Used Quest Diagnostics? What we know about their data breach
Quest says someone got into the system doctors use to order lab tests and view results. Here's what's known so far and what you can do now.
Hi, I'm Doug.
I work in the IoT industry, helping companies throughout the Americas solve their toughest problems with tiny but brilliant devices. I also run hands-on smart home workshops at my office in Boca Raton and moderate the r/ShellyUSA subreddit.
I'm a consumer too, and I deeply believe in our innate right to privacy. Local control is critical when I choose any piece of personal electronics - it's how my own home automation choices became my day job. If a device can't do its job without sending my family's data to someone else's server, I don't want it.
I think our data privacy is at greater risk today than at any time before. We're surrounded by tools that make it easy to trade convenience for the safety of our families, and most of us don't see what we gave up. Not until the company behind the product sells our data, suffers a breach, or switches the service off.
That's what I write about here: privacy, local control, and how the hardware actually works. I hope you find something here that is worth your time.
Update: Six Hours at 50°C and Not a Single Alarm
Hundreds of French supermarkets turned out to be about 700, across several countries and several brands of refrigeration controllers. The attackers hid it by stretching defrost cycles so the alarms waited, and a lot of the hacked hardware stopped getting updates years ago. The fix is still the same: get it off the Internet.
Relax, Google Only Wants to Hear What Was Said in Every Video You Watch
Chrome updated itself overnight and left me a present: a tab announcing that Gemini can now answer questions about the videos and audio you play. How thoughtful. Google already knew what you watched, and now it can know what was said. The off switch is in the last line of a tab most people close without reading. Funny how the privacy option always ends up in the fine print.
Six Hours at 50°C and Not a Single Alarm
Somebody set hundreds of French supermarket freezers to “defrost” from a keyboard. Six hours at 50°C later, they were tossing out the meat. Turns out letting strangers run your cold storage over the Internet is a bad idea. Here’s how to keep your freezer’s controls inside the building.
Withings Wants $100 a Year to Tell You You’re Alive
Heart Rate Variability, Now With Price Variability
Breaches Will Keep Happening. Your Exposure Doesn't Have To.
Skyticket may have leaked 14.6 million records, then switched off saved credit cards, which is a lot like locking the barn once the horse is in another country. Three habits limit the damage the next time a company you trust gets hacked.
SmartThings Tracker? Your Lease Is Up
When you buy hardware with a Cloud dependency, you never own. You're just leasing it for an unknown period of time.
When the cloud goes dark
Weber takes your June oven one step away from a $1500 brick