Perhaps the best part of this anecdote was Swenson’s incredulous conclusion that the situation “could have been worse.” But he’s right that it was nice of the hacker to let him know his vacuum was hacked instead of spying on him indefinitely.
The most common issue people have with so-called “smart” home devices is that they often require a software subscription to access core functionality, and if the manufacturer goes under or stops supporting the device, it simply becomes a paperweight.
the only tiny saving grace of those pieces of shit is that they got rubes to put up battery powered cameras which are trivially easy to disable and often not active regardless due to a dead battery. I moved into a shared house with some. The batteries were charged like twice in 2 years and I put duct tape over the camera on the one facing the street