back to article Creepy or super creepy? That is the question Mozilla's throwing at IoT Christmas pressies

The FREDI baby monitor has been ranked creepiest connected home gadget on offer this festive season in a survey by Mozilla. According to Mozilla, the babycam uses a default password of "123" that users aren't forced to change, it doesn't use encryption and has a history of being hacked – earning it a "super creepy" tag from …

  1. magickmark
    Big Brother

    Rotate the Pod Door, HAL

    I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave

    1. TimMaher Silver badge

      Re: Rotate the Pod Door, HAL

      Sadly, Douglas Rain has just died.

    2. Alister

      Re: Rotate the Pod Door, HAL

      I'm sorry Dave, but the Pod door cannot rotate. I can open the Pod Bay door for you, or rotate the Pod for you, which would you prefer?

  2. Neil Barnes Silver badge

    When you aren't drinking enough, it glows. Which is fine.

    I'll eat when I'm hungry,

    and I'll drink when I'm dry,

    and if moonshine don't kill me,

    I'll live till I die.

    1. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

      Re: When you aren't drinking enough, it glows. Which is fine.

      and if moonshine don't kill me,

      I'll live till I die.

      And even if the moonshine kills me,

      I'll still live till I die.."

  3. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

    Does it spy on me?

    Of course it does. That's what IoT is all about.

    Sill an answer waiting for a decent question

  4. Christian Berger

    Now if Mozilla would look at itself

    They'd flag themselves for:

    * doing DNS over JSON over HTTPs with Cloudflare

    * putting more and more privacy invading features into the web (e.g. Blutooth, WebAssembly)

    * trying to coax people into having accounts with them to share their browser history

    and probably lots more privacy threatening stuff going on at Mozilla.

    1. Andy The Hat Silver badge

      Re: Now if Mozilla would look at itself

      Welcome to the Internet. If you've done nothing wrong there's nothing to worry about ... until there is, at which point all hell breaks loose.

      When will people realise that IoT *is* Big Brother except it's corporates and criminals in the harness with the state trying desperately to hold onto the reins of an ever accelerating wagon.

      1. doublelayer Silver badge

        Re: Now if Mozilla would look at itself

        That's all true, but mozilla still has the browser that is less privacy-invading than the main competitors. Of the browsers that real users (read not us) install, firefox is the one I'm most comfortable with. In addition, firefox being open means that most of the browsers that are better are forks or redistributions of it.

    2. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: Now if Mozilla would look at itself

      * trying to coax people into having accounts with them to share their browser history

      Claiming you can self-host Firefox sync data but not clearly telling anyone how to do it or putting out an up-to-date reference server.

  5. Mage Silver badge
    Big Brother

    Did ANY pass?

    Probably not.

  6. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

    Word association football

    Christmas being mentioned, my brain thought you were talking about a connected hot water bottle. Since you're not, I'll be patenting that. :-)

    1. vir

      Re: Word association football

      The hot water bottle connects to your Apple watch so you can tell if it's still hot with a simple glance at your wrist or you can ask "Alexa, is this water bottle in bed with me still hot?"

      Progress.

    2. Clarecats

      Re: Word association football

      I took it as a hot water bottle too, probably because I don't use or buy the other kind.

  7. Slow Joe Crow
    WTF?

    Why buy this stuff in the first place?

    Starting with the connected water bottle, why on earth do people spend money on stuff just because it's "connected"? I don't need machinery to tell me when to drink, I don't need to monitor my pet's dish (and open a point of attack into my network) and the only thing I use Alexa for is the "Alexa play Despacito" meme, which doesn't require an actual Alexa. This is good because I don't want voice controlled crap eavesdropping on me.

    As an aside my finest meme was when I walked into the kitchen wearing tracksuit pants and Adidas sandals, Slav squatted next to my teenaged daughter and said "Alexa Amazonova, to be hardbass playing".

    1. vir

      Re: Why buy this stuff in the first place?

      The Hidrate [sic] Spark's website is that great border area between serious and satire:

      "Syncs with Fitbit, Apple Watch & Health, Under Armour Record, Nokia Health Mate, and Google Fit.

      These are optional fitness integrations. The bottle and app can be used without them."

      "Proven to be accurate within 3% compared to manual recordings during a medical study."

      "Keep an eye on friends and make sure they stay hydrated."

      "Never lose your bottle. See your bottle's last synced location in the app."

      And then a "benefits of water" section that interestingly enough fails to list "postpones death, but doesn't avert it".

      1. Nattrash
        Pint

        Re: Why buy this stuff in the first place?

        "Keep an eye on friends and make sure they stay hydrated."

        Now, why haven't I seen this in my local pub? Or any pub for that matter?

        1. Stoneshop
          Go

          Re: Why buy this stuff in the first place?

          Now, why haven't I seen this in my local pub? Or any pub for that matter?

          And the obvious integration with the pub's Ordering and Loyalty apps, and your bank's mobile payment app (in a way that doesn't preclude you from hydrating your mates when the banking behind that app inevitably goes on the blink).

    2. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

      Re: Why buy this stuff in the first place?

      I don't need to monitor my pet's dish

      You obviously don't have cats.. (or do have cats that don't have a problem informing you, loudly and often, when the food level drops below 25%).

      In our multi-cat household we have 4 that (mostly) eat only kibble[1] and 3 that eat mostly cat[2] meat (although will eat biscuits as well since they are available). The meat only gets given them in the kitchen, but we have two large bowls of kibble upstairs for the more shy cats.

      [1] Expensive stuff (for sensitive stomachs) - two of our cats were very, very ill when they came to us as rescues (green runny stuff coming out of the backsides of a 8-month old mother cat and her five three-week old kittens in never a good sign - especially when the mother isn't cleaning the kittens. One kitten died within a day or so but the other 4 survived. We ended up keeping the mother cat[3] and one of her kittens[4]). They were left with very sensitive stomachs and so need specific foods to stop them being ill again.

      [2] And not cheap tinned stuff - certainly not! Which means bulk buying of pouches when on special offer in the local supermarkets. Several of them do supplement their diets with warm, fresh meat.. And then insist of telling us about it, at high volume, at 3am..

      [3] Which really, really didn't impress our senior female cat since the mother cat was (theoretically) above her in the pecking order. Even after the mother-cat was spayed, she still had to give boss-female a wide berth..

      [4] Naturally, the one that the mother-cat liked the least. The one who, if cats had autism, would be diagnosed as somewhere on the spectrum. She's a remarkably pretty calico cat though (to go with our remarkably pretty tortie).

    3. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

      Re: Why buy this stuff in the first place?

      and open a point of attack into my network

      You mean you don't have a separate wifi network just for IoT?

      (Pats Ubiquiti APs fondly)

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Mozilla's throwing at IoT Christmas pressies

    in the usual fashion, I assume the "creepy" from the headline refers to Mozilla installing another "helpful" this or that tracking, unremovable bit. Surprisingly, when I made a bold step past the headline, I discovered a different reality awaits!

  9. Mayday
    Flame

    NONE of this shit

    Needs to be connected to the internet, or to the "cloud".

    End of story.

    Solutions looking for a problem, but causing many of the latter.

  10. DerekCurrie
    Stop

    Incompetent Technology

    Incompetent

    Oaf

    Technology

    Idiotic

    Odious

    Twaddle

    . . .

  11. VikiAi

    Not to worry

    It's only Spendmass - By March most of the spying will be on cockroaches in landfill sites anyway.

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