The voice from our Nest camera threatened to steal our baby

There's no way to say this humbly, but imo stuff like this is the reason that companies lose their way when they lose an empowered "buck stops here" product-oriented CEO with enough engineering chops to modulate product decisions.

I had an endless to-do list of improvements, including security enhancements like the one you suggest (but done in a way that would not impair usability, like anything with QR codes :-)).

The problem is, a string of well-meaning but amazingly risk-averse managers came in and killed the soul of the company by introducing enough bureaucracy that the team and I no longer cared to bang our heads against brick walls anymore.

If the leadership doesn't a) understand product, b) understand business, c) know/respect good engineering, or d) have "fuck you, we're doing this" authority ... it will fail in spectacular ways through a series of seemingly good short-term decisions, it's just a matter of time.

Combine product, business, engineering, and authority to lead, sprinkle in some ethics and respect for your customers/employees, and baby you've got a stew going.

This whole privacy mess in home & so-called "IoT" is a result of people who don't even know what would be required to operate ethically with such powerful technology in the first place. I believe they are mostly good people, they just don't have the mindset or philosophy to know what to do. It kinda makes me misty-eyed. They know where to find me if it sounds like some of this could help... I'd be happy to try and get the band back together again.

I disagree. This is the equivalent of blaming car manufacturers in the 70s for stolen cars when people left the keys in the cars. This is 2019. We've had PINs and passwords for decades. At some point people have to take responsibility for their own lives, their own property, and their own safety and take some things seriously. Nest and other companies can only do so much when the users keep doing stupid things like "password" for their password.

If you leave your front door unlocked when you go on vacation, yes, the crook should be jailed, but you should lock the darn door.

I really like your idea of a physical pairing procedure. It's not a large price to pay for dramatically increased privacy. Some other possible partial-solutions I initially thought of:

1.) Don't allow users to create their own password. Generate a strong password for them, and only show it to them once upon password creation/change. (like how API secret keys are often only displayed once upon creation) --- this would eliminate the "same password on multiple sites" issue

2.) Require a device whitelist where some type of fingerprinting/calibrating is done upon initial login by each device added to the list.

3.) Geofence logins to a pre-specified radius surrounding the camera location. E.g. if the parents work < 10 miles from home, they can set up a radius of 10 miles and understand that if they travel further than 10 miles away from home they won't be allowed access. --- this would be hackable, but would at least add another layer of protection.

This is how Tesla pairs a new phone to work as a key -- you need to have one of the two RFID key cards that come with the car present, and be inside the car with the new phone. You pair _that particular device_ and then authorize it with the RFID card. Simply having the login to the app/account is not enough, and from the car itself you can always remove a paired phone.

A key for a car frames the problem in much clearer terms and Tesla engineered a secure solution. It is unfortunate this isn't done for other things where security is equally important.

Omitting the lack of 2FA is missing an even more important point because it's cases like this why 2FA is pretty much mandatory today.

But instead of using already available solutions, you want to reinvent the wheel with "a pairing procedure". Gee, that sounds awfully familiar to what 2FA does, which also would have completely eliminated this failure mode, if the user would have bothered to actually use it.

In that context, I really don't see what Google could do differently with Nest. If users don't use additional security, then you can add all the additional security you want.

We just aren't trying that hard.

I'm sure it wasn't your intention but that's quite insulting. Just because someone didn't grow up with technology doesn't mean they can't learn and understand it. Farmers especially since they're very DIY and resourceful.

I hope you helped your mom set up 2FA after that.

Would basic checks would you recommend that Google on top of offering a robust 2FA solution?

Likely safer than SMS 2FA as well.

It's the manufacturer's fault to allow the weak configuration in the first place.

Ideally, being susceptible to a leaked password-email-combination should be considered gross negligence.

Not perfect, but, its decent.

I still use it and will continue to do so until someone releases a better ecosystem.

Right now I get an alert on my phone if someone rings the bell, or leaves/removes a package. Plus with facial recognition I get alerts which include the person's name for common visitors (via facial recognition) and will announce visitors via a set of google home minis. Nest will alert my phone if the smoke detector sees smoke or CO. I'm obviously quite "all in" on their ecosystem.

I also will note I have an elderly relative at home as well as 3 dogs and we are not there most days so the ability to see what's going on at home and potentially take action like calling the police/fire/EMS is extremely valuable to me.

https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9295081?hl=en

I don't remember what Nest used before being bought by Google (I believe SMS MFA was available), but they're transitioning accounts to sign in with your Google account.

A surprising number of sites that really should do not offer any MFA. Like bank accounts, credit cards, investing accounts, payroll, cars...

My money may not be safe, but at least my github commits are!

There's 8 billions people in the world. There's every kinds of them.

The commons one aren't interesting, they are commons, they aren't the one that we want to talk about. Thus what you see are only the best or the worst.

Please don't lose hope because of that.

I think the super angry response we are seeing is a result of the authoritarian lean of our current times.

It's like the concept of freedom IMPLYING responsibility has been completely done away with. The operating concept is: adult consumers are children, and need to be protected.

* Detect that a login occurred from an unrecognized IP and email the account holder to tip them off.

* More stringent password requirements and a check against public leaked database registries to alert the user that the password they're using has been leaked.

But it seems like the bigger frustration is not that they did not prevent it, but that when it occurred it was difficult to raise the issue, and the response was tremendously inadequate.

In the mind of the populace, I think Google might stay in the same brain spot reserved for father christmas. I would have suggested a massive privacy awareness campaign but I doubt it'll work - especially when it comes at the cost of convenience.

Username/password is reflected unchanged in JS. Got a console error because my password has a single quote in it.

If I login to my gmail account using a different PC, google won't let me in without sending a text to my phone or a code to my email. Sometimes, even using a different browser on the same PC I typically use triggers this security check. Even after letting me in, Gmail will send a notice of the strange login to my backup email - the mail will contain the time and ip of the event.

Same with telegram. Loging to a new app/device and Telegram will sends the notification to the two apps I use on my main PC, my secondary pc, and my phones. Deleting the notification on one client app won't remove it from the rest. This way, an intruder can't erase the evidence.

Also, almost almost every other email service I own badgers me to set up 2factor - either another email, a phone, back up codes or 2-factor authenticator apps.

If Google/Nest isn't doing this - then, part of the blame lies with them. These basic, obvious, common sense security/password practices you know is breaking news to "NORMAL" people.

In that sense Google could make the security stronger for their customers but chooses to make it easier to install and use for the majority.

Getting downvoted for this, but consider this: they require a password for security purposes, why don’t they require MFA? Why is this not a requirement for this product or all their products? It’s a barrier to entry, and an eases of use thing, which means it’s a product decision to not require stronger authentication on this or all their products.

1. user Initially creates login and password for Nest device

2. Before Nest accepts your password, it checks HaveIBeenPwned.com to see if that password has already been used before for this email address. If so, the password is rejected.

They were actually very different from other companies at that point in time.

It's just harder to be not evil when margins are shrinking.