What decisions are they making for you? It&#x27;s your decision to opt in to their system by buying. As a technologist you have a good idea how to spot the crappy ones that can put you at risk- or would just (rightly) assume that something like an internet connected Elmo is a bad idea. It&#x27;s the general population that we have to worry about, as they&#x27;ll be the ones most seriously harmed (identity theft is the thing I worry most about any of this) by these things going awry. They may also not even put things together that some of these devices could be or are internet connected in the first place, where to us it&#x27;s obvious that there must be network connectivity of some sort.<p>That being said, let the bad actors fail. Let their names get dragged through the mud, let the big companies sober up after a few too many VTech&#x2F;Mattel&#x2F;LG style failures that make the headlines. Let them either back out of the market because this shit is hard to keep secure, let them work with someone who can, or let them triple down and figure it out themselves. We&#x27;re going to see a lot of failures, but we&#x27;ll be better for it.<p>I&#x27;ve connected my own devices around my house (securely), use z-wave, and consumer home automation hubs&#x2F;hardware, as well as some well known stuff like Nest and Amazon Echo. I don&#x27;t ever want to go back to NOT having these things.<p>I&#x27;ve accounted for many of the likely failure points by these very well regarded manufacturers and I&#x27;ve firewalled my network very tightly, among many other things. But damn it, I&#x27;ve seen the future and I don&#x27;t want to go back. It&#x27;s too nice, too convenient, and adds too much real value.<p>It&#x27;s your decision to buy their goods, no one should be preventing anyone from trying to enter the market just because you get the heebie jeebies or don&#x27;t see the value. Someone else does- or no one else does and they fold up shop.