The blog post “The Internet of Things that Talk About You Behind Your Back” by Bruce Schneier is really creepy. But it isn’t new, it is just getting worse.

In IT Security, the problem of undetected communication covert channels is old and well known. Also the fact that internet marketing adopts approaches and technologies that some times are close to it, is well known.

What it is worrisome is the extent to which we are getting. There are various aspects to it.

One is the legal aspect, that is what the legislations allow and how much they protect citicizens from excesses: it would be interesting to compare current legislations between different countries, from the USA to EU, Canada, Brazil, Russia, India, China, Japan etc.

On the technical side, devices like PCs and some tablets allow the user some choices like use different browsers (even Tor), manage cookies (in particular 3rd party cookies) etc., even if it is usually difficult to really be anonymous on internet unless extra precautions are taken (and many users will not be able to adopt similar precautions).

On smaller devices, like smartphones and “smart” objects like watches etc., choices are much more limited but with a little bit of effort the user can do something to protect him/herself from this kind of surveillance.

On IoT devices at the moment there seems to be nothing that the user can do, it is either use it and be traced, or do not use / buy it at all. For these devices, legislation could be the only way of giving the user some choices.

Finally, how many users are even aware of this kind of Internet Surveillance? How many would object if they knew?