Everybody is rushing to either “cloud” enable their products or make it part of the Internet of things. There are countless examples of this nonsense. Now we even have water pitchers with fucking Wi-Fi capabilities:
Starting today, Brita will sell a sensor-filled, WiFi-connected Brita pitcher (yes, you read that correctly) that will work with Dash Replenishment Service.
The new pitcher, called the Brita Infinity pitcher, will be able to track how much water is flowing through the pitcher. When approximately 40 gallons of water have passed through the pitcher’s purification filter, the pitcher will then send a signal to the Dash Replenishment Service to reorder more filters.
Instead of having a watch pitcher you have to replace filters on whenever you water starts to taste funky you can have that and concerns about battery power, whether the pitcher is accurately measuring water usage and not shaving a bit off of the top to increase Brita’s profits, and network security too!
We’re at the point where we need to strongly consider separate wireless networks and VLANs for our Internet enabled devices. The utter lack of security concerns most Internet of Things manufacturers have shown so far makes these devices too dangerous to let onto our usual networks but the technology is becoming so pervasive that simply ignoring the technology will become increasingly more difficult.
Until I’m convinced this mess is straightened out (which I’m guessing will take years), I plan to be very careful to avoid devices that attach to my computer network, or to the internet.