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Karen Langston's avatar

The amount of data we unknowingly give away is honestly mind-blowing Jason. Smart home devices are a big one—so many people don’t realize how much they track! Setting up a separate Wi-Fi network for IoT devices is such a great tip. Is it expensive to do this? WOuld. you do this for say a smart TV? What’s one privacy mistake you think most people overlook when it comes to smart home tech?

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Jason Rowe's avatar

So the biggest mistake by far is connecting the smart devices to their main network and keeping the default login for that device.

Default logins for devices are public knowledge so criminals bank on the fact that no one knows to change the login on each device. If they can access the network through that device they have access to everything.

Beyond that setting up a separate network for your devices I should be free as almost every internet service provider allows you to set up a “guest network”. This will automatically be segmented from your main network.

Here’s a few guides that will get you started

https://view.flodesk.com/emails/679c390ac4c21b86ff8a9070

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Karen Langston's avatar

thank you Jason. We have two hotspots — not an actual wifi like most homes have. Are we still at risk for this? ANd, this makes sense thank you

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Jason Rowe's avatar

Yes still at risk with hot spots.

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Karen Langston's avatar

thank you Jason

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Jason Rowe's avatar

You’re so welcome!! Hope this helps

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Karen Langston's avatar

Indeed, thank you.

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Barry J McDonald's avatar

Maybe I'm paranoid, but I never felt comfortable with Alexa in my house. I usually just plug my speaker in around Christmas time for background music, but then it's packed away for another 12 months. - One of the kids bought it, so I'd feel guilty tossing it away. - As for Google, I use DuckDuckGo. Not that I was security conscious but that the results had more and more ads and not the search results they used to give me.

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Jason Rowe's avatar

Absolutely!

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Jason Rowe's avatar

You’re not paranoid at all lol I don’t personally use one at all. I have a few smart light bulbs and sockets for automation but they are on a segmented guest network.

Duckduckgo is good but I personally use Brave browser. If you are using duckduckgo on a chrome browser it isn’t doing much good unfortunately but definitely better with ads than Google. Just a suggestion!

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Barry J McDonald's avatar

Thanks for that, I’ll check out Brave.

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Tanya's avatar

Thanks again Jason for your extremely helpful and wise advice. I have never, and never will have smart home devices, or ai voice assistants. I've always felt there was something dodgy about them and alarmed at how many people use them. When I express my views about them I just get a brushed off response which also worries me. But it's their choice ultimately so they may learn the hard way one day. I left Facebook and Messenger 7 years ago. What a liberating decision that I've never looked back on! I use Brave for my browser on my android device and Safari on my apple device. Although I do feel slightly dubious of Safari too. I will never use ai and again am concerned at the amount of friends and family who use ChatGP, inputting personal information such as CV's. I never give permission to share my data on viewing a new website. If there is no button to reject/decline then I leave the site. It's incredibly worrying with the amount of data collection methods that are insidious and vague in their collection. The only one I am guilty of using is Instagram for artistic inspiration, being an artist. I tried not to connect socially but have ended up with a dozen friends who use it for similar purposes. I'm regularly telling Insta that I'm not interested in the ads and content they show me in their algorithms. But I know that I'm still being analysed regardless.

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Xpertfxglobal's avatar

❤️❤️

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Boma's avatar

This is really helpful information. Thank you for sharing. Many blessings to you!

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Jason Rowe's avatar

You’re welcome!! Hey if you’re interested I’d love to offer you a few free guides to help tackle some of these issues. You can get them at the link here Jason-rowe.myflodesk.com/free-guides

Thank you for enjoying my publication

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Anjali Krishnakumar's avatar

Your phone and those apps know almost all there is to know about you. Seems so terrible! The volume of our life that these apps are taking over is scary!! I've heard weather apps are also riskier. Recently i discovered that the WhatsApp one time view messages gets saved on our phone gallery. (I tried and it worked!!)

Sometimes I want to delete all these, buy a mini Nokia and move to the mountains! Enough with these things! 🥲

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Jason Rowe's avatar

🙏🏼

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Jason Rowe's avatar

Yes it seems technology has taken over and times were much simpler when we weren’t constantly connected to our phones.

Could you do me a favor and restack so more people can get this information? I’d be so grateful

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Anjali Krishnakumar's avatar

Sure thing, Jason!

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Sean Mize's avatar

@Jason Rowe thanks for sharing - it’s crazy what we don’t know that we don’t know!

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Jason Rowe's avatar

I’m so happy you found value!! Please do me a favor and restack so more people can get this information. I’d be so grateful

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Michelle Buck's avatar

This is eye opening. I just got off IG and Facebook. I need to delete them still but I don’t use them. Never thought about the smart thermometer! I downloaded the checklist. Thank you!

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Jason Rowe's avatar

It is certainly a scary time!! But there is hope. Just takes a little awareness. Glad you enjoyed it and got your checklist. Be sure to check your welcome email there are 3 more free guides for you in there. They are my must haves for everyone venturing in to data privacy. Cheers!

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Michelle Buck's avatar

Thank you!

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Jason Rowe's avatar

You’re welcome

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BioRat's avatar

Beautiful read. So true about the IoT devices...Shodan anyone? 🤭. Google Dorks for pulling up unsecured cameras and peaking around a bit 👀? I'VE never done that but...😅. This is all so true. If anyone wants a more privacy focused A.i, I've heard Venice is pretty privacy focused. It's pretty much a proxy to the other main LLMs and they don't store your prompt. I've yet to test it out but I'm looking forward to it. I hope that's true! But nothing beats a locally stored LLM. Love this!

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Jason Rowe's avatar

Thanks for the great insight!! I’m not familiar with Venice I’m gonna check it out. Maybe I’ll do something on it soon

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Ellen Williams's avatar

Americans need to get paranoid as hell and protect our privacy.

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