"The FBI listed some indicators of compromise (IoCs) in the PSA for consumers to tell if they were impacted. But the average person isn’t running network detection infrastructure in their homes, and cannot hope to understand what IoCs can be used to determine if their devices generate “unexplained or suspicious Internet traffic.” Here, we will attempt to help give more comprehensive background information about these IoCs. If you find any of these on devices you own, then we encourage you to follow through by contacting the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) at www.ic3.gov.

The FBI lists these IoC:

- The presence of suspicious marketplaces where apps are downloaded.

- Requiring Google Play Protect settings to be disabled.

- Generic TV streaming devices advertised as unlocked or capable of accessing free content.

- IoT devices advertised from unrecognizable brands.

- Android devices that are not Play Protect certified.

- Unexplained or suspicious Internet traffic.

The following adds context to above, as well as some added IoCs we have seen from our research."

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/06/fbi-warning-iot-devices-how-tell-if-you-are-impacted

#CyberSecurity #Privacy #IoT #SmartObjects #InternetOfThings

"[A] team of researchers recently set out to determine just how much companies like Amazon, Apple and Google are using the data gathered through their voice assistants to profile us –– track and monitor our behavior –– across the internet.
(...)
The study focused on the behaviors of the three biggest voice assistant platforms: Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri and Google Assistant. What researchers found was that how concerned you should be about your smart assistant profiling you varies greatly depending on which device you use.

But in order to figure this out, they had to essentially trick voice assistants into profiling them.

They downloaded publicly available information that Google compiles on every user based on their searches, like gender, age range, relationship status and income bracket. Using those labels, they were able to design questions that could easily convince the platforms that they were, for example, married, had children or were a homeowner not a renter.

The researchers then recorded themselves asking these questions and replayed the audio to voice assistants over and over again. Over the course of 20 months, they conducted 1,171 experiments involving nearly 25,000 queries.
(...)
What they ended up finding was that Alexa exhibits the most straightforward kind of profiling behavior: It’s all based on your interest in products.
(...)
However, with Siri and Google Assistant, things are more complicated.

After reaching out to Apple to get their data, the company insisted “they had no data on us,” Choffnes says, “which means we couldn’t even test anything or prove any hypothesis about whether there was any profiling happening.”
(...)
Meanwhile, Google Assistant was the strangest of the bunch. The researchers found that it was clearly profiling its users but often incorrectly."
https://news.northeastern.edu/2025/03/17/voice-assistant-profiling-research/

#VoiceAssistants #IoT #SmartObjects #Amazon #Alexa #Google #Apple #Surveillance #Privacy #DataProtection

🚀 Exciting News for Developers! 🌟 The future of QR and NFC technology in the US is brighter than ever, thanks to platforms like ObjectVoice! 📱✨ As a software developer, I've seen firsthand the incredible progress we've made with ObjectVoice. This innovative platform empowers us to create smart behaviors using a simple no-code interface, harnessing the power of QR codes and NFC tags to make everyday objects intelligent.

#QRCode #NFCTechnology #ObjectVoice #SmartObjects #NoCode

#UserAgents #IoT #SmartObjects: "User agents can be well-designed or they can be poorly made. The fact that a user agent is designed to act in accord with your desires doesn't mean that it always will. A software agent, like a human agent, is not infallible.

However – and this is the key – if a user agent thwarts your desire due to a fault, that is fundamentally different from a user agent that thwarts your desires because it is designed to serve the interests of someone else, even when that is detrimental to your own interests.

A "faithless" user agent is utterly different from a "clumsy" user agent, and faithless user agents have become the norm. Indeed, as crude early internet clients progressed in sophistication, they grew increasingly treacherous. Most non-browser tools are designed for treachery.

A smart speaker or voice assistant routes all your requests through its manufacturer's servers and uses this to build a nonconsensual surveillance dossier on you. Smart speakers and voice assistants even secretly record your speech and route it to the manufacturer's subcontractors, whether or not you're explicitly interacting with them:"

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/07/treacherous-computing/#rewilding-the-internet

Two bug-fixes this weekend on the ObjectVoice platform that I'm excited to share.
1. Previewing web pages inside the emulator for Forward behaviors is now *much* more dependable. Had a lot of work to get around that one.
2. The bug that was 'resetting' behaviors before publishing is fixed!

Hope everyone and their projects are doing great this weekend!

#startup #saas #softwareupdates #qr #smartobjects #entrepreneur

#CyberSecurity #AI #Iot #SmartObjects #Hacking: "For a start, review all the devices in your home that connect to the internet. Try to identify AI-powered features, such as learning user behaviours or processing large datasets. These are common in smart speakers, home security systems and advanced wearable technology.

Secondly, explore the functionality of your devices and disable irrelevant or unnecessary AI features. This simple step could prevent AI from gathering personal information and its possible exposure.

Thirdly, when you purchase a device, examine the manufacturer’s security disclosure, often found on their website under titles like “Privacy”, “Security” or “Product Support”. It can also be found in user manuals and, sometimes, directly on the product packaging.

Make sure you understand what sort of AI technology the device uses and how data is collected, processed, stored and protected. What are the safeguards? Did the manufacturer use industry standards or subscribe to strong security guidelines like the European Union’s data protection regulation, GDPR?" https://theconversation.com/ai-is-making-smart-devices-watches-speakers-doorbells-easier-to-hack-heres-how-to-stay-safe-223738

Testing of new Apparance feature work, a quick asset pack based building is used to show of interactive in-view editing capabilities and object-object awareness and integration support.
#ProcGen #GameDev #SmartObjects
https://youtu.be/_8OKlcr3yg8

🎉 NEW VIDEO 🎉

Embedded Files and Linked Files in Mockups in Affinity Photo

https://youtu.be/tuYn_Q332F8

AffinityPhoto #SmartObject #SmartObjects #DTP #DesignTutorial #Design #Clones #Mockup #Mockups #EmbeddedFiles #LinkedFiles

🎉 NEW VIDEO 🎉

Working with Clones in Mockups in Affinity Photo

https://youtu.be/65vN34cmPe8

AffinityPhoto #SmartObject #SmartObjects #DTP #DesignTutorial #Design #Clones #Mockup #Mockups

🎉 NEW VIDEO 🎉

Advanced iPhone Mockup in Affinity Photo

https://youtu.be/1cHEc0rwK8c

#AffinityPhoto #SmartObject #SmartObjects #DesignTutorial #Design

🎉 NEW VIDEO 🎉

Make a Mockup in Affinity Photo

https://youtu.be/VKzsfieHTgw

#AffinityPhoto #SmartObject #SmartObjects #DTP #DesignTutorial #Design #MeasureTool #AffinityDesigner

#Cybersecurity #SmartObjects #LG #IoT: "An LG washing machine owner and self-confessed fintech geek has asked the Twitterverse why his smart home appliance ate an average of 3.66GB of data daily. Concerned about the washer’s internet addiction, Johnie forced the device to go cold turkey and blocked it using his router UI. Had the LG washer been hacked, hijacked, or otherwise tampered with over the net – or is this the average data consumption for a modern smart appliance?"

https://www.tomshardware.com/networking/your-washing-machine-could-be-sending-37-gb-of-data-a-day

#Surveillance #AdTargeting #SmartObjects #IoT: "MindSift, a small New Hampshire-based company, is part of a new push that aims to target ads by listening to peoples’ everyday conversations through microphones in their smart devices, according to a review of recently deleted sections from MindSift’s website and comments made on a podcast unearthed by 404 Media.

MindSift has been deleting details about its technology from the internet in recent days, but two of the three founders of the company go into detail about their technology on a small podcast they cohost called “Real Business Roundtable” where they give advice to entrepreneurs."

https://www.404media.co/mindsift-brags-about-using-smart-device-microphone-audio-to-target-ads-on-their-podcast/

Ordinary things made
Smart with liquid metal coating
Future coming soon

#liquidmetal #smartobjects #futuretechnology #haiku #poetry

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/06/liquid-metal-could-turn-everyday-things-like-paper-into-smart-objects/

#introduction

I’m an #academic who has been researching consumer experience on the Internet since 1993. Currently interested in how people interact with #smartobjects and #ai in the #iot and the #smarthome (recent pubs: https://rebrand.ly/JCR2018 & https://rebrand.ly/JAMS2019 ).

I use #machinelearning methods in #python like #umap, #tda and #nlp for #DataVisualization (forthcoming pub: https://rebrand.ly/JCR2023 )

I yell at my #alexa and #roomba devices too much, and am a huge #wetleg fan.

In this 1967 IBM training video, the Cookie Monster eats a talking computerized coffee machine https://boingboing.net/2018/03/20/in-this-1967-ibm-training-vide.html #smartobjects #Video #Post