Internet of things. Is it really safe?

Technological evolution is a fascinating thing to observe. For the last 20 years so many things have been invented, it’s just blowing my mind. When the Internet appeared, it was just a huge experiment of what we can do and attain with such advancement.

We created an email just to test an idea of exchanging of information via permanent address in rapid and easy way. Nobody ever thought that it would have such success.

We invented social media networks just because of necessity to connect with our friends and to establish new relationships.

We were presented to Bitcoin as an alternative to send value via decentralized and distributed network. Who could’ve known that it would have a possibility to replace the entire financial system?

We were given a freedom of choice to invent any form and taste of devices. We created laptops, smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, drones, robots etc.

Those examples prove that we, as a society, are developing and improving, not necessarily in spiritual way but let’s just skip this part :)

Internet is everything right now, people are hooked on it like a drug. The reason for that I believe is because it allows us to share and consume human emotions in a form of posts, messages, videos, gifs etc.

What is more interesting is that Internet can connect not only people together but devices as well.

This thing is called Internet of things (IoT), I’m pretty sure you’ve heard about it somewhere or maybe you have a project that is related to this technology.

The main principle of IoT is that every single device or, in frequent occasions, physical thing can be connected to the Internet in order to exchange and process information that it gathered during some period of time.

This opportunity opens a door to a whole new dimension of experiments. Engineers and programmers who are working on this are challenged with completely new and sometimes impossible tasks that has to be done anyway.

The most vivid example of IoT is a concept of smart city, where basically all infrastructures are connected to the network and are exchanging information for the benefit of society.

And by all infrastructures, I mean all of them: transportation systems, educational institutions, water supply networks, health centers, community services, power plants and so forth.

Imagine, you have a health tracker that is recording and processing your heart rate, sleep cycles, your pressure and so on. Who knows, maybe you’re wearing one of them right now?

Now, imagine you’re sleeping and all of a sudden your heart rate begins to pump and your breath starts to increase faster than usual. Such abnormal activity is fixated through your tracker and being sent to the local health center as an emergency alert. Because it is happened instantly, doctors can reach to you in the right time and save your life. Pretty cool, right?

Or how about having all of the cameras in the world connected to the web and talking to each other, while searching for unusual patterns of behavior of people to prevent crime and drastically reduce the chances of missing a robber?

Or how about having a smart home where all of your “things”, including your fridge, coffee making machine, air conditioning system, lighting, floor and even your chair connected to the network? Insanely cool, right? Or insanely not?

Last year I attended IoT conference here in Kiev, from which I remember the example of smart mattress which records various data about your sleep and makes it more comfortable for you. It was fun to hear because it was a real project that people were working on.

Those are only a few of possible implementations of how IoT can enter our life.

However the most important question for me was - is it really safe to send all of that information to unknown people?

Knowing the fact that such info will be available to the government, it most likely will be used against us in one way or another.

On top of that, everything that was created by a human has certain vulnerabilities that can be found by hackers. I suppose, they are already working on that, while you’re reading this post.

In fact, my friend, who is a lawyer, told me that stealing the info from messengers and fitness trackers are quite frequent events, especially in Europe. Despite of the fact that it happens often, no bill is being created to handle those situations. That is a huge problem that all of the governments have to deal with before it went viral.

In any case, I truly see an immense potential in every area of our lives due to those innovations. But I’m still concerned about privacy and security issues that IoT may not handle at all.

Image credits: 1; 2; 3; 4

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Hope you loved a story.

Your friend, Dmitriy :)