Clickbait, he tweeted “inaccuracy in the ASUS router tool” later on.
In a follow-up post a day after his initial Tweet, Johnie noted “inaccuracy in the ASUS router tool,” with regard to Apple iMessage data use. Other LG smart washing machine users showed device data use from their router UIs. It turns out that these appliances more typically use less than 1MB per day.
the writer knew that the stats were bunk, yet wrote the article anyway. the site knew this, too, tacked-on the clickbait headline and published it. toms really has gone to shit the last few years–at least under the current ownership (last changed hands 2018).
And OP presumably read the article, knew there was no actual story, and posted it here anyway.
Speaking of which, it uses the same web interface as a lot of other news sites. Newsletter popup, autoplay video part-way down that then jumps to the top of the screen, etc. What Hifi is the same, and there are various other sites all with the same annoying engine. Two questions: (1) are all these sites owned by the same company and (2) is there a browser extension that can fix them?
yes, it’s the same ownership (scroll down to the bottom). they have dozens of sites. don’t know of any specific addons to help with them, though. custom ublock origin rules, perhaps.
This is happening with streaming apps too. Max and Prime look exactly the same. Either some UI engineer got hella contracts, a parent company tried to save on development, or both. Either way, theres something unnerving about your apps looking the same and just hosting different content.
Thanks for saving me the click.
Well the missing socks have to get sent somewhere… /s
Yes, socks can turn into a lot of data really fast, especially if they are multithreaded. Which is why I only use single threaded socks to protect my dataplan.
So much for my fibre connection…
Given that one sperm has 27.5 MB of data (which means each orgasm has over 7 petabytes of information!) I think we can safely assume which socks his washer is transmitting.
Given that one sperm has 27.5 MB of data (which means each orgasm has over 7 petabytes of information!)
Redundancy!
I believe that fluids don’t, in general, compress. But maybe the trick is turning them to digital data first and then redundancy makes them very compressible.
The info in each sperm is effectively identical, so it’s still only 27.5 MB of data in the whole thing, just with a lot of redundancy for error detection / correction.
You wouldn’t download a sock
I’m too lazy to Photoshop it into a real image
I’m sure they’re being downloaded to Russia and then sold back to the west to finance the war!
No it couldn’t. My washing machine cant connect to my network! I can’t think of a valid reason why I would even want that.
I tried it with our dish washer, just to see what it’s about. Turns out it’s all about nothing. It’s absolutely void of any useful functionality.
Yeah, I don’t get it. I guess I can see the appeal of some “Internet Of Things” connected appliances, like smart fridges suggesting recipes and keeping track of stock and auto-populating shopping lists for you. I don’t need that personally, but I can see why it could appeal to some people.
But things like washing machines and dishwashers? You need to be there in person to fill them up just before they’re ready to go on, and to empty them when they’re done. And when they’re not turned on, they’re sat there doing nothing. What “smart” functions can they even offer?
What “smart” functions can they even offer?
Notification that the cycle is finished and checking how much is left.
But that’s about it.
And also providing more programs and options without having to tack on a full-colour LCD or anything like that. Pretty much just a cost saving measure on the manufacturing.
I guess I can see the appeal of some “Internet Of Things”
IoT, where the “S” stands for security…
I can think of a very valid reason. I very often forget that I ran the washing machine, I’m already investigating how to send a notification to my phone or computer after it is done. Right now I am checking how much electricity it consumes and when it stops doing it. But a API would be nicer.
They sell clean/dirty indicator magnets for dishwashers for like $2.
stick a bell onto it and take a moment to listen whenever you want to check.
To wake the baby up?
What about a NFC tag that starts a timer on your phone?
On one hand, it would be nice for us to drop the smart plug here, but at least those can be entirely local-only. I highly doubt any device API would be local.
Because it’s advertised. That’s why.
A remarkable (and actually concerning) percentage of people completely lack the critical thinking skills to question whether that’s a good idea. The box says it has WiFi, WiFi is good, so I connect it to WiFi. Simple as that.
Imagine spending extra money on a new clothes washer only to have someone turn it in to a crypto miner. 😬
I’m too lazy to come up with a witty money laundering joke.
IoT = bad
The ‘S’ in IoT stands for security
Internet of Targets
Plot twist: it was the Asus router misreporting the amount of data.
Until a robot can hang up my washing, my machine is staying off any networks
When it can you should still setup a private network just for them to communicate
Yep, one for private use, one for this kind of machines and one for guests. But still, in theory it could be sending sensitive data regardless of network setup.
LG’s app is an absolute privacy nightmare too. That app must be used if you want access to any smart appliance features and it requires precise location permissions 100% of the time. Even then, the app features are mediocre, it doesn’t work very well and often doesn’t notify of a finished wash load until long after it’s completed.
Why anyone would want to allow their washing machine manufacturer to continuously track their exact location in exchange for some crappy, poorly implemented features is beyond me.
Thanks for pointing out the location service thing. I just killed that shit.
Just looked at the app’s permission settings on my phone… set to only allow location while being used.
Like you I don’t see much use for the app, though the notifications can be handy if you want to know when a load us finished and you can’t hear it’s beeps. I work out of my basement with my washer upstairs so that can be the case with me. But still rare that I ever use it.
A: Why would a washing machine have internet access? B: If it has the option, why would You even connect it to the internet? C: If it has to be connected to the internet, why would You even buy it?
At least regarding the last point: maybe because there was no other option.
If you need specific features or have certain space constraints, you may end up with only two or three devices.
As an example: try to find a TV (not a monitor, a real TV with tuner, etc) without WiFi. Almost impossible.
A: Why would a washing machine have internet access?
They can download customized wash cycles if you’re into that sort of thing. They can also communicate through an app to do things like tell you when a load of laundry is finished, when it’s time to run it through a self-cleaning cycle, and give specific details when it encounters problems (e.g., mine once notified me the hot water line was giving it cold water). They also allow you to start a cycle remotely, but tend to require enabling that manually via button press for some reason, so that feature’s basically useless.
There are probably 3 main groups of people with WiFi appliances:
- The vast majority of people don’t care, and put it on their normal WiFi router and would never notice something like this
- A smaller group of people don’t care much, but pay attention to their bandwidth usage and would spot an appliance trying to send 3.7 GB of data a day
- A much smaller group of people are paranoid and would put the device on its own isolated subnet, or use firewall-type features to limit the access their appliances have to the Internet.
My guess is that if this were a widespread problem, people in the second group would notice, or would have immediately checked and chimed in and said “holy crap, mine is doing this too”. I didn’t hear many people saying that, so I’m guessing this is a bug, and it’s either a one-off weirdness, or it’s a bug related to people in group 3 who are blocking their appliances from being able to connect to the Internet.
It’s probably something as simple as a badly programmed firmware update check that doesn’t do exponential backoff when it fails. It probably connects, fails, then immediately tries again. A proper exponential backoff would wait before trying again, and if it failed again it would double the wait time down to some minimum value like once per day or something.
Incidentally, this is also why claims about smartphones monitoring people’s conversations when they’re supposedly off is BS. That would require either huge amounts of bandwidth to transmit all the conversations, or huge amounts of computing power inside the phone to decode the voices. Either way you’d be using tons of battery, and probably a significant amount of bandwidth. There are enough paranoid people out there that if this were a real thing, someone would have caught the devices doing it by now.
I think the largest group by far isn’t listed: people who bought an appliance and didn’t care at all that it had WiFi and never connected it their network.
“Error: Wi-Fi must be enabled and connected to load detergent.”
The article gets into what actually happened.
Dude’s Asus router was incorrectly reporting bandwidth usage.
I have a similar model washer/dryer and refuse to put it on my wifi. I only want it to wash and dry.
Why a washing machine need the connect to the Internet in the first place?
So that they can call it “smart” and charge more for it.
Don’t forget they can now get you to download their app to use those smrt features. Load that app…yes, that’s right.
Now that you’ve done that, they have your sweet sweet data.
The LG washer app asked for literally every possible permission. If it could ask for my DNA, it would have.
Sad but true.
A “smart” label makes me assume it i going to do a bunch of shit I don’t want it to while failing early because it is overly complex.
Yup. And at this point if you want to buy a regular TV, they’re harder to find and often cost more now.
So you can manually put your laundry inside it, go to your bed and tell the machine to wash it like you didn’t had to get up to put your laundry inside it.
Reporting when it finishes, allowing remote start, collecting statistics, downloading improved firmware to name few. None of these are essentials though.
Edit: uploading -> downloading
Anybody in his right minds wouldn’t connect a washing machine to WiFi in the first place.
Why not?
My washing machine has wi-fi. I didn’t buy it for that reason, but it just happens to. Using the app, I have some programme options that aren’t possible to select using the hardware dials. I can do things like change the detergent dosage and the number of additional rinse cycles. It has some “special” programmes for various specific fabrics. And it has things like maintenance diagnostics and the ability to run a specific self-cleaning cycle.
That’s all pretty useful.
And what’s the actual danger of connecting it to wi-fi? Will Big Data know how often I wash my towels? Do I need to worry about the government spying on my fabric softener usage? Will hackers seize control of my machine and ransom my ability to get clean underwear?
I just can’t see the big downside here (other than the fact that the machine is more complicated than it needs to be, but that ship has already sailed seeing as I already own it).
My washing machine has wi-fi. I didn’t buy it for that reason, but it just happens to. Using the app
So you did not just connect it to your home wifi, but you also allowed the vendor to connect it to their servers. Now the vendor knows the name of your WiFi and the password. Just to begin with. Next year maybe this vendor’s website will get hacked and 20000 such wifi passwords go public in some darknet :-)
Using the app, I have some programme options that aren’t possible to select using the hardware dials.
Who benefits? You may find it cool to have it in the app, but FIRST the vendor has saved some of their money by not building the needed dials and buttons for these functions. (Or did they give you that discount? ;-))
And maybe in 3 years from now, they don’t feel like maintaining your app anymore. Are you going to shout “WARRANTY” at them?
I just can’t see the big downside here (other than the fact that the machine is more complicated than it needs to be
Yes, that is a downside, too. Part of this ‘smartness’ could break and maybe even the whole thing stops working when these ‘diagnostics’ give false data.
Another huge point is: My washing machines so far have lasted between 8 - 15 years. But NEVER has any wifi-active device lived that long. Think about this difference, and who’s the one who benefits from it?
Will hackers seize control of my machine and ransom my ability to get clean underwear?
It’s more likely that they’d seize control of it and add it to their botnet. Which is exactly what it looks like happened here. There was a small package downloaded, then a large amount of outgoing data. That looks like a compromised IoT device being used for a botnet. Small incoming package to hack the device, then the device starts spamming some poor dude across the country as part of a DDOS, because he beat a script kiddie in a COD match and the script kiddie is salty about it.
Was it being used as a node in a botnet? Or did it glitch somehow to keep sending over and over again? I can’t image that behavior is nominal for that washing machine.
Just put the device on a separate wifi without internet access, or look at the “child protection” features of your router. Ours can put devices based on their MAC into “access groups” which range from “full access” over “internet from <time> to <time>” to “no internet at all”.
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Luckily, most embedded devices lack the smart to attach to two networks at the same time. So you keep it locked into a network where it can only do your bidding, and it won’t listen to anyone else. Unless they built in some very crazy and nefarious code and drive around with network enabled cars in the owners neighborhood.
puts on tin foil hat
https://www.wired.com/2012/05/google-wifi-fcc-investigation/
Wait, I don’t need a tin foil hat for this… It was national news
At the point it becomes impossible to buy hardware that doesn’t have a Wi-Fi antenna in it, I’ll get really worried regardless. Tricking a device into connecting to the right wifi network already is so wild, and people shouldn’t have to do that. I’m smart enough to. Not everybody is. Not everybody has the money for an extra router.
Not everybody has the money for an extra router.
No need for an extra router. I just put those device into the “has no internet access” group. It is one of those “Parental Control” things. Every device inside the net can see and talk to it, but itself cannot talk to anything outside.
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Until the router needs to be reset, or something else happens to it.
That’s what “configuration backups” are for. You’ve got some, don’t you?
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