Our homes are starting to get filled with Internet-enabled devices. I recently looked around my own home, and in addition to the expected devices like computers, printers, tablets and smartphones we have many other devices that can connect to the Internet. We have a smart TV, an eero WiFi network, three Amazon Echos, several fitness trackers, and a smart watch. Many homes have other Internet-connected devices like smart burglar alarms, smart thermostats, smart lighting and even smart major appliances. Kids can have smart toys and game consoles these days which have more computing power than most PCs.

Every one of these devices gathers data on us and a good argument can be made that we are all being spied on by our devices. Each device witnesses a different part of our lives, but add them all together and they paint a detailed picture of the activity in your home and of each person living there.

There are numerous examples of companies that we know are using our data:

• Last year it was revealed that Roomba was selling detailed information about the layouts of homes to data brokers.
• The year before we found out that Samsung smart TVs were capable of listening to conversations in our living rooms and also had backdoor connections to the Internet.
• There has been an uproar about smart talking toys that not only interact with kids but also listen and essentially build profiles on them.
• Smart devices like smart phones, tablets and computers come with software that is aimed at gathering data on us for marketing purposes. This software generally is baked in and can’t be easily removed. Some companies like Lenovo (and their Superfish malware) went even further and hijacked user web traffic in favor of vendors willing to pay Lenovo.
• Buyers of John Deere tractors found out that while they own the tractor they don’t own the software. The company penalizes customers who try to repair their tractor by anybody other than an authorized John Deere repairperson.

Probably the most insidious result of all of this spying is that there are now data brokers who gather and sell data that can paint a detailed profile of us. These data profiles are then used to market directly to us or are sold to politicians who can target those most sympathetic to their message. It’s also been reported that smart criminals are using this data to choose victims for their crimes.

I’m sure by now that everybody has searched for something on the web, and then noticed that for the next few weeks they are plastered with ads trying to sell them the subject of their search. This happened to me a few years ago when I was looking at new pick-up trucks on the web. But today this goes a lot farther and people complain about getting medical ads after they have searched the web about an illness.

To make matters worse, we have a government regulatory policy in this country that benefits the corporations that are spying on us. Last year Congress passed privacy rules that let ISPs and anybody else gathering raw digital data off the hook. There are essentially no real privacy rules today. Data privacy is now under the purview of the Federal Trade Commission. They might intervene in a particularly egregious case of invasion of privacy, but their rules are not proactive and only can be used to find companies that have already broken the rules. Unless fines grow to be gargantuan it’s unlikely that the FTC will change much of the worst practices using our data.

The European Union is in the process of enacting rules that will clamp down on data gathering. Their rules that go into effect in a few months will require that customers buy-in to being monitored. That is great in concept, but my guess that it’s going to take a decade of significant fines to get the attention of those companies that gather our data. Unless the fines are larger than the gains from spying on people then companies will continue to monitor us, and they will just work harder to hide evidence of spying from the government.

I think there are very few of us who don’t believe our data should belong solely to us. Nobody really wants outsiders knowing about their web searches. Nobody wants unknown companies tracking their movement inside their homes, their purchases and even their conversations. But for now, the companies that are gathering and using our data have the upper hand and are largely free do nearly anything they want with our data.