition settings
2. Data Sharing

   Check if you can control who your device shares data with. Can you opt-out of third-party data sharing?

   • Disable "Personalized Ads" in Advertising settings
   • Toggle off "Share Analytics" in Analytics & Improvements
   • Restrict visibility of shared content to "Only Me" or "Friends" in privacy settings
   • Limit the visibility of personal information like birthday and contact details. You could even delete / not share information non mandatory or give approximations for sensitive data e.g birthday, home address etc
3. Device Activity

   See if you can review and delete past voice commands or activity logs

   • Specific to Echo speakers and Ring cameras: turn off Amazon Sidewalk feature to prevent data sharing with other devices
   • Set auto-delete for Web & App Activity and Location History to delete data older than three months
   • In general, you should regularly visit your history to delete any voice or video recordings, research history and else. This could improve your overall privacy

Finally read carefully the infograph on smartphone data collection

At this point you might be wondering, but Bob why are now talking about smartphones? Well the answer is simple, every smart phone device is connected to a hub in some way. In a vast majority of cases, this hub is your own personal smartphone. That is why it is important to also review the privacy settings and setup of this device!

Test your knowledge on this chapter!