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A recent study conducted by the research centers “Imdea Networks,” “Imdea Software,” and “Carlos III University” revealed that the interaction between smart devices and mobile applications entails significant security and privacy risks.

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The study showed that these devices can share “MAC” addresses, serial numbers, and “SSID” network names, creating a digital profile of the home environment that can be used for surveillance purposes.

Software Development

According to David Choffnes, a professor at Northeastern University and co-author of the study, this situation represents a privacy violation. “These vulnerabilities provide attackers with a clear view of what is in your home, who is there, how they move, and when,” he stated.

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The study also detailed how certain devices and applications can act as invisible observers, where a mobile app that detects the number of connected devices and their identifiers can deduce the level of movement in the home and who visits, without the need for location functions such as GPS.

Beyond movement within the home, researchers discovered how some data collected by the devices can be sent to remote servers. Third-party applications and Software Development Kits (SDKs) can extract this information to create detailed household profiles.

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This is a practice that can be used for commercial surveillance and cross-device tracking. Such information feeds into a shadowy data collection network, which could potentially reveal details like residents’ habits and social structures.

Consumer Protection

Narseo Vallina-Rodriguez, a researcher at “Imdea Networks,” warned of the risk that this uncontrolled exposure of information allows advertising companies or spyware applications to build a digital map of household activities.

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This type of profiling can also identify the home’s occupants, determine when they leave and return, and reveal the devices they own—details that could be exploited by malicious entities.

Vallina-Rodriguez noted that many of these practices are conducted without explicit user consent and, in some cases, without adherence to regulations such as the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

This raises questions about the ability of current laws to protect consumers in an era of rapidly advancing technology.

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