Increasingly, household devices connect to the Internet through your home wi-fi and share information, send notifications to you, give you access to video streams for example, take instructions from your smart phone and so on.

Smart speakers, smart doorbells, smart cameras and security devices, smart TV and even smart toilets are being more commonplace.

This can be great but can also be a security risk.

Setting up your device

Many of these devices effectively set themselves up and just need your wi-fi password to connect, but others need a complex setting up procedure.

When you buy such a device from a well-known computer maker then the device is very likely to have secure communications but devices from small fairly new manufacturers may have little or nothing to make them secure.

On initial setup, make sure to use a strong password and select any settings that increase security e.g. saying yes to data backups.

Some of these products e.g. security cameras may need you to create an online account and link that to the device and probably to your smart phone. Make sure to use a new strong password for this.

Consider the use of Two factor authorisation if the device offers this.

Disposing Safely of Your Device

Disposing Safely of Your Device

At end of life, there are extra considerations with these devices, that you don’t have to bother with for most household objects.

It’s like trying to dispose of a computer – what data is there on the device, or that the device can access that you do not want anyone else to see – confidential information, wi-fi password, video clips etc.

Make sure to delete any such data in a way that it cannot be recreated by anyone.

One simple answer may be the destruction of any internal data storage.

If you have any worrying experiences with these devices do let me know, by email.