Many of the devices used in every-day life now have a connection to the Internet. We’ve started with computers and laptops, went to tablets and smartphones, but then it hit us, we can connect anything. We’ve started connecting cars, robots, watches and everything in between, and then, even more, things.
This connection that any device might have with the Internet is called The Internet of Things. Now, all of these smart devices are created to help you with your daily lives, to make things easier. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case, and sometimes, things might go wrong, and that might cost you your life. We’ve prepared a list of five ways that the Internet of Things could kill you.
Your Smart Car
Cars that can drive themselves have been the subject of many futuristic and Sci-Fi movies and books over the years, but with the recent scientific developments, this amazing concept has managed to appear in real life. Give it a couple of years, and they’ll be on the streets.
So what seems to be the problem, you might ask. Well, they might decide that they should kill you.
No, we’re not talking about a machine rebellion from the plot of the Terminator, but instead, a smart car will probably be in situations where it’s driving you through the city when suddenly, a crowd steps on the road. Let’s say that the car can’t stop in time. What should the car do? Kill a bunch of people in front of it, or sacrifice its passenger by slamming into a wall? What would you do in that situation?
Several surveys and crowd researches have been done concerning that very subject, and most of the people questioned have stated that they think that the car should kill the passenger for the greater number of lives. This kind of thinking will probably be the way that the situation will be dealt with.
Hacking Of Your Pacemaker
It’s been said that the hackers have a great amount of power when it comes to the internet, but that in real life they can’t do anything to hurt us. Well, that’s not exactly true. With more and more things around us that are getting internet access, we’re giving them more power when it comes to influencing our lives. So much power, in fact that they might have the power to kill us.
You may have heard of the iStan. iStan’s a medical simulation that’s used to provide a realistic copy of the human body. It can be found on the Internet, and many medical schools use it for practice since most of the real people don’t exactly like being killed and tested on by students. iStan is created in a way that mimics many human systems as realistically as possible, and if iStan is injured, it would react like a normal human would.
Hackers took advantage of this and hacked his pacemaker, which they proceeded to use as a torturing device, before killing him in the end.
This was done to demonstrate the vulnerabilities of such systems, and one of the hackers involved, Mike Jacobs, has stated that “The simulator had a pacemaker so we could speed the heart rate up, we could slow it down. If it had a defibrillator, which most do, we could have shocked it repeatedly. If it was the intent, we could cause harm to the patient. It’s not just a pacemaker; we could do it with an insulin pump, or some things that would cause life-threatening injuries or death.”
A Confused Smart Kitchen
Just think about all the things that you can do to meat and vegetables when you’re preparing the meal, and then realize that your smart kitchen might do even more to you if it gets incorrectly configured.
Just to give you an idea, you might get rat poison instead of salt by your smart fridge, or it might mess with the safety limits that you’ve posted.
Many of today’s kitchen come with a carbon monoxide alarm, and even though your devices rarely start pumping out poisonous gasses, if they decided to start doing so, you wouldn’t be able to notice it, since it’s both odorless and colorless. That’s why we need the alarm to warn us of the danger.
Most of the time, a sticky pad hanged on the fridge should do the trick, but since the new, smart technologies are being brought into our homes on a daily basis, we’ll probably have security systems that are connected to our phones, smartwatches and alike. So, imagine if the deadly gas starts leaking out, and the mechanism that’s supposed to measure it and raise the alarm is flawed of even completely broken. You wouldn’t even be aware that you’re slowly being poisoned.
Water Toxicity Levels Might Get Out Of Hand
This one might include the death of hundreds or even thousands of people, so we should think about it with a bit more concentration. Any and all devices that are used for auto-controlling the levels of toxicity in your local water supply need to be working on 100%, all the time.
If they don’t, you and everyone you know might end up poisoned by toxic substances. For example, many countries are putting fluoride in their water supplied because it helps when it comes to dental health. Still, we should all be aware that this is a toxic substance that must be heavily controlled at all times.
The maximum level of fluoride that the US’s United States Health and Human Services Department has recommended is 0.7 milligrams per liter. Now, if the smart system gets faulty or confused, and instead pumps in 7 grams, or more, everyone would be dead soon.
We’ll all be in trouble even if there’s nothing to drink, and that will be the case only if we figure out that our water is poisoned in time.
Death Of Humanity By The AI
If the smart devices were ever to gain self-awareness, it could mean the death of us all. Let’s put morality on the side, and ignore the fact that the AI would learn the meaning of good and bad, and then kill all of us for being so obviously bad, and presume that that is not the reason we go.
Humans might realize what power the AI holds, what vast knowledge it could gather and use since it controls the internet and is connected to every electronic device on the planet. We might get scared and try to shut it off. To keep itself alive, the AI might simply decide that we’re a threat to its existence and then kill us all.
What Can Be Done About It
If you want to prevent these and many other different forms of cyber attacks by hackers or by the AI (if it ever becomes a reality), we recommend the use of VPNs.
They’ll help you with masking your location, hiding your actions and even allow you access to geo-blocked content. Your data will be encrypted, and you’ll block out hackers, trojans, malware and most of the other threats that we know of at this time. You can even get a VPN router, that will protect all of your devices automatically.
Even though death by Smart car can’t be helped, even through the use of a VPN, you should still do whatever you can to prevent the smaller “accidents” from happening to you, or the devices that you use.
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