Privacy concerns over “Circle with Disney” appliance
I work in a small iot company. We usually do concurrency analysis. Yesterday we received Disney's Circle box. It's a device you connect to your wifi and lists all the devices in your network ; then you can monitor those devices, deny them access to websites and even access their browsing history.
While these features aren't new, the fact that it's a portable 3rd party device in your network puts it into a very higher level of wrong ethics :
1. It is claimed to be used in your own home, but nothing prevents you from connecting to your neighbors or workplace wifi and some public places too
2. As it's using "hacker techniques for good", there is NO action on the monitored device to do to enable or prevent monitoring, so you can browse history on your wife's computer or your boss's phone.
3. There's even a battery embedded so you can carry it and monitor on the fly.
This device is intented to prevent your children from browsing porn or using facebook instead of studying ; especially at a time where snapchat and dickpics are a thing... BUT :
1. If gateway manufacturers were caring, they'd make similar features because 90% routers are built with OpenWRT which has the features. It would at least be really limited to your home.
2. How many scenarii could go wrong with that ? What if some child looks for his sex orientation and he doesn't want to tell by fear of judgment? How many wife/husband will buy it to spy on AshleyMadison visits? How many will use in work places for blackmailing?
3. Do you really think a child of today won't find ways to reach the content your forbid? Ways are for people to bypass these rules, and still if not enough, that content is available on public wifi...
It for sure comes from good intentions ; but evil can be found in the best things.