Lots of the comments don't trust Google, but I'm not sure I would trust ADT. I was looking to buy a house, which had an ADT system installed. I just called them up, asked about the address, how much monitoring would cost, etc. and they told me what kind of panel, sensors, etc. were installed at the house. No verification at all. Clearly this would help with their sales, but from the perspective of someone who owns the system; I would not want them to give out details of my security system to anyone.
These types of home security systems are more a deterrent than they are anything else. In fact, the ONLY reason I think I'd personally invest in would be automated alerts for fire or emergency situations.
If someone wants into your house, they will get into your house. There's giant glass windows in most homes these days and door locks are hardly much more than a speed bump.
All you should look at ADT for is simply making you not the easiest house to get into. But if someone wants into your house, a security system is unlikely to be something that stops them.
Edit: to be more clear, I think the deterrent part is the equivalent of putting an ADT sign in a window or nearby. THAT is the deterrent, not the system itself.
My house was broken into with the high tech method of a rock through the sidelight window, right on top of the ADT sticker; so much for that theory. This occurred @ 10am on a weekday when we were out for less than an hour too.
We added (real!) cameras after this and for the next 2 years freaked out every time an alert hit our phones. Now there are so many false positives that it's conditioned us to be less uptight.
My sister has a monitored alarm where I'm a secondary contact. On a recent alarm they phoned my to ask if I wanted them to call the cops. As I'm (at least) second in line this had to take at least 15 minutes since the alarm, plus the police response time (tip: minor property crime is not a priority for police). The burglars were long gone by the time anyone got there.
So my point is it's largely security theatre, like airport security. It makes you feel better I guess but does nothing.
> So my point is it's largely security theatre, like airport security.
It's difficult to improve on as well.. good physical security is directly at odds with accessibility and livability.
> It makes you feel better I guess but does nothing.
Worse than that.. as you've noted, it's reconditioned your expectations and it belies the fact that you can never truly secure anything in your home.
If you truly have something valuable, you can either insure it and hope for the best, or store it somewhere other than a space optimized for sleeping, eating and bathing.
If the cost of the security system is less than the discount you get on your insurance policy, then it may be worthwhile purely for that, but it's highly unlikely that the technology will be used to capture the thief let alone recover your property. There is much better and less intrusive technology for that purpose anyways.
Home security seems on the same footing with home anti virus.
My inclination for these kind of systems isn't so much to prevent the act from happening in real-time but more around providing law enforcement with enough footage to land the perpetuators in jail. Of course if that part of the system is broken then we're truly screwed no matter what.
All this is exactly why I've never paid for a security system. I have some cameras in the house but that's more to monitor the kids when we (parents) are out of the house.
I know 100% if someone wants into a house, they will get into the house. I know that when people put 'this property protected by Smith & Wesson' signs on their house, it only informs burglars there are guns to be stolen. I always joked I don't want ADT, just the sign.
But now that I actually have an alarm system, it's great. If I leave for the weekend, I know nobody has broken in. It won't stop them, but I at least know.
All ADT does is call the police. During the most recent civil unrest incidents the police were not responding to 911 calls like this, making it pretty useless when you actually need it.
Police don't really respond to alarm calls anyways. The high degree of false alarms generally puts responding to these at the bottom of the list of things to respond to.
In a city. In a wealthy suburban community the police are usually happy to have something more exciting than off-leash pets and minor traffic violations.
Consider getting an extra car. Not universally applicable, but we have one more car than we use. So there's always a car in our driveway, lending an appearance of occupancy.
Not sure it's any better than an ADT sign, but maybe just as good.
I have a couple of smart lights/smart outlets that do this.
I mostly needed it because for whatever weird ass reason my living room doesn't have lights despite being built in 1994. The lamp I use is fine, but the wall switch for the outlet it's plugged into is by the front entry door, I come in the side entrance where the garage is. So I've rigged it up so that I can turn the lamp on from the garage entry, thus allowing me to just turn on the one light I need anyway if it's dark.
So when I'm away I have it set to turn the lamp on near the time the sun sets, then turn off around my usual bed time. HomeKit is nice and lets me easily turn these automations on or off. Usually during the winter it gets dark anyway so I have another automation that turns the lamp on when I pull into the driveway.
I think that particular outlet is from iDevices and cost something like $40. Worth it imo.
You're combining their two statements. They said that somebody who wants in your house is 100% going to get in if they want to badly enough.
They also said that saying that you have guns definitely increases the attractiveness to burglars. Guns are one of the things that would be easily (not legally) sold to somebody or kept to use in another crime. It wouldn't take long to figure out how many people live in a house and if all of them were gone.
My neighborhood gets a lot of break-ins, and I've tried to understand whether there is a causal link showing that electronic home security lowers break-in risk. The deterrent effect makes intuitive sense, but it's surprisingly hard to find empirical evidence for (even recognizing that it's not the kind of thing you can run an A/B test for). Additionally the internet is so awash in marketing (there's almost never an incentive to tell someone not to buy something) that it's very hard to ascertain the facts, and consumers' behavior in these matters tends to be guided more by perception than true solutions.
I had a similar experience when considering a water filter. In that situation, I was able to actually figure out a sensible path, thanks to a very few unbiased websites: test your water or read your locality's water reports to figure out what your drinking water contaminants actually are, then figure out specifically which filter (if any) will address those specific contaminants. Meanwhile, plenty of people will buy a mass-market water filter for "peace of mind" which may actually be neither necessary nor sufficient.
Well my insurance company offers a minor discount if you have an alarm, so that's about as emperical as it gets. From their perspective you're ~ 2% less likely to have a significant claim with an alarm vs. without
The water filter question is interesting, would you mind sharing which sites you used for guidance? In this same situation right now and having trouble navigating the waters.
No, I think what I was saying was more a reminder more than anything. Understanding limits is useful in a conversation like this.
I don't think someone is more likely to get caught, do you have any sort of documentation to indicate that? I suspect crimes of opportunity might be more likely to be caught I guess, but not someone with any foresight.
If a thief goes in under the impression the house has a security system, it would be easy enough to prevent recognition. Oversized jacket, hat, some sort of mask. All of it nondescript/black, no logos, etc. Apply a little bit of thought to this and it's easy.
In my area, cops aren't likely to show up immediately anyway. Someone would have minutes, not seconds, to get in and out. Maybe in an area with private security or with a larger police force.
That all said though, I think people's fear of crime is much larger than reality. As I said, I think the only value I'd personally find in a system like this is the fire alerts and an emergency button to hit if necessary.
> Home security is about alerting police, in case someone does break in, so they don't have time to get many valuables.
I've had to deal with a few break-ins and every police officer I've talked to about it said that most burglars are in and out in a few minutes. They've mentioned that physical deterrents are helpful (ie. bars on windows) but not once have they said that an alarm system would help matters.
This is true and is actually one of the ways they sell the system.
About five days after we bought our home the ADT salesman came to the door and after seeing that we were on the fence used this as another argument. Like you, I really only wanted it for the fire detection, and the fact that the panel has an emergency button and is located in the back but with clear line of sight to the front door.
We did have one break in during the 8 years we lived there, but the German Shepard was what stopped them, not the alarm sign in the yard.
Yea, all the sign does, for someone motivated enough, is tell them how much time they have. "Okay, they have a security system. Break in, grab the tv, grab the other stuff that's visible and worth something, then run"
At the end of the day... it will deter those that aren't interested in dealing with it. And for those that aren't deterred it just gives them the info they need to know it's a smash, grab and run situation.
It’s not just a deterrent. It also serves as a warning. If I am in the house, I want to know someone is breaking in. I have a lot of mixed feelings about gun laws, but I am definitely an advocate for anyone being able to have a gun in their home to protect themselves - even though I don’t own one.
I would also like to know if someone broke in my home if I am not there.
Yes, I am well aware of the statistics about gun ownership in the home, suicides, accidental shootings, etc.
When I bought my first and current house, the home inspector gave me some amazing advice.
The relevant advice here was "I'm not telling you to do this, but you can buy home alarm system stickers on eBay and thieves literally cannot know whether you actually have the system installed or not."
In the city where I live there is a bylaw where you have to register your alarm system with the police, and must display a mandatory label in the window with a serial number visible at all time. I guess a thief could rely on that during their recon.
mine exists solely for my pets in case of fire or other emergency, everything else is covered by insurance.
ADT used to have a clause in their contracts you could only cancel during a narrow window near renewal, is that still an issue? They are pretty costly per month compared to some other providers, this even if you own your equipment
Not a clue as I don't use them. I think there are cheaper systems out there that provide fire/emergency options. Simplisafe for instance, haven't looked in awhile so I could be wrong, provides fire alerts and things like that.
Not sure what your insurance is like, but mine is $1050/yr. An alarm system would save me $50, barely two months of service for something cheaper, barely one month on a more expensive plan.
agreed the sticker is a big part of it. Although I will say a super loud alarm going off will probably scare way some people and the police do eventually show up if you have monitoring. If I am away from the house for weeks on end that is nice to have.
I'm not sure a run-of-the-mill burglar would be able to do anything with panel information. Any burglar sophisticated enough to alter their plans based on type of security panel is going to be going after diamonds and art, not a smash and grab for a used television.
Releasing sensor data at all seems like a pretty big flaw, though. Lack of window sensors and number or existence of motion detectors seems like a dataset you wouldn't want getting out without some sort of ID verification (or at all).
It would have been a second home, so centralized fire monitoring and flood sensors would have potentially been useful for us. Things like the panel being hardwired instead of cellular, etc. shouldn't be given out over the phone.
To give them the benefit of the doubt, it's possible that they knew the home was just sold because the previous owner had cancelled the subscription for ADT or something and there was no active protection. And maybe they wouldn't have given out that information if it wasn't marked as such in their system.
Would be an interesting experiment to start calling about random addresses.
+1 to this. I didn't do enough research and ended up in a 3 year ADT contact with their extremely dated equipment back in 2016. Eventually I just stopped using their equipment all together and removed all of the sensors and switched to Google Nest products. Terminating the contract required paying off 75% of the remaining amount so I ended up just paying monthly on a service I never used because of how pedatory the contract was.
It's bad enough that you chose it. When I bought my home, one of the conditions was that I take over the contract from the previous owner. I thought that was kind of BS but ADT made it clear that someone would have to pay and the seller made it clear it wasn't going to be her. I ended up paying her to do the cancellation fee so I could avoid getting in bed with ADT.
They’re somewhat useful for monitoring. I don’t expect that they’re much of an actual deterrent and ymmv on if they’re worth the price.
But don’t discount the value in monitoring something that you can’t fully control. By the time someone greats into my house they’ll be long gone with anything of value when the police arrive (if they ever do), but having something alert me and the local Fire Department in case of smoke is useful. Same with leak detection and flooded basements, or break-ins. These are things I’d much rather know when they happen so that I can remediate, gather pets that may be wandering the neighborhood after door kicked in, etc during the day than after getting home from a long day at work (not issue in Covid-19 times). Even worse to come home to find a problem when getting back from business trip or family vacation.
ADT is probably not going to get Google's data. They are limited in what they know about their customers. How much data does ADT have in comparison to Google?
Google OTOH is going to get access to about 6.5 million ADT customers. Needless to say, Google already has acquired a lot of data on a lot of people, including those ADT customers.
If what ADT knows is now known by Google, then it is not just the details of a security system that might be disclosed by one entity, but the details of the people inside the building.
The risk (i.e., the potential damage) of undesired disclosure is greater when one entity has access to "all" data versus when the data is spread amongst multiple entities.
I wonder what this says for the Google/Nest Security product future. The existing Nest Secure[0] is a well designed product, but also rather limiting (only one base unit, which is frustrating for houses with multiple entrances, or large houses). The Nest Secure was released ~3 years ago, and there have been some minor feature improvements, but no hardware additions or changes.
The Nest Secure has been pretty flaky from my own experience. I agree with you that the hardware design is good, but the software is pretty terrible.
For example, many times on the Nest app I'll try to deactivate the alarm (when coming back home) but it'll give an error saying that it couldn't connect to the alarm, try again later. Yet as soon as I open the door, magically the app knows the door is open and the alarm will sound in n seconds, so clearly there's connectivity of some kind.
Furthermore, it seems that some of the requests to change the state of the alarm (disabled, armed) seem to get queued somehow, since sometimes it'll give an error when disabling the alarm through the app, then I'll go in, disable the alarm, reenable it, and a few minutes later it'll disable it as if the app message got processed later. That's pretty much the worst case scenario; not only does it not respond immediately, but it also leaves the system in a state that's not intended by the user.
It's maddening enough that I'm not buying any more Nest products. They're well designed, but it seems that nobody cares about the software past the out of box experience.
Sorry, I should have clarified my point a bit on multiple entrances. I have my keypad near one door, but the other doors are on the opposite side of the house. So my kids may open another door and start the alarm countdown going, won't get there in-time to turn it off all the time. I'd like to be able to have 2 keypads.
As well, there is the siren problem. The siren is not loud enough to be heard in all corners of my house well. I'd like to be able to have a siren in my bedroom so if it does go off in the middle of the night, it would be very clear to me.
I intentionally avoided Nest products like the plague when replacing my parents smoke alarms due to many stories like this [1][2]. Poor leadership and smart home devices do not a good marriage make.
I honestly like bradfitz's youtube video the best to show the Nest Protect (the smoke alarm) issues[0]. They have since fixed these issues, as this was the gen one protect.
For your #2 (no insider knowledge), that looks like people's accounts getting hacked and then the hackers talking through them. All home camera cloud based cameras have had these cases. I think Nest moving to Google account login system for Nest is probably the best protection against this kind of thing happening. Account takeovers happen, and guarding against them at scale is hard (especially when people reuse passwords).
For #1, I think the culture has changed a lot as it's been absorbed into Google's hardware division. Hopefully it's better, but I couldn't say anything of value there.
I swore-off Nest entirely when they shut down Nest API access to anyone but themselves. That killed it for me because I wanted to control my HVAC thermostat from my PC and without firing up Chrome or Bluestacks. I also wanted to log my own long-term thermostat and front door lock history as the Nest app only shows 10 days tops, without CSV export either (why?! That’s a horrible artificial limitation!)
The second thing was seeing Google continue to somehow justify Nest Cameras’ lack of local storage as somehow being a good thing (check the mod posts on the Nest support forums - it’s laughable). That’s idiocy. My house’s coax cable conduit is exposed where it enters the house - it’s trivial to sneak-around the perimeter and snip the coax with a pair of kitchen scissors and then all of my Nest cameras are useless. Why can’t they be configured to save to my LAN’s NAS as a failover?
It sucks for me that the decision to shut down external access to the Nest API was made literally days after I dropped over $1500 on Nest kit - but since then I haven’t bought any more - I’ll be transitioning over to other brands that respect me as a consumer, instead of locking me in to their ecosystem of products designed around the demonstrably false assumption that a home’s internet connection is 100% available.
Everything google does on the home side just seems like pet projects that they abandon 2 years later as they consolidate and change names once again. Meanwhile, Amazon/Ring is killing it coming out with more models, sizes, colors, features, etc.
Hopefully this is a small enough partnership/stake to not torpedo the Samsung Smartthings / ADT partnership. I'm not a user of the latter, but appreciate the growing ecosystem.
Seems like a bad idea to me. But I'm someone who would never use or recommend ADT in the first place. People don't seem to realize... You can run your own serious alarm system (DSC is a great brand) and then self-monitor with devices like the Envisalink. This integrates with Home Assistant too. All the awesome functionality for $0/mo.
Except the time it took you to research, install, validate it's running, and do general upkeep. Also doesn't help you if you're on vacation with limited internet service.
And most importantly, the fact that you have to respond even with your own monitoring. That's most of what you pay ADT for. If they get a ping, they call you. If they can't get in touch with you, they dispatch the relevant people.
Yes you can set this up yourself (and spend a lot more on the hardware, which they generally give to you pretty cheaply or even "free" because you're signing a contract) but when you go hiking in the mountains and someone uses your Facebook posts as a cue that you're out of town, you're SOL.
Don't get me wrong I love looking at all the home security stuff you can do, and it does indeed sound like a neat project. But you're really paying these companies for monitoring and automatic (human) response, not the security systems themselves.
> And most importantly, the fact that you have to respond even with your own monitoring.
So true, my dad has a monitoring system he built and he constantly looks at his phone as a deer or bear or something triggers it. I'd imagine the lost productivity for people who depend on the flow for work would be immense.
Of course, a very good point. For me it's a hobby which I enjoy.
In an area without Internet service, for me, it is common to miss calls as well. Plus, from personal experience, the security company will not notify law enforcement until they have called you to confirm it is not a false-positive alarm.
In my case, before the alarm goes off due to a forced entry, I will have automatically received notifications with snapshots of people around my property. Even if the security company had called immediately, a response would take >10 minutes. So I just self-monitor.
Overall, with home security you basically just want to be a more annoying, harder target than your closest neighbors. It's sad but true.
For the average computer programmer it comes out to around an hour of labor per month. Two if you get the fancy security package. Security equipment is generally free with the monthly subscription.
Yes. Because I have that discount and I do not have a professionally monitored system.
(Arguably, these discounts are things they trust you at your word for, but perhaps if they're not satisfied they're true during a claim, they might use it as a reason to not pay out.)
I wonder what happens to Alarm.com. Do they get bought out by a competitor (possibly Apple), or will their revenue slowly dry up? The ALRM stock price dropped sharply right as this was announced.
Alarm.com has built some of their own hardware, but their operation is obviously much smaller than Nest. Can they still compete?
On the other hand Wyze has most of the things security systems need available. They hinted towards much more affordable home security services. I rather just wait till their options available. All of the things you mention are kind of useless when you go on vacatiom out of the country or you are somewhere rural.
That's basically the premise behind Surety. Except Surety systems are centrally monitored after the DIY install and have tons of customization options.
Please stop being an asshole in HN comments. You've done it more than once recently. We ban accounts that do that, and have had to warn you about this before.
I appreciate your patience in dealing with my sarcastic tone, and the amount of nonsense you must put with over the years. But please don't personally attack me with name calling. Like the guide says, "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
So thanks for bringing this to my attention, I will do better!
I know it's highly open to interpretation, but when I make a remark like "please stop being an asshole in HN comments", I specifically phrase it that way to be a comment about behavior, not person. The choice of the word 'asshole' is not accidental, either—it's a degree more intense than 'jerk', and I use it when the comment and/or the prior history of the account seem to warrant a more intense signal. Sort of like a yellow card vs. a red card:
ADT’s pricing and go-to-market approach is draconian in 2020. Long term contracts, expensive equipment, and high pressure sales tactics couldn’t be any different than my experience with a Nest home security system. Will be interesting to see if and how ADT evolves because of the ownership stake.
The position that a less sophisticated company with less integration into the rest of your live would be able to connect fewer lines with only access to your home security data doesn't seem that outlandish.
The claim that ADT or another large, established home security company is less capable of securing your data than Google requires evidence.
I don't want a company that makes its money selling information to advertisers to have such full access to my life.
I can tell you that Google does not sell your information to anyone. They horde all of their data so that they can sell advertisements targeting groups of people (scarily accurate groups) but they won't sell data on individuals as that impacts their competitive advantage.
Fundamentally, the reason I'd rather anyone but Google have my private data is Google's ability to use it effectively. Many companies can vacuum up data, few are prepared to do anything intelligent with it. Not only does Google have far more data, it's able to use it. That makes them way scarier than ADT.
Really? because there are many examples of smaller less sophisticated companies getting owned by hackers. ADT might not do anything with your data, but hackers have lots of uses for it.
So in your world, Google being able to sell target ads is more dangerous to you, then hackers getting access to your security cams or baby monitors, or stealing your personal dox and reselling them on darknet markets for bitcoin?
There are millions of people who have been harmed by identity theft from databases going around of people's personal info that have been hacked from less secure companies.
You have millions of people scammed by Indian call center scammers by taking advantage of terrible Windows security.
You have tons of scammers buying people's personal financial information from existing databases that are traded.
These are all real, palpable harm, where people have gone bankrupt, spent years cleaning up identity theft, had their children's room monitored by pedophiles and pranksters, etc
> You have millions of people scammed by Indian call center scammers by taking advantage of terrible Windows security.
You know where all of those scams come from? Targeted Google Ads... So yeah, Google being able to sell and target ads is extremely dangerous, especially when they enable ads to be targeted at vulnerable populations like senior citizens.
Funny story, the attack chain here starts with Google Ads, usually to push a Google Chrome extension in the Chrome Web Store, and then people end up letting a scammer onto their PC. And yet "terrible Windows security" is what you are worried about?
I have been asking Google and Googlers alike to address these concerns for years, and Google's movement on it is far too slow, because the systems they use are far too profitable to change.
> You know where all of those scams come from? Targeted Google Ads
No, quite a number of them are done via SMS and VoiceMail spam, e.g. Robocalls. What, you've never gotten a text or voicemail threatening you with a federal bench warrant unless you call up and pay money?
I've actually spent a very large portion of time over the past decade helping seniors deal with scams, and figuring out where they came from. I trace back every scam call I deal with to how they got to it. Google is the top offender. And malicious, scammy ads that push malware have actually been reinstated by Google only hours after I've gotten a Googler to take it down.
Here are screenshots of malware showing on the top search I see seniors search for, tested just now: https://imgur.com/a/rIAMjpM
Google sells scammers the ability to squat the trademark of a competitor, MapQuest (very likely illegal in it's own right, no ads are served on a search for "google maps"), which is commonly searched by senior citizens. The ad is barely perceptible from a real, organic result, and claims to be MapQuest. And the result is a page that only functions when you install a malicious web browser on your PC.
What's incredible here, is that you'll blame Microsoft for your company's ad platform, make MapQuest look bad (because you served a fake MapQuest site to people looking for it), and promote Google Maps and Chromebooks as an alternative... all while raking in the cash from the scam ads. Google is a business that operates on the revenue from scams. Every supposedly good thing Google does, and every paycheck it issues, is coming from ripped off individuals. The entire product cycle and marketing direction reinforces this.
This search term has seen nothing but malware and scams since at least 2013. If Google had any interest in protecting consumers (or not violating antitrust and, honestly, trademark laws), Google would not serve ads on this search term, ever. Feel free to investigate this internally, I am confident nothing will change.
> Google is a business that operates on the revenue from scams
I highly doubt these scams make up a significant fraction of Google's revenue. It is much more likely these are simply the failures of false negatives in automation falling through the cracks.
Besides the ad target scams, the Web itself is full of these scam malware sites. If you search for things to download, organic search results often send you links which eventually terminate in malware, especially true of searches for porn, software/music/movies.
I will raise this MapsQuest scam internally, so thanks for the report (note, I have nothing to do with ads, I work in research thats not ads related)
Probably nobody cares, and there's nobody in particular I would like to tell this to, but I recently experienced a Google service that made me feel more positive about them, even though I have eaten up the negativity recently to a certain extent.
That service is the call screening. Where you can (I'm not sure if it's standard on all Android phones, but I have a Pixel 3) have your virtual assistant talk to an unknown caller and transcribe whatever they say (but they always hang up).
It just made me momentarily feel so much better about Google, the sense that this one little thing actually improves my life by leveraging the dystopian tech infrastructure. I don't hate the bots that much, I hate them not working for me.
I just thought I'd share this because you must be bombarded with anti-Google stuff these days.
> the sense that this one little thing actually improves my life by leveraging the dystopian tech infrastructure. I don't hate the bots that much, I hate them not working for me.
The problem is, you have become part of the problem. Because the bot working for you is now annoying other people. Surely, you realize the companies that employ annoying bots all hate dealing with them themselves, but it improves their lives to subject you to them.
I don't think so, because to me the annoyance experienced by people who make unsolicited calls to me isn't important. It's not part of "the problem" from my perspective.
I used to work on systems like this. The thing is there is a lot of data. But no effective or even interesting ways to use that data.
My guess they want to get into the 'home automation' bits. Which is a huge money sink and really not that interesting. They also need to be willing to do something more than on a 2-3 year time frame. I have things in my house that are 25+ years old. I zero plans on replacing them. My parents have a house that is 80 years old. They also have zero plans on replacing things. For the embedded market which is where ADT sits they need to be thinking 10-15 year time frames. They also need to think in the 'fail usable' state. If my internet goes out and I can not get my garage door open I am not happy and that thing will be on the way to the garbage bin. They also probably want in on that monthly recurring lease on equipment you do not really own.
I think when you combine data about doors opening and closing, security system status (home/away/stay) and existing data for location history and the like, it presents a lot more accuracy to people's routines, which can potentially be leveraged to sell ads.
I don't feel like that data is easily monetizable to a company like ADT, but is likely very monetizable to Google.
Oh I do not disagree. It is just a tough field to actually extract any value out of. I would bet at this point most of these companies sell that sort of data to 3rd party already. It is probably buried in that tomb of a contract they give people.
There is a second possibility here. That no one is exploring. That Google is just investing money. Which means they have no effective way to use their existing capital. MS ended up at this position at one point.
And cheaper too then trying to infer it from building out a huge home market. Smartphones are carried by everyone, and people are on them all the time.
HN commentators often have a naive idea that more data is always better.
"Everyone else is doing it too! So you can't be upset at us for doing it!"
That's terrible reasoning. Even if literally every company is doing it, we can still be upset that Google is doing it. Google has gone out of their way to collect broad amounts of my data in a way that ADT and other companies haven't - from an ongoing list of where I am and where I shop to what I search for on Chrome.
But it’s done in a way that gives you value as a customer.
Not in my experience. I tried really hard for a while to "buy in" to the Google ecosystem a few years ago. But the data accuracy was too low, the Google Location Services WiFi triangulation actually made navigation significantly less accurate, the Nest thermostat kept learning stupid patterns where it would turn my A/C down to 68 for like 10 minutes, then up to 82, just because of a couple of days with odd weather, they use dark patterns to trick you into enabling data collection features, Play Music makes it really hard to, you know, play my music, and they still keep discontinuing, breaking, or hiding features in apps like Maps. Last time I was going somewhere it took me ten minutes to figure out where they'd moved Offline Maps.
Based on the time of day of the posts, I'm guessing the majority of the anti-google sentiment is coming from Europeans. They are generally distrustful of large American corporations.
There are plenty of Americans who distrust Google and large American corporations, too. I don’t trust any entity that exists for the purpose of vacuuming up as much of my data of possible.
Privacy is an integral part of security. The terms have just become disassociated due to those who use the refrain of "security" to mean their security at the expense of your security - eg airport molesters.
Wow. Crazy. Google is starting to leverage their position. They now selling 12.8x this buy in corporate bonds. I think this is the beginning of many plays by Google/Alphabet.
Alphabet is selling some record amount of corporate bonds, which OP states they're using to finance this purchase (and that they raised 12.8 times this amount so there's plenty left to make more acquisitions).
Probably the implication is that with really cheap funding (bonds) they can swash buckle across corporate america and buy stuff? It's most likely a coincidence. Google had $120B of cash on its balance sheet at 12/31/19.
There was an article where they interviewed a bunch of burglars and asked them the best way to secure your house. First they listed off all the things that don't work, like alarms and cameras. Then they said:
- Number one, have a TV on. If they see a TV on they assume people are home and watching.
- Get a big dog. If they have to choose between a house with a dog and one without, they'll chose the one without.
- Get motion activated security lights. Always-on lights just provide extra light for breaking in, the motion sensors draw attention (although most robberies happen during the day so it's sort of a moot point).
I would assume so. Pride and bragging about how easy something is would lead a lot of folks to just straight up tell you how they've outsmarted security gear.
Humans will always be humans, and humans LOVE to tell you how they've beat the system.
opportunistic thieves, and these are common sense things. They are looking for lower hanging fruit.
Now if you have a Picasso or $5 million in diamonds at home, they will find a way to enter, but for a iPhone they'll go to your neighbor that doesn't have a TV on, or motion sensor lights.
I haven't seen anyone posting, but on the ADT investors relations website there is a presentation [1] and [2] webcast outlying the M&A rationale.
Briefly speaking, it is to be expected product integration (starting with Google Cloud for ADT video) and in the future some 'automation' and newer products.
By the way, can there be any 'synergies' between ADT and Fitbit?
I was responsible for administrating an ADT security system for a Los Angeles-based startup (too many hats). Dealing with ADT was an absolute nightmare. Their support agents knew nothing about our configuration. ADT support technicians could take days to respond to a faulty sensor, which meant our operations folks would have to wake up at all hours of the night and check for false positives or disable the whole system. The experience led me to believe that office security systems are ripe for additional competition.
At least over here in the UK, ADT seemed to have an acquisition-based near monopoly in home alarm systems and acted every bit like you'd expect, and I wouldn't be surprised if commercial alarm systems were as bad.
Reminds me of dealing with Terminex dispatching exterminators to spray for insects in the arctic in the middle of winter when it was -20 deg F. There are lots of these service companies that are fall somewhere between inept and crooked.
Google has an existing partnership with ADT for monitoring their Nest Secure product so I'm not even sure it's all about the install base. There's a lot of mutual benefits to that partnership, ADT has the existing network of people-oriented call centers and installation crew without great hardware & tech, whereas Google's tech is much better but without any of this timely & expensive infrastructure built out.
Google's products are also expensive. The Nest smoke detectors are priced to only be viable for a studio apartment. Beyond that, you're way better off going with a traditional alarm/fire system.
Requirements are 1 in each bedroom and 1 in the hallway outside each bedroom. That adds up quickly.
The alarm.com smoke detectors are $50 and also last 10 years. You're paying a lot for a Google badge that doesn't even contact the fire department with the base setup.
When a smoke detector goes off, I've got my system set to:
1) Turn off HVAC/heat
2) Unlock exterior doors
3) Turn on lights
4) Flush syncs of any local data to remote sources
What's the google price tag for again? Initially it was worthwhile for the panicky waving motion to cancel alarms. But then they removed that.
Beyond the privacy concerns I wouldn't want my front door to disable itself because my Google Account was suspended because YouTube's content-identification algorithm picked up a snippet of a song in the background of a video upload. Only to find due to automated support computer-says-no the only way to get it re-enabled was to hope my complaint about it goes viral on Twitter or makes the front page of HN.
Amazon did the same thing in Germany. A customer misused their return policy and got locked out of their Amazon account. Amazon refused to let the customer access their bought videos. Although a court ruled that illegal, I now only do one thing with each account.
It's Google, so they'll probably force you to create a YouTube account to watch videos recorded by your security system, put adverts for private security services over the top, share what time you're usually out of the house with third parties, and then shut down the service after a couple of years.
We've heard reports of google shutting off account access with no recourse because a person made the wrong youtube comments. Imagine if you got locked out of your house because an automated system misinterpreted a comment you made on a Taylor Swift video.
If I had to describe google in one word it would be - creepy.
Google has never made a product that did not collect data in a unique manner from its other products. Between that, the dark patterns, and this recent experience, google the company and the people that work there just give me the creeps.
From previous comment:
"I uploaded a picture to google maps as part of a review. About a month later I get an actual notification on my phone - hey do you want to share this picture you took in City Park last weekend? It creeped me out beyond belief. Google had been rifling through my personal pictures in the background while I was going about my life. It was an enormous breach of my personal space and it is just one example of many related to google."
Additionally, I very much want an internet connected smoke alarm. But I would want something from a trustworthy company. And currently google does not fit that profile.
I get not wanting your data used for advertising and NSA.
But I don't understand why people intentionally give their photos to a system for processing, apparently happily let it be used for advertising and government surveillance, but then get upset when it's used for features. You're rely happier with everyone spying on you and pretending they aren't?
I uploaded one photo to Google Maps. It looked through all of my photos then decided a different photo was was a good candidate for "sharing".
It was a surprise for me since I forgot I left access to my photos on. iOS 14 resolves this by letting you choose which photos you allow an application to have access to. This cannot come any sooner because that was disturbing.
edit: I shared the original photo because I believe in helping other people.
To be clear here. I didn't give _all of my photos_ to Google. It was presented to me as a user that I was uploading a single photo.
Google then took liberties with that permission to an extreme. And it was personally revolting to me. I cannot overstate my absolute disgust with what happened there.
Wow. Good point about customer service. I forgot about that.
I can't think of a faster or more effective way for Google to destroy the public's trust in it than to inflict its customer service practices on the masses.
Google's customer service is pretty good on the hardware they sell. I've owned a Nexus 7 and various Nexus and Pixel phones and when you call them they are generally helpful.
You are being pedantic and a know-it-all. You know very well what was meant by that. Just consider the comment to apply to all the the monopolistic cartel technology world dominating corporate companies. They are all part of the same world dominating corporation system that colludes in Davos and through the various other secret groups, as much as they even collude in public to conspire against us all, regardless of whether one thinks one is in their good graces by doing their will.
My apologies if I came across as pedantic or a know-it-all. I was thinking that, of all of the big companies that could be buying a stake in ADT, this is actually one of the more competent ones, which is a good thing. Also, plenty of other big companies with even more of a record of bad behavior. So, it was intended as a face-value statement.
Because of their success these companies also get the most scrutiny (see house investigation/hearings last week). One foul step and its a PR disaster, impending regulations, boycotts, etc. Are you sure you'd prefer your convenience to come from smaller companies that garner less attention?
I focused on ADT's network of technicians rather than their install base. I guess the two are correlated but it seems that Nest thermostats and smoke detectors have always tried to straddle the line between DIY self-install and professional installers.
Also, ADT which has fairly scummy sales tactics and isn't very technologically advanced compared to other competitors and is very old school. Hard to imagine two companies farther apart.
I'm trying to think of any company I would trust for a camera in my house and am drawing a blank. Google is pure evil for sure, but which company is better?
It it even possible to roll your own LAN solution any more? The tech giants have become so hostile to anyone who dares to try to control their own data that I never even hear it discussed any more.
You can build your own LAN system. You just need to plug a camera with a wide lens into a Pi, optionally with a PIR motion sensor. Possibly with some IR illumination for night vision.Have some code which motion triggers the camera (either in software or IR triggered) and upload the data to your own storage. That could be local on a NAS or cloud (a bucket you own).
I suggest this over an IP camera as you might as well be paranoid about those too. If you need live streaming that can be done with open source software fairly easily.
You would have to spend some time working on hardware, and it'd probably cost more, but technically it's just tedious rather than difficult. There are some projects to do this with the Pi camera already. You could even add object detection with ML quite easily, which is something you pay a lot for with other platforms.
What you miss out on is the level of embedded and mechanical integration that the commercial stuff has. Blink has a two year battery life (replaceable), the housings are IP rated etc.
Wyze is the only company I trust currently. You dont have to use their app you can save it all to an SD card and there are github repos for custom firmware. I currently just use their software.
Most IP cameras support standard methods of accessing their video feeds. A program like iSpy will work fine, you just want to also have a firewall that will block your cameras' attempts to call home and not set up any cloud access.
Is that still true? I wanted to buy an IP camera to monitor our puppy's crate a few months back and I was shocked to find that pretty much all the cheapish IP cameras that used to support this a few years back have all moved to a cloud-only offering where you have to access your video via their app which streams your video to their cloud service (hard no).
I was amazed that not a single product in the sub $100 range on Amazon seemed to support direct LAN access. I ended up going with the Wyze cam, which still has that issue, but I'd trust a bit more over the no-name Chinese brands still running 10 year old Linux kernels on their cameras.
I referred to iSpy both because it's a great free/open product, but it also has an excellent camera database with all of the video feed URLs for different model cameras. Check it out: https://www.ispyconnect.com/sources.aspx
From my experience, many cameras won't publicize/document this information, but it's still available/possible for almost every one.
Ah I see. Thanks for replying. It unfortunately looks like iSpy doesn't have a mobile client? Many years ago I used to use Robert Chou's "IP Cam Viewer" which was a no-nonsense app to connect to different IP cameras, but unfortunately that doesn't work with a lot of the changes that camera makers have made on their end to prevent direct IP connections.
In my case, I'd strongly want to avoid direct IP connections to my cameras from a smartphone. That'd suggest very easy outside access to devices that have questionable security.
It's very possible. Another alternative is to go with Apple HomeKit Secure Video products, which do send your data to the cloud, but in encrypted form which is only accessible to you.
Interestingly, I have 3 Nest thermostats (3rd gen), one of which had its WiFi chip go bad this weekend. A quick live chat session with zero wait time, and they’re shipping me a replacement and a prepaid label to return the faulty device. It was even out of warranty by a few months; I was impressed, took less than 30 minutes from start to finish & zero time spent “waiting for an agent”.
As far as I am aware google has already tried with the home security and they have been caught forgetting to tell customers that their device has a microphone integrated.
For home security you need to have customer trust to succeed. Google? No way. Facebook? Yeah right.
Many years ago a colleague of mine at the time got stuck in a nuclear power station for a few hours because he tailgated someone into the plant but the systems wouldn't let him out as he appeared never to have entered.
Apparently this was surprisingly difficult to remedy.
Imagine if your house won't let you in because it doesn't think you have gone out!
> Many years ago a colleague of mine at the time got stuck in a nuclear power station for a few hours because he tailgated someone into the plant but the systems wouldn't let him out as he appeared never to have entered.
how does that work? can't he tailgate someone on the way out? or get the guy at the security desk to let him through? was he the last one out of the plant or something?
Something like this has happened to me in a parking garage.
The garage had a gate that would usually require a card, but if you worked a late shift, then you might get off work just after a concert or other event let out and the gate was left up for everyone to leave. Which meant the next day, it would still think you were in the garage and not want to let you in.
Ironically, the dynamic has shifted; we've all voluntarily installed microphones all throughout our houses and carry around tracking devices. They have no reason for you to leave and would prefer you stay at home where they can monitor you for any wrongthink you may verbalize. Best part, those people who refuse to bug and track themselves become interesting to additional scrutiny … because they clearly must be up to something.
I like Google. The search engine is amazing. BigQuery is awesome — it’s really something only a Google could pull off — but, but, I think this might be DOA for the same reasons that make Google search and ads so good: the data. I don’t want Google in my home like this with a view of everything coming in and going out (yes yes they can already see the amazon orders in my gmail account, but still) or who is coming or going.
One thing missing in this area is a low cost combined alarm and home automation. Some have nice home automation (Smart Things, for example), others have a nice alarm system (Ring). But nobody has a good combination of both together. At least part of the problem is that the alarm system does not want to trust third party devices for triggering the alarm. This means that they are treated as second class citizens.
So an example of this is that I have water monitors and a water main shutoff valve that works with Smart Things. But Smart Things doesn't have an alarm, and Ring doesn't support the water monitor and shutoff valve..
Not sure I'm happy with ADT, since they are expensive (per month monitoring). But they do have name brand recognition.
I had bought a new Nest thermostat and was going to install it at about the time that Google went from having different things Nest-integrated to having them be Google-integrated. I chose to sell my thermostat to somebody and buy an Ecobee specifically because Ecobee wasn't owned by Google or Amazon.
So far Amazon seems like its treating its acquisitions better as far as customers are concerned. Ecobee does make a model with Alexa built-in but I got an older one that doesn't have that.
I am really tempted to buy some Eufy 2K cameras, which I hear are decent quality and integrate with Homekit. Apple has tougher security requirements than Google or Amazon and the products that meet it seem better, even if more expensive.
yes but how many times you think it will make a headline when google slowly increases stake in adt while simultaneously pumping in preferred deals for relevant data. I fully expect nest to have deep integration into adt going forward.
Remember: Google doesn't think they're invading your privacy when they are making money on it. It's only a violation of privacy if their competition is making money on your privacy.
ADT and other American security is broken. They are missing the hard part of an active security system: response.
In Japan there is a company called Secom. This company has a near monopoly on security systems. They have this monopoly because instead of just calling the cops they have staff on patrol who respond to alarms. You can imagine the install base moat required to have active personal patroling constantly.
The end result is alarms get checked. Every time we mis-unlocked our office a Secom person would stop by soon after to check. No idle phone calls from a phone center, the staff checked the premise themselves.
Of course similar services must exist in the states for businesses, but without the install base they cannot be priced reasonable for home use. Secom is used everywhere, from uppper class homes to museums.
I'm on a "low Google diet" myself as I'm not at all a fan of how my data gets scooped up and resold.
That being said, while I disagree with their business practices, I think their information security is one of the best. For contrast, imagine Equifax running your home security... :)
And every 2 years you can count on them cutting support for whatever devices you bought from them because they got bored and moved on to something else.
In their defense, OnHub routers launched late 2015 and was discontinued/rebranded Google Wifi in late 2016, but they did end up supporting the older models for approx. 4 years of updates, including phone support. That was a product that made me trust Google just as Apple was getting out of the router business. Google Home, Nest and Dropcam have all had older products remain supported, so far.
Meanwhile I'm rocking a 10 year old DSL router that is still being updated with security patches.
4 years is nothing in the consumer market with the exception of maybe smartphones.
Nobody has the money to buy all electronics new every 4 years and looking at the current Android version distribution, a lot of consumers don't even buy new smartphones every 4 years.
According to Wikipedia, Apple sold the iPhone 6 until September 12, 2018¹, and it did not get iOS 13, which was released September 19, 2019² — barely one year of OS support.
Measuring support spans this way is... odd. It's like saying "ubuntu only comes with 1 year of support" because you installed 16.04 today. If we're going by this metric a lot of electronics have 0 years of support. Regardless, apple is still has the longest support, at least when it comes to phones/tablets.
You're blurring the line between software and hardware support, which is a very important distinction.
Ubuntu 16.04 may only have one year of support left, but my current desktop hardware supports both 16.04 and 20.04. It's much more reasonable to sunset old software to reduce maintenance burden while providing an upgrade path than to lock people out of any upgrade path for their hardware.
There is also the distinction that Apple sells closed hardware and prevents you from installing a custom OS with longer software support. And that Apple products cost $$ while Ubuntu is free, which leads to different reasonable expectations. But I don't think either of those are needed to make my point.
> You're blurring the line between software and hardware support, which is a very important distinction.
Isn't hardware support just called "warranty"? That remains the same regardless of when you bought it.
>And that Apple products cost $$ while Ubuntu is free, which leads to different reasonable expectations.
My point wasn't whether canonical/apple's support lifecycle policies were reasonable, just that that defining support periods as the last day it was sold, rather the first day it was sold was unusual/misleading. If you want something to be supported a long time after you get it, you don't grab the oldest version, simple as that. Consumer products don't have a support subscription like enterprise products do, so limiting support to old products is really the only economically viable choice that companies have.
FWIW, the 6 was released September 2014. The 6 alongside the 5s (released a year prior in September 2013) are still receiving patches for iOS 12, the most recent being July 15th.
For that reason I think it's more than fine to continue selling it discounted until 2018, it's not like they were marketing it as flagship.
Additionally the 6s from Sept 2015 is receiving iOS 14.
Yeah, it feels like "damned if you do, damned if you don't". Folks would complain "why can't I buy a simple phone like the 6!" if Apple only sold the latest and greatest, but then when you sell something older, folks want to complain if it's not able to run the latest OS.
Not that Apple's being altruistic here, obviously they want to segment the market and get money from wherever they can. But, can't expect them to sell low price point devices that are as future-proofed (future-resisted?) as top end hardware.
So I actually went on bestbuy and looked at what the waranty policy for a few of the refridegrator brands were, and they were nowhere close to "decades" like the grandparent comment claims.
>I thought the compressor was the thing that was not warranted because they break so frequently.
given the sample above, it seems like at least with LG, that they have a lot of confidence in their compressors and "sealed system" (probably the refrigerant system).
Warranty is not the same thing as how long it lasts in practice. I would never buy a fridge from a manufacturer again if it stopped working after a year and a half.
I think the mental hurdle here is that while the warranty might be short, the fridge doesn't just stop working after the warranty period is over. And if it does, well there's a 100+ year old industry of fridge repair. But, given the track record in software of not just ceasing to support the products but actively killing them, the move into hardware might give one pause as the devices may well be bricked. At least that's my interpretation of my own POV re: almost anything Google wrt service. Then there's the data privacy element...
Home Furnace is probably the longest lasting Home Appliance and it has an expected life of 15-20 years. Common Kitchen Appliances (and most other appliances) are about 10 years...
Maybe I'm the exception but all my home appliances (washing machine, dishwasher, fridge, freezer) are around 25-30 years old with the exception of my oven and stove. Everything is working as expected and I suspect they will last even longer.
That may be true for most smart home gear, but I place routers in a slightly different class of home electronics. Like gaming consoles, for performance and upgrades to the latest standards (Wi-Fi 6E, for example) you’ll likely need a new router every 5-7 years. There was a short period where 802.11ac routers were initially not very good and then the second-gen 802.11ac routers arrived and were substantially faster/better chipsets. If I recall correctly, the Apple AirPort Extreme was an example of the former and the Google OnHub an example of the latter. Now we have “mesh router sets” that trade features and performance for smaller sizes and cheaper components. Hopefully in the Wi-Fi 6E timeframe we’ll go back to performance routers that don’t look like spiders. It’s not that I don’t expect devices to get updates, but so much in networking gear depends on working around chipset bugs, I can’t imagine every router manufacturer supports their routers equally well... the number of routers I’ve bought that didn’t last even two years could probably fill a medium-sized box for me. Which highlights how hit-or-miss buying such gear tends to be, I suppose.
You're both making observations about different segmentatis of the market. For some gamers, latency (both %-ile and long-tail) is incredibly important -- in particular FPS / MOBA / fighting games. Upgrading every few years to stay on the cutting edge can make a notable improvement to these consumers, though I suspect routers are a bit less rapidly changing that things like CPUs and graphics cards. Think of these like the luxury smartphone users that will get value from upgrading their iPhone annually.
For consumers that just watch Netflix (even at 4k), latency is irrelevant and you just need the bandwidth to be high enough; for these usecases, sure, a 10-year old router is fine. This is the consumer that keeps their Android phone for 2-3 years until it breaks, and only then upgrades.
I don't think the GP was claiming that everyone needs to upgrade frequently, just that for some consumers it makes sense.
Both segments can coexist, and so it's valid for different products/companies to tailor their offerings to one or both. It's pretty clear that you shouldn't buy Google products if you want to set-and-forget for 10 years. But if you're going to upgrade to the newest revision of smart-home gadget in less than 5 years anyway, then Google's product-ADD isn't a particularly relevant negative to you.
Definitely a factor to make sure that consumers are aware of when purchasing though!
That’s not on Wi-Fi is it? Or your router is in the same room as your device, and it’s the only device using the signal?
I agree you shouldn’t rip out 5e cables to install 6e if what you have works for you and there aren’t any substantial improvements.
To that end, I’ve personally skipped Wi-Fi 6 and will wait for 6E before considering an upgrade. Even then, I’d like to have at minimum 3 devices that support Wi-Fi 6 before I upgrade. I’ve two such devices right now, so it’s not out of the question for me.
I’m in favour of keeping devices automatically updated even years later, but I suspect the only economical way of doing so is emulating devices in VMs, a giant test suite and automatic security update testing (no humans required beyond reviewing code diffs). But setting up that kind of automated testing infrastructure is a high bar for most companies, so it’s cheaper to put the cost on the consumer to consume again within 3-5 years for the next product update lifecycle...
I get this question every time when someone sees my latency, yes it is on WiFi. I don't use cabled and haven't for at least 6-7 years. My latency was always low except when I broke something in my local networking stack.
There are at this point 40+ other visible access points in my vicinity, and my router is two rooms away. My walls are made of concrete or brick.
Everyone should stop thinking WiFi is slow, because it just isn't.
Right now I’m waiting to buy a new router even though I do have 2 of 30 or so devices with support for Wi-Fi 6.
Previously I did buy a few new devices to get 5GHz support from an ac router, after I moved to a location that had very poor 2.4Ghz connectivity. It can happen but it’s rare, I’d say?
I agree. 4 years is nothing to brag about. Not for the sorts of devices that people keep for longer.
I've had my Asus router for 5 years, and I'm still getting updates. The hardware is still good, so the support should keep up.
I was on an iPhone 4s up until late last year. It was a backup phone and of course I broke my newer phone and needed something quickly until I could replace it. They stopped updating it however so I really don’t like to use it.
Your DSL router is getting security patches because the primary business model for DSL routers is for them to be owned by the ISP. It's thus an enterprise product which tend to get decades of support.
Depends on what you mean by "support". The OnHub never ended up using its smart home radios or built-in speaker for anything. I also ended up needing to buy multiple other boxes to work around Google WiFi's crashy PPPoE implementation and lack of VLAN tagging.
And then there was that day Google accidently deleted everyone's router configuration.
It worked great as a dumb access point. Everything else was shambles.
True. I stopped using mine because of the PPPoE support & VLAN tagging required for gigabit fiber optic internet was missing/didn’t perform well. And I remember having to reset not just my OnHub but my relatives’ too. But back when I had a standard coax cable connection, it worked great! :) I was able to chat with a live human when I needed support with mesh at one point.
I've been very happy with our home networking since ditching our consumer networking gear for Ubiquiti stuff. It's not very expensive, and it's worked extremely well.
I made my statement based on when it was last updated. It appears it’s in a stable, security-fix-only mode. I consider this similar to discontinued products of other kinds — Google recognizes here that there’s more goodwill in making sure OnHub still works, but it really wants you to buy new hardware. This will be more visibly true when a Wi-Fi 6E device appears, I expect.
My Netgear router is about 10 years old and works fine. Once a product is released, it should remain supported for it's useful lifetime, not some arbitrary cutoff.
Not really. If it's sold it's in the hands of god knows how many parties. If it's only used for targeting, it's still with one party. Maybe you find any sort of monetization of data icky, but the latter is definitely more preferable to the former.
This is something I don't get. Once I've clicked on an ad, the company has all my information to correlate with other databases they bought from someone other than Google, right? It takes me to their website, where they fingerprint my browser, drop cookies, etc. How is that materially different than Google selling them my info? If I interact with it in any way, they get all my info. (And in fact, with ads that include Javascript, do they even need me to interact with the ad?) This seems like a distinction without a difference to me.
That's definitely technically doable but that doesn't require Google in the mix. You clicked and went to a website that used those databases and your browser to fingerprint and identify you. Not sure how Google also having this data is somehow relevant to any of that.
The parent comment's point is that you can get info for the user from google by doing this. ie.
1. google sends you a bid request, which contains the user's demographic/interest information
2. you respond to it with a bid, which has a unique tracking id
3. if your bid wins, your ad gets served. from there, you can serve a javascript payload that fingerprints the user. at this point you can create a huge database mapping of device fingerprint and ip (probably unique, but also pseudonymous) to interest/demographic data.
4. (optional) you can correlate the data you've gotten with third party databases to augment the data you already have. I'm not sure how viable this is. You can get more demographic information, but deanonymizing the pseudonymous identifiers from step 3 might be difficult to impossible.
All of this only really works if you can fingerprint the user, which might be against the ToS of most ad exchanges. They're probably also on the lookout for this type of thing, because you can imagine this is pretty important business data. However, if you're big enough, you might be able to convince the ad networks to let you fingerprint for "fraud prevention" purposes.
You know who actually sells your data? The senators and congressmen who are constantly going on about how Google and Facebook are selling your data. I've donated a small amount to many campaigns, and I always use a different email address for each one since I own my own domain with a catch-all.
A few months or a year later, I get emails from groups like "stop republicans" or from local campaigns in states I don't care about to elizabethwarren@[mydomain.com]. And I only have used that email once to donate to Elizabeth. And it's not just one politician, it's all of them. Even ones we feel are so idealistic, like my Andrew Yang donation that I did based on his Reddit plea now receives emails targeted to my demographic about how it's my fault the democrats will fail to stop Trump, or lose California, or whatever.
Financial companies also sell my data. I get phishing emails to turbotax2014@[mydomain.com] which is what I used to file that year's taxes. [Edit: in retrospect, this one is probably just a hack or incompetence rather than intentional selling]
And which emails have never been sold or given out? The ones I use for Google or Facebook. Never in the past 15 years.
This is a really good point; I have had the same experience. The fact that every political campaign is happy to sell my personal information to other groups has completely turned me off from donating.
The same applies to volunteering. I made the mistake of giving my real phone number to a congressional campaign that I signed up to volunteer with. Since then I've gotten dozens of spam texts from many different organizations.
In what way? What privacy breach are you worried about?
For example are you worried that a real human at your home security company will be invading your privacy? When they do are you worried that real human will take personal action against you? Or are you worried about automated systems building knowledge about your life based on home security data? Or are you worried about your home security data used in aggregate? Maybe you are worried about attackers getting access?
Internal infosec and privacy controls/policies are required to protect you from some of these. Some of these threats may be more likely from Google, but I'd say some of them are more likely from other home security providers (keep in mind that a lot of home security products are actually intended to have another human monitoring your home).
I would say these are the obvious ones for Google:
> Or are you worried about automated systems building knowledge about your life based on home security data? Or are you worried about your home security data used in aggregate?
Good breakdown. For me the main issues would be around how technically capable Google is to ingest all of the content coming from ADT monitoring infrastructure, extract meaningful information and then merge that in with their existing knowledge of my life.
There’s a number of direct answers below, so I’ll give you a more philosophical one: privacy is in direct conflict with Google’s business model and thus it is impossible for them to deliver privacy in good form without jeopardizing their business.
> I'm on a "low Google diet" myself as I'm not at all a fan of how my data gets scooped up and resold.
Does google ever actually resell data? Or just monetize it? There’s a big difference selling the personal information on someone versus letting people buy targeted ads.
Depending on the level of targeting allowed the difference is meaningless. If you can target people based on something like sexual preference, you’ve effectively sold out everyone that clicks on that link.
Google is an awful service provider. Ever had a Gmail account get hijacked? Good luck getting it back. Google doesn't give a crap about helping its "customers" because its products are free so they have this awful take it or leave it attitude. You can't rely on that. They did the same thing to Nest. They'd change your thermostat and shut things down, potentially at your home's risk. Just a really careless and inconsiderate company who I avoid doing business with.
Get a fumigation sign. The skull and crossbones and threat of death by toxic asphyxiation will keep all but the most determined burglar away.Few burglars go out on a job with respirators. Add a bit about asbestos being found "on site." An ADT sign is nothing but an "all clear." The police won't help, they're too busy selling drugs, forfeiting automobiles and investigating possible misdemeanor counterfeit bill passing cases.
Huh, looks like Google used to offer a cellular-based backup option, but cut it off a few months ago. Some folks were upset that the only way to get that now is to pay Brinks ($29/mo or $20/mo with 3-yr contract).
I assume the Brinks deal will be phased out and ADT will replace it? Given what people are saying about ADT's pricing, hopefully their offer will be no more expensive than Brinks'.
One of my biggest worries with this is that it will shut ADT off to all future integrations outside of the Google ecosystem.
I believe that if ADT wants to stay competitive, they would hugely benefit from a swath of integrations with different vendors doing different things to allow for a modular home security experience.
I'm not sure that partnering with Google really accomplishes that... at least not on its own.
"Home" security? ADT has cameras, door sensors, medical alerting "pendandts" etc. installed in many more places than private homes. This deal seems more about sensors and new streams of incoming data for Google.
Neutral news. I just hope this results in new products launching quickly. The nest Yale partnership is disappointing to say the least. Despite the naysayers, this can be a successful step in the right direction for nest as an ecosystem
Well great, if the thief carries a android phone for the first time in history of mankind google would be able to run machine learning algos to predict where the crime is going to be committed. /s
personally I would be more worried about ADT getting google data. plus ADT has tie-ins with many police depts. this could go south really fast from here. Also, google already has fitbit data so google is slowly spreading its tentacles into our life in real world much more so than FB.
honestly I feel like I need to minimize my google usage right-bloody-now. a slightly better web search is not worth all that shit it comes with.
I was literally going to call them today to monitor my house's pre-existing ADT (DSC I think?) system out of practicality. Now, I'm not so sure.
Edit I wonder what modern solutions exist in this space for takeover of old systems. It feels like every alarm system installed is designed to extract your money for components for 3 years or so and then immediately become "discontinued." Most of the companies I see want me to buy a new system and lock into 3 years of monitoring. It wouldn't be so bad if the components weren't so damned expensive. $1k to fit out a small house, no smarthome nonsense even.
We just bought an old house that had been nicely taken cared for. There's an existing wired alarm system which must have taken a lot of work to install. I just installed my first server rack in the basement for network-attached storage and to run services locally, including Home Assistant [1]. I'm looking at Konnected [2], which makes an aftermarket alarm panel interface. I'd love to hear what else folks have done.
konnected.io looks fascinating. It seems to focus on wired systems, but I believe the system I own is just an "old" wireless system. I'll look for something similar for wireless systems. At least what I want seems possible!
Its been a few years since I looked. But yeah.. basically all the consumer and general commercial monitoring is centralized to be handled by ADT. Hardware is all from honeywell or a few others. Companies like frontpoint etc handle customer acquisition, support, Billing, and distribution. Most of the “apps” and alarm system configuration is also reskinned ADT.
There are a couple small companies that provide more access to your own hardware. You can use their centralized system to send yourself alerts etc. Having police/fire/medical dispatch gets back them paying ADT to process those alerts. If you want to start in this direction I was happy with suretyhome.com.
Edit: regarding consumer hardware its all either zigbee or z-wave these days. A DIY system (like with surety) is generally all compatible and Id ball park more like $3-400 for hardware. If you use one of the bigger players they use custom firmware & lock down the panel/sensor management to ensure you pay them a nice markup.
Originally I had a local electric company take over our security system's sensors - it seems like the sensors are mostly standardized hardware where the sensors just read open or closed to some central hardware box, and the actual monitoring is handled by some third party. Might be worth investigating.It would have been a factor of ~1k more expensive to go with ADT for us.
This works if you have one of the wired systems, which are common on systems installed while the house was being built. All of the sensors are pretty easy to hook up, and there's even a DIY kit available from this company https://konnected.io/ if you're into that sort of thing
However, my alarm was added well after the house was built, and they used wireless sensors so they wouldn't have to open up any walls. These all use a proprietary protocol, which probably could be reverse engineered by someone smarter than me, but no drop in solutions exist. I am in the process of replacing all of them with Z-wave sensors to use with home-assistant, but removing them means re-painting all of the window trim.
Yeah, they can install a cheap TrendNet PoE switch and a handful of cheap offbrand cameras, and charge you for them monthly into perpetuity. After that contract point to repay for the equipment, it's highly profitable, as it turns one time costs into a recurring fee.
