A Florida family was terrorized by a notification coming from their Nest security camera alerting them of a missile launch by North Korea.  Interestingly enough, until they heard the alert the family didn’t even know the camera had speakers.

 

 

Although the traumatized mom blames Nest for not notifying their users of a data breach, it wasn’t Nest who was breached. The data breached occurred elsewhere. As the family reuses passwords, once one of their accounts was exposed it left all of their accounts vulnerable.

Although it certainly would have been a nice bit of customer service for Nest to notify their account holders that they should change their passwords if they reuse them, it is not their legal responsibility as they were not hacked. The responsibility for notification lies with the breached account provider.  The family didn’t say whether that notification was received.

Regardless of whether Nest should have notified their users or not, this poor mother still had to watch her terrified nine year old son crawl under the carpet in a panicked attempt to protect himself from nuclear missiles.  No mother should have to experience that.

How do you prevent your family from being traumatized by a prankster hacker?

1. Be familiar with all the features of your  camera before you buy it. Know if it has a microphone or speakers, connects to the internet, whether the default password can be changed, how the firmware is updated and where recorded video is stored.
2. Change the default password as soon as you set up the camera. Use a unique, effective passphrase.
3. Update the camera’s firmware as soon as it is installed and keep it up to date. If it has an automatic update feature, enable it.
4. Disconnect the camera from the internet when you aren’t using it.

Taking these steps will greatly reduce the chances of your camera being hacked. These same steps can be taken to secure any IoT device.

Our world is rapidly changing with technology creeping into all aspects of our lives. It is important that we change with it to ensure our families safety. That means we need to be aware of the risks associated with the devices that we bring into our homes and how to mitigate them. As this Florida family has learned, tech companies aren’t going to do this for us even if we are 114% certain that they should.