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Piracy Notices Can Mess With Your Thermostat, ISP Warns (torrentfreak.com)
U.S. Internet provider Armstrong has warned persistent pirates on its network of limiting their access to the thermostats if they didn't play by its rules. From a report: Our attention was caught by a recent letter the company sent to one of its users. The ISP points out that it received multiple copyright infringement notices, urging the customer to stop, or else. [...] While reduced Internet speeds are bad enough, there's another scary prospect. The reduced service level may also prevent subscribers from controlling their thermostat remotely. Not ideal during the winter. "Please be advised that this may affect other services which you may have connected to your internet service, such as the ability to control your thermostat remotely or video monitoring services." Accused pirates who want their full service restored, and regain control over their thermostats, have to answer some copyright questions and read an educational piece about copyright infringement.
See subject
Walmart was recently forced to stop their deferral program for first time shoplifters, because the judge said it was extortion. if the reasoning in that case stands, this kind of program may be found to be illegal for the same reasons.
Your internet provider is a conduit on which multiple services rely. It cannot and should not, by law, be used to control or limit access, or police content either of it's own accord or upon request of external parties.
Of course, personally, I am strongly against connecting any devices (other than computers) in my home to the outside facing network, but that's beside the point.
Is this really news? All the ISP is doing is pointing out things that will stop working properly if the customer's internet is shut off. This isn't a case of "behave or we lock you out of your thermostat", it's a case of "behave or we may shut off your internet. Here's what that could affect..."
...it would be a real shame if something were to *happen* to it.
If you are violating the ISP terms of services, then services may be termed.
Is having your Thermostat blocked that big of a deal? So you get home and your home is 50 degrees and you have to turn it up. and be cold for about an hour?
I mean what would happen if your ISP had an outage? Does your IoT fail when there is no connection?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
They are only pointing out what other ancillary services might be interrupted if the ISP shuts off the Internet. The ISP is hoping scare tactics will result in compliance. I donâ(TM)t think the ISP intends to log into the device and change its password or anything like that. They are merely saying âoethink of everything else you use the Internet for, donâ(TM)t lose all that functionality because you are piratingâ.
Armstrong? More like Strongarm.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Another reason to get a VPN.
If the thermostat is downloading Bittorrents of recently released Hollywood movies, it might need more than 4Mbps.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Sure, a single point of failure is outside of your control may fail but four single points of failure stacked atop each other (power/network hardware/ISP/server) is a recipe for disaster.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Yet another great reason to not to connect things to the internet without a great reason.
Dumb pipes or bust. Most people don't need/want the dumb pipe it seems, but at least make it available. They could literally charge more for doing less, but they don't want to, I guess.
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
We aren't all rich here in Silicon Valley. Some of us ride the bus to work with the people who pick up your trash.
... is contract law.
I don't have a problem with the ISP, but I have a problem with the ToS.
Copyright owners should be going directly after the perpetrators.
Why don't we have a ToS with the electric company that NO powered devices will work if we violate copyright?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
What I does a solitare game clock in at 100megabytes and use 1 gig of data weekly?
Isp's are about to find out that net neutrailtiy would have been better than fighting advertising networks.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
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/* get off my lawn mode */ ...and this is probably real good reason why you shouldn't put vital crap like home HVAC into the IoT bucket. Getting up to change the thermostat once in awhile isn't going to kill you, and while an automated home HVAC control setup might save you a few pennies each month, there are models out there which don't require an Internet connection or smartphone app that perform much the same energy-saving measures. /* end */
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
This isn't messing with your thermostat, it's interfering with remote access back to it when you're gone. Something I'm pretty sure 99% of us can't do now anyway and for the 1% who do, lack a substantial need.
The good news is that consumers appear to be getting the message that "smart" devices are dangerous; from what I've read, sales are way down. Security vulnerabilities are the most obvious issue, but there's also stuff like this (the vendor fucking with you for unrelated reasons) and the question of long-term support.
Heating and cooling can be matters of life and death. I wouldn't entrust them to the Internet. (Monitoring them, sure, but not controlling them.)
Out of curiosity, what part of NN would have stopped Joe MoronOnline from downloading a crap malware-loaded binary to his laptop and running it?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I would say a mechanical thermostat like a Honeywell Econostat is good enough. Yes, it may break due to the bimetallic spring and movement, but they are vary reliable. As an added bonus, without physical access, they can't be accessed from remote.
It may be nice to have a programmable thermostat to raise/lower temperature, but it definitely isn't a necessity.
What gets me is that there are thermostats out there that would malfunction or not work if they didn't have a constant internet connection. These devices are not Playstations or Xbox consoles where high-value DRM is a must.
Oh yes, your thermostat will get phreaked up, but don't worry, Netflix will keep streaming well!
Alright, you filthy pirates... Freeze!
Lose = not win
and meter testing like other utilities
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What online IoTish thermostat doesn't have a well-defined offline mode in the first place? Is NEST like that? I don't have one but was thinking about it.
There should be no such thing as an online device that doesn't behave properly when the Internet service goes down. Obviously it can't do everything it can do when the service is up but it should at least be programmable to do something reasonable if not desirable.
Either ISPs are a common carrier, or they aren't. If they're a common carrier, they're agnostic to the traffic they carry. In exchange, they're indemnified from liability for that traffic.
If ISPs argue they can throttle or assign certain traffic to fast lanes (anti-net neutrality), then they're arguing they're not common carriers. If they're not common carriers, then they're liable for the traffic they carry. They will have to track down pirates on their network and enforce copyright lest the copyright holders sue them instead of the actual pirates. They will have to monitor traffic for people plotting crimes, lest they be held liable for aiding and abetting. And if a member of a drug cartel conducts illegal banking transactions, the ISP will be on the hook for money laundering. Someone looks up ways to get away with murder, the ISP will be found complicit. If you can monitor your traffic to detect piracy, what's your excuse for not monitoring it to detect these other things?
That's the Pandora's box the ISPs will open if they decide they don't want to be agnostic to the traffic they carry. But like most people, they're tempted by only the positives of a course of action and blindly ignore the negatives.
It may be nice to have a programmable thermostat to raise/lower temperature, but it definitely isn't a necessity.
I'd really like to kill the heat when I go to bed and have it kick back on about an hour before my alarm goes off. If I owned the thermostat in my apartment, that would be worth the upgrade. That does not require IoT access. Being able to control the temperature in my apartment from work seems like a useless feature.
What gets me is that there are thermostats out there that would malfunction or not work if they didn't have a constant internet connection.
What good's a thermostat that can't help with a DDoS attack?
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
I never heard of someone getting their phone service cut because they were doing something illegal with it.
WTF is an ISP doing trying to play law enforcer? The authorities should get a warrant, tap the traffic, then make an arrest. Or not, if it turns out the evidence wasn't correct.
Then the ISP should update their watchdog software to not give such false positives.
What gets me is that there are thermostats out there that would malfunction or not work if they didn't have a constant internet connection.
Really? Can you name one or are you just assuming that's the case? I don't see why the failure of the remote-access function would keep you from manually adjusting the thermostat. Are there really models out there that have no manual interface?
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Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Jamming radio frequencies is illegal. How is effectively 'jamming' someones internet-connected devices in this way, devices which have no relation whatsoever to the alleged 'illegal activities' the ISP is complaining about, really any different? At the least it sounds like extortion. Considering that all these IoT devices like thermostats must 'phone home' to the manufacturers servers to function, I'd think the manufacturer would have a problem with it legally, too.
In a broader sense, this is the question I think needs to be asked: Is it illegal for anyone to interfere with the transmission or reception of data on the Internet?
they need to get a court order and not some auto take down.
a Programmable and s "Smart" thermostat.
I'd be more concerned about medical equipment in the home that depends on constant internet access to keep someone alive or safe losing connectivity.
they need to get a court order and not some auto take down.
Is that what the law says?
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Given the way devices tend to get redesigned, I'm not convinced that you can expect thermostats that offer remote access to offer local access.
OTOH, since I wouldn't have one in the house, I haven't looked at the current designs. But even if local control exists for all the current designs, I expect them to be "made more efficient" in the future.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
This summer I set our thermostat to 86 while we were away for 3 weeks. When we got home it took the AC about 2 hours to get the house back down to sleeping temps, not exactly a hardship that requiresan always on internet connection to solve. Now if you worked highly variable hours and were single and wanted to avoid that 2 hours of uncomfortable temps while maximizing energy savings I can see it being worthwhile, but that's probably a niche application.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
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My dad used to have a remote monitor for his pacemaker that sent data over the internet to his doctor. Without the remote monitoring, he'd have to make regular trips to the doctor for monitoring (and having an elderly man driving on snowy roads is a risk of its own)
The internet is becoming a utility, and it should be regulated as such - the power company can't turn off your power just because they think you're using electricity to grow marijuana. They can, however, tip off the police about the suspected grow house, but they can't turn off your power.
This is why we need legislation that treats internet access like the US used to treat the mail. Where mail service used to connect each citizen to the rest of the world and the fidelity of the service was vigorously protected, today we have the internet that does essentially the same thing for the modern world. As such internet access and protection of email should be enshrined into law as a basic right with the same protections of privacy as was the original US mail service.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
Why the hell would you want your thermostat hooked to the internet? Or your fridge? WTF is wrong with some people???
Why does anyone need to change the temperature anyway?
I change mine 2 times a year, Once coming into summer to set the upper temp and again in autumn to set the lower temp for winter!. pick a comfortable temp and forget about it,
Just turn it on and off at the at the wall at the appropriate time of day depending on weather conditions and forget about it.
Not hard and certainly does not require any outside connection :-)
If your buying into automation of the heat in general I am surprised you don't see the value. It allows you, if you have portable internet, to be more dynamic with that mentality you are already familiar with. For instance, when leaving work you can turn on the heat so its warmed up when you get home. Or if youre going out to dinner, you can turn it on when you leave the restaurant.
I can see the appeal if you have any requirements a plain old 7 day programmable is too basic to satisfy. I believe google home also detects when you enter the house and profiles you over time to automatically adjust the schedule.
For me, I have electric heat (instant heat when on). So i simply turn it on when i enter the room and off when i leave. But i can see the appeal of an internet connected thermostat once you hit the limitations of a fixed schedule, or if there are multiple schedules needed for each family member. Its the next generation of scheduling thermostat and its easy to picture the uses. Rather than say, an internet connected fridge, which seems totally useless to me. (cue defenders of internet connected fridges...)
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You can connect most smart thermostats to OpenHAB and then control them through your own OpenHAB cloud instance in whatever PaaS provider you want to use to host it (or even not use the cloud component, OpenHAB works just fine with only local hub running). There are a few other projects out there if you want just local hub operation but AFAIK none of them have a self-controlled cloud component for non-local control.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
It may be nice to have a programmable thermostat to raise/lower temperature, but it definitely isn't a necessity.
I'd really like to kill the heat when I go to bed and have it kick back on about an hour before my alarm goes off. If I owned the thermostat in my apartment, that would be worth the upgrade. That does not require IoT access. Being able to control the temperature in my apartment from work seems like a useless feature.
What gets me is that there are thermostats out there that would malfunction or not work if they didn't have a constant internet connection.
What good's a thermostat that can't help with a DDoS attack?
Every major thermostat manufactuerer (Honeywell, et al), offer off-line 7 day programable thermostats. The one I have is set to warm the house up for 7am. (19C to 22C)., The thermostat learns how long it takes on the average, and starts turning on the furnace beginning around 1.5 hours early to up to2 hours before 7am each day. We have -23C outside and with the wind-chill, its like -35C. (The setback is working just fine and in short time. Recovery is slow, needing more than 2 hours to reach 22C. We also have it set to 21C until 5pm and down to 19C at 11:15pm. Saturday and Sundays we follow a different program because we have a different schedule.
And the A/C program is similar, but with higher temp settings.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada