Alexa, tell the fridge to stop listening to me!

Smart appliances are fun, aren't they? Your washing machine texts you to let you know your clothes are dry and your robot vacuum cleaner knows your home like the back of its non-existent hand! Your security cameras are all eyes all the time and well, let's face it, sometimes all ears too!

You are never alone in the supposed "privacy" of your home anymore and the dozens of smart appliance hacking stories should have taught you this quite some time ago. If Alexa is "always listening" then it is safe to assume so are others.

One of our staff members at SHELT has constant altercations with Siri. She works in a private office, quietly, and out of nowhere, Siri will pop up and ask how she can be of help.

So besides your friendly assistant, who or what else may be listening to you?

Let's start with the obvious: your security cameras. The Ringcam incident from 2018 has suddenly resurfaced and is being circulated again showing a little girl in her room, frightened by a "voice" telling her he's her friend and then switching to "I'm Santa Claus" and even instructing her to thrash her bedroom! You can watch the full video here.

How did this happen? Default Factory Settings on the appliance were not changed and so this gave practically easy access to a hacker who used it to have some fun with some families right inside their homes!

Next is your trusted vacuum cleaner! It has been proven that hackers can access your smart vacuum and reconfigure it. While this may seem like a not-so-major issue, it also showed that other devices within the network could be accessed too. Sensitive devices like cameras and data storage units.

This brings us to another appliance, your smart TV! So much of your personal information is stored in your smart TV these days like your preferences, viewing habits, passwords and more.

To ensure safety, make sure you are using a secure network as a start and - we cannot repeat this enough - don't use the same password for all your accounts! Once one is hacked, the rest will follow!

Want to share your experience with smart appliances or add some more tips? Drop a comment below!