Merry Christmas, Your New Air Fryer Is Spying on You ⇥ gizmodo.com

A press release from U.K. consumer advocacy group Which?:

The consumer champion rated products across four categories and gave them overall privacy scores for factors including consent and what data access they want. Researchers found data collection often went well beyond what was necessary for the functionality of the product – suggesting data could, in some cases, be being shared with third parties for marketing purposes. Which? is calling for firms to prioritise privacy over profits.

This includes products as pedestrian as air fryers, which apparently wanted the precise location of users and permission to record audio. There could be a valid reason for these permissions — for example, perhaps the app allows you to automate the air fryer to preheat when you return home; or, perhaps there is voice control functionality which, for understandable reasons, is not delineated in a permissions request for “recording” one’s voice.

I downloaded the Xiaomi app to look into these possibilities, but I was unable to proceed unless I created an account and connected a relevant product. I also looked at manuals for different smart air fryers from these brands, but that did not clear anything up because — wisely — these manufacturers do not include app-related information in their printed documentation.

Even if these permissions requests are perfectly innocent and were correctly documented — according to Which?, they are not — it is ridiculous that buyers need to consider all this just to use some appliance.

Matthew Gault, Gizmodo:

But it shouldn’t be this way. Every piece of tech shouldn’t be a devil’s bargain where we allow a tech company to read through our phone’s contact list so we can remotely shut off an oven. More people are pissed about this issue and complaining to their government. Watchdog groups in the U.K. and the U.S. are paying attention.

We can do something about this. We can have comprehensive privacy laws with the backing of well-funded regulators. But until that happens, everything “smart” is capable of lucrative contributions to the broader data broker and surveillance advertising markets, just because people want to use the product’s features.