What You Should Know About Hackers and Smart Doorbells

• Using smart devices in your home can make you vulnerable.
• Many smart devices weren’t designed with security in mind and leave the back door open for hackers to enter your network, even if you have a VPN.
• Learn which devices may be leaving you vulnerable to hackers and the different risks they carry.

Smart Devices In Your Home

Our homes are getting smarter and smarter. We love the convenience of smart devices, but it’s important to understand that these unencrypted devices can leave your entire network vulnerable to hackers.

Any device that connects to your network can put you at risk. Devices like smart doorbells, TVs, and Alexa were not designed to protect your information and create a back door for any hacker to access other devices in your home.

Different devices have different risks when it comes to privacy.  The risk depends on what the device is used for in your home.

Here is one example of how smart devices can leave you vulnerable when it comes to your privacy. When smart TVs were still new, LG Smart TV had a feature that was meant to collect data for a better viewing experience. However, these smart TVs were also transmitting data from shared files on the home network.  Many of these smart devices are designed to send information about your streaming habits, but you don’t expect them to be able to access other information on your network. 

Smart Doorbells

A smart doorbell itself may not have many risks because all the hacker would view is the video feed of your front doorstep, but a baby cam could give a hacker access to view the inside of your home.

The popularity of these devices has left many homes vulnerable to hackers. According to one study, 25% of households with high-speed internet planned to purchase a smart doorbell in 2019.  While smart doorbells are not a big threat in terms of privacy, they have become the perfect device for potential hackers to enter your local network.

While these devices carry different risks concerning your privacy, they are all vulnerable to device-hopping. Once a hacker gains access to a smart device, they now have the ability to hop to another device within that same network, without you even knowing they’ve entered your home.

How It Works

There are two kinds of networks – a local network (your home network) and wide area network (the Internet). Your router is the link between these two networks.

Your router contains a firewall that is responsible for protecting your home network from potential threats on the Internet. However, devices on your local network are not protected from each other by this same firewall, which is why hackers that get into your smart devices can be dangerous.

A hacked smart device opens a back door into your local network. A hacker that has gained access to your smart doorbell can now access your computer.

Many people with these smart devices are completely unaware that their home is open to hackers because of device hopping.

But I have a VPN already. Am I safe?

You may think you are protected by a current VPN, and you might be, but only when it comes to your computer. Only the device that is using your VPN is protected.

Your computer in your home may be safely browsing the internet through your VPN, but your smart doorbell is leaving your entire network open. To better protect your privacy, learn more about how a Smart VPN Adapter covers all the devices in your home.