Report: Many IoT device vendors may send user information to third parties

Researchers from the colleges at the United Kingdom and the United States recently released a report entitled “Information Exposure for Consumer IoT Devices: A Multidimensional, Network-Informed Measurement Approach”, which analyzed data transmissions for 81 smart TVs, smart home centers and home appliances. Test equipment comes from well-known manufacturers such as Samsung, Apple, LG, Amazon, and Roku. The report states that these devices may send information to third parties without the user’s consent. ​

After 34,586 control experiments, a total of 71 test devices have sent information to third parties outside the device manufacturer, and 30 devices can accurately infer their information by detecting user behavior. 56% of equipment in the United States and 83.8% of equipment in the United Kingdom will send information abroad, and all test equipment has sent data in cleartext. The third parties that receive data are cloud technology vendors, including Netflix, Spotify, Microsoft, Akamai, Facebook, and Google.

Experts say commercial organizations may use user data collected by IoT products to maximize their benefits.