Privacy
After watching Apple's WWDC 2019 keynote, I'm struck by the company stressing privacy.
Let me explain. Recently I had to replace the thermostat at my mother's house. We went with a Venstar digital thermostat. One of the options was to put in a WiFi card and control it on your phone through their server. Now the thermostat is perfectly capable of working as a thermostat and even some basic programing without the server connection. But you can't use a phone to control the thermostat without that server connection, even though the connection isn't necessary for functionality. It's a tradeoff, you get the remote control and they get to monitor your HVAC and possibly other things on your WiFi network. There's no need for the server connection and no need for the server itself except to watch what you are doing.
This is the default.
Obviously Venstar isn't the only company that does this. Alphabet (Google) built their entire business model on keeping track of your every action. Advertisers use webpages to follow you. One of the great tech tragedies is that the original iPads can't be used for web surfing anymore because advertisers tried to exploit the code so much that it crashes the browser.
Somehow, advertising became more that just showing you the product and more about tracking you.
This means that there is a huge market out there for privacy. That's why VPN services are doing so well. And that is why Apple is working to make their products more secure.
Security and privacy should be the default.
Let me explain. Recently I had to replace the thermostat at my mother's house. We went with a Venstar digital thermostat. One of the options was to put in a WiFi card and control it on your phone through their server. Now the thermostat is perfectly capable of working as a thermostat and even some basic programing without the server connection. But you can't use a phone to control the thermostat without that server connection, even though the connection isn't necessary for functionality. It's a tradeoff, you get the remote control and they get to monitor your HVAC and possibly other things on your WiFi network. There's no need for the server connection and no need for the server itself except to watch what you are doing.
This is the default.
Obviously Venstar isn't the only company that does this. Alphabet (Google) built their entire business model on keeping track of your every action. Advertisers use webpages to follow you. One of the great tech tragedies is that the original iPads can't be used for web surfing anymore because advertisers tried to exploit the code so much that it crashes the browser.
Somehow, advertising became more that just showing you the product and more about tracking you.
This means that there is a huge market out there for privacy. That's why VPN services are doing so well. And that is why Apple is working to make their products more secure.
Security and privacy should be the default.
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