Could Your Smart Home Device Save Your Life?

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Yes, your brand-new 65-inch, smart TV could be used to spy on you. Your fancy nanny-cam could be transmitting your every move. And hackers could be controlling your Amazon Echo or Google Home—along with your computer’s server. Scary!

But what if your smart home devices could also save your life?

Smart devices have gotten a lot of bad press lately when it comes to the potential for privacy invasion. But one was credited with saving a woman and her daughter when it called the police during a domestic assault earlier this month in Tijeras, NM. According to ABC News, a man accused of waving a firearm and threatening to kill his girlfriend reportedly asked, “Did you call the sheriffs?” The device interpreted the question as a command and dialed 911.

Police showed up at the home and rescued the injured woman and her daughter, who was unharmed. The man was taken into custody.

It’s not clear at this point which speaker-driven, Wi-Fi-enabled device called 911, but it’s likely a Google Home or Amazon Echo.

“The unexpected use of this new technology to contact emergency services has possibly helped save a life,” Bernalillo County Sheriff Manuel Gonzales Ill told ABC News in a statement. “This amazing technology definitely helped save a mother and her child from a very violent situation.”

But the device didn’t mean to call the police, points out Jim Jones, a digital forensics professor at George Mason University, in Fairfax, VA. In fact, it did so only because it misinterpreted the suspect asking if his girlfriend had called the sheriff.

“It happened to turn out well,” he says of the rescue. “[But] the potential for it turning out badly—or at least not what you intended—is much greater.”

The dark and light side of devices

Because many smart home devices are always listening to whatever is being said, they could be manipulated to transmit those conversations to hackers, law enforcement, or even foreign governments.

“It’s a microphone in your home, and it is always on,” Jones says. “This opens up a lot of potential for abuse.”

So a nefarious hacker needs only to crack the code for just one of your connected devices to get access to your entire Wi-Fi network. Once that happens, the hacker could control all of your connected devices. (Cue the Roombas gone wild.)

Reality check: Most bad guys aren’t interested in spying on average, law-abiding Americans. They’re usually looking for a bigger payday—such as troves of credit card information at retailers such as Target and Home Depot.

But folks using smart home devices can and should take steps to protect themselves.

“The No. 1 thing is to keep [everything] updated” to make it harder for hackers to get in, Jones says. “Automatic updates will fix security holes as they become known.”

Folks should also change their passwords on their internet router—along with every Wi-Fi-enabled gadget in their home, experts say. This way hackers can’t get in through the fairly common manufacturers’ passwords the devices come with.

“People have to be smarter about their own security,” says Jane LeClair, president of the Washington Center for Cybersecurity Research & Development, in Washington. “It seems no matter what device we come up with, there’s someone on the other side of the table that wants to use that device in a negative way.”

Chalk it up to the price of progress, and doing what it takes to get some additional peace of mind at home. After all, the devices can be used to quickly summon police or medical assistance if someone has a medical emergency, such as a bad fall or heart attack, or simply needs help. And, well, they’re cool.

“I’m not home, but I’m able to see who’s at my front door right now,” LeClair boasts.

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