 We are a month away from christmas today i haven't even started my christmas shopping i've been talking about supply chains for ages and how you gotta start your christmas shopping early i am the last person take take my own advice. I interesting piece in los angeles times though about the privacy risks hiding in your holiday gifts smart products and services. Is what we're talking about your gift may actually pose a threat to a friend or loved ones privacy something to keep in mind while you shop andres. Andrietta is director of consumer privacy and engineering for the electric electronic a frontier federation foundation rather than andres can you give us an idea of the range of gifts that may be putting our privacy at risk what are we talking about here. Hi thanks yeah well it's almost everything that connects to the internet really we have anything from baby monitors from your tv to your doorbell camera. They can cleaners your fridge now like all of these things can be invading your privacy and they some of these things have microphones and cameras. So they get to see into your life and your private life in your home and many of them have very bad security if any and others are actually selling the data or having partnerships with law enforcement that are very concerning. Okay so what kind of risks are we talking about then. So basically anything that happens in your house anything that that device touches in terms of your private information is exposed. Again, either because they do not have proper security or because they're selling it to other actors for advertisement or who knows what. And I think one of the things that we have to keep in mind is you have really big brand names and you would assume they're good at security. But if you quickly search on the internet for recent leaks of data you will find very big names there so if these big names are not actually that good at protecting your data. All the other brands that sell all these new smart products that you've never heard of I would have serious doubts that they can match those companies. Why are they collecting our data are they can they make money off of it what's what's the okay. This there's been like this trend of thinking that the more data you collect the more valuable the organization is your company and your product is to other investors or maybe to selling it to other third parties. Regardless of whether that's true or not at the end of the day these being this frenzy of companies collecting as much data as they can just in case they can use it. So there's that first part which is very worrying because they don't even need it and many others actually do sell your data. If you look at you go shopping for a new TV and all of them they say they say now they're smart TVs. One of the biggest brands now is Vizio but Vizio just announced that their profit on ads subscriptions and data double them are double the money that they make on selling TVs. And that should be very telling when TV companies make more money on selling ads and your data from actually selling the TVs and they're not the only ones LG Samsung sunny they all do things. Similarly they on top of it they show you out so they're triple dipping into your wallet right first you had to give them money to purchase the TV. Then they are collecting as much data as they can from you to sell it to anyone that wants it. They don't really care who and then on top of it they show you out so there it is just in an insane ecosystem of companies profiting and exploiting you without knowing. Is there any way to find out that they're you know to be aware of these the fact that they're collecting data on on labels of anything that you buy that's you know Bluetooth enabled or Wi-Fi enabled or you know smart tech is do they have to have any warning label on that. It depends on the jurisdiction and honestly there is not like labeling they have to do for example under certain jurisdictions they'd have to get clear informed consent. And I think that is the case in Canada with a paper I think it's pronounced the personal information protection and electronic document act. It's the same in Europe with GDPR but what we see is that they they there's flagrant. Violations of that consent like they're actually not getting it or they use what we call dark patterns and they use these patterns in which you thought you opted out. Or you didn't opt in into the tracking and through your interaction in the settings and everything else they opt you in again Google was. Shown as one of the worst at doing this by the Norwegian consumer console and all these TV companies do the same thing it's really actually very hard to opt out. Which is really crazy but my recommendation is you know just go search on the Internet the name of what the brand or the TV you're looking for or any other device and add. You know security risk privacy or something like that and you will see articles and if you see a lot of articles I would get concerned and research before we shop I would say so yes just because they have a view into your life right like some of these are cameras to monitor your baby and as a parent myself like I would not want to put a camera watching my baby that has really bad security practices and invites any stranger to connect to it and then that they're selling data to. We've heard about people hacking into baby monitors and talking to people's kids in their room which is terrifying we've heard about doorbells people getting into a house saying I just want to let you know I just hacked into your doorbell or your thermostat or whatever is enabled and here I am so you've got a bit of a problem there I can hear everything you're saying which is terrifying as well but. We're talking about interactive toys we're talking about fitness gear we're talking I mean there's it's ubiquitous the devices that are attached to the Internet what do you keep in mind when shopping this season I mean how do you mitigate mitigate the risks out there. I look if it says that it's a smart or connected and I ask myself do I really need it to be like a baby monitor like I don't need it maybe other people have different needs but I don't so I skip the ones that are connected or so called smart. The other thing is even if you have to buy one of the devices because sometimes it's very privileged not having not being in a position of not having to buy some of these devices. You do have recourses in depending on the jurisdiction you are and I would put complaints to the consumer protection agency or to the data privacy protection agency. I would put a complaint because clearly they're not getting proper consent if it wasn't properly informed and clear I would be putting a complaint with them and the more we do that. The more it puts pressure on these agencies to actually act and on these companies to not do it because of your regulation or lawsuits. It's going to be an interesting shopping season that's for sure if people care about their privacy sadly I think people are getting complacent do you. I'm not I'm getting even more worried I think what's happened is we hear a lot they're nothing to hide. And it's a very misleading line because it makes you feel like well you have to be a criminal to care about this and it's not that you have a private life your walls are not made of crystal you don't you know you still lock your house. People don't have a camera 24 seven looking into your life so there is an expectation of price it's a human right. I think people actually are more conscious about it. There's a lot more people asking like right now we're having this conversation which didn't happen before. So I think actually people are more concerned about it. They're getting more informed and governments are listening and starting to take action. Andress it's been a pleasure talking to you. Thanks so much I think it's an important topic that we continue to touch on our privacy and our devices. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me.