Smart Defense Against Smart Devices

by Ninel Gribskaya

It is the year 2025, and we live in a society that is overrun by digital devices under a capitalist state that is becoming increasingly invasive and tyrannical. As the corporations and the iron fist of the dictatorship of capital metastasize, we can never be too careful with how much data is gathered about us. There are many ways that one can protect one’s digital privacy and a big one to consider are the various devices we use, especially these so-called “smart” devices that are becoming a bigger part of our lives.

So what is a smart device anyway? A smart device is a device that has three main features: context awareness, autonomous computing, and connectivity (Urwin, 2023⇲). What this means is that these devices collect information and perform computational tasks on their own and connect to the internet to upload the data to some server somewhere (Urwin, 2023⇲). These devices include many things such as smart watches, TVs, cars, cameras, homes, and many more things (Urwin, 2023⇲).

One immediate concern that comes to mind is that once these devices collect data on you, it can be used for a number of purposes. Corporations generally use this data to advertise to you, especially if you use a device that has Amazon Echo on it; a device that is always listening to you talk even when you are not directly talking to it (Komando, 2019⇲). That innocent little device that listens to your voice commands is in fact as creepy as you imagine it to be; it was discovered that Amazon employees are actually listening to you use Echo enabled devices and making transcriptions (Komando, 2019⇲). Voice driven devices are potential wiretaps, and if you don’t want your voice to be heard and stored on the cloud, it is best not to have one around.

There is one other privacy concern with smart devices, and that is they are generally very insecure (Puzder, 2022⇲). Smart devices can be compromised and used for botnets as seen with the Mirai worm that brought down various websites including Amazon, Twitter, Reddit, Github, and Netflix in 2016 (Puzder, 2022⇲). Smart devices can also be hacked to demand ransom as seen with the hacker who took control of internet-connected chastity cages and told their victims, “Your cock is mine now,” and demanded payment in Bitcoin to release them (Franceschi-Bicchierai, 2021⇲). If random hackers can breach these devices, just imagine what a malicious government entity can do with them.

Given all of these security and privacy concerns, how does one protect themselves from these devices? The easiest solution is generally to not use a smart version of some device if it can be avoided (Puzder, 2022⇲). Some products however no longer offer a non-smart version; it is generally impossible to buy a new TV nowadays that does not have smart functionality built in (Somers, 2023⇲). In the case of smart TVs, one can avoid generally the security and privacy concerns by simply not connecting it to the network and using it as a dumb TV (Somers, 2023⇲). There are plenty of ways to connect to streaming services with an external box such as a Roku or better yet, a real computer (Somers, 2023⇲; Jacobsson Purewal, 2024⇲).

There may of course be some smart devices that you do intend to use with their smart functionality. If you plan to use a smart device there are some steps you can take to limit what it can do on your network and decrease the possibility of them being hacked; some of these will take some technical know-how and specialized networking equipment (UMA Technology, 2024⇲). Some of these steps can be done on your home router such as encrypting your wifi with WPA2 or WPA3 and changing the default wifi password (UMA Technology, 2024⇲). You can also configure your router’s firewall to limit what traffic goes in and out of your network (UMA Technology, 2024⇲). Be sure to disable Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) on your router as well; UPnP would allow smart devices to automatically configure connections on your network and is also generally insecure (Kost, 2025⇲; UMA Technology, 2024⇲). Always keep your devices up to date as much as possible; while you probably can’t count on the manufacturer to give you more privacy, you can at least get their fixes to security vulnerabilities (UMA Technology, 2024⇲). If you are curious as to what your devices are doing, you could monitor your network traffic with a program like Wireshark (UMA Technology, 2024⇲; Henry & Long, 2019). Finally, if you have networking equipment that supports this, you could also segment your network and keep your smart devices on their own VLAN (UMA Technology, 2024⇲).

The key of course to using any smart device, whether you intend to use its smart functionality or intend to use it as a dumb device, is to do some research ahead of time before you buy it. It is likely impossible to completely avoid being spied on given how much we interact with internet connected technology in our daily lives but with some effort we can at least limit how much espionage is conducted upon us by the devices we use.

References

Franceschi-Bicchierai, L. (2021, Jan 11) ‘Your Cock Is Mine Now:’ Hacker Locks Internet-Connected Chastity Cage, Demands Ransom. Vice⇲

Henry, A & Long, E. (2019, Oct 28) How to Tap Your Network and See Everything That Happens On It. Lifehacker⇲

Jacobsson Purewal, S. (2024, Apr 16) Use your TV as a computer monitor: Everything you need to know. PCWorld⇲

Pudzer, D. (2022, Sept 29) Smart Gadgets Are Mostly Insecure. Washington University in St. Louis Office of Information Security⇲

Komando, K. (2019, June 20) When smart devices watch you, what do they do with the data? USA Today⇲

Kost, E (2025, Jan 2) What is UPnP? Yes, It's Still Dangerous in 2025. UpGuard⇲

Somers, J. (2023, Apr 13) How to Make Your Smart TV ‘Dumber’ (and Why You Should) Lifehacker⇲

Urwin, M. (2023, Dec 19) What is a Smart Device? Built In⇲

UMA Technology (2024, Dec 30) 10 Ways to Limit Smart Devices’ Access to Your Home Network. UMA⇲