We listen too frequently from intelligent home products that become pisapapeles with little or no warning, and now the FTC is directed to the buttons problem.
In a recently published article, the employees of the Federal Commercial Commission said they chose 184 different intelligent products and sought revelations about how long their manufacturers offered software updates for devices.
The results were not surprising, and the FTC researchers said they could not find details about the “duration of support or the completion date” for 89 percent of the products surveyed.
The FTC report does not have a call to action against smart housing manufacturers that do not reveal how long they will offer software updates for their products.
That said, the report does Note that smart household manufacturers who do not say how long will they offer software updates for their products could be violating the law.
Specifically, manufacturers who sell intelligent devices with written guarantees, but do not detail how long they will launch software updates could be violating the Magnuson Moss Warranty Law, which “requires that written guarantees on consumer products that cost more than $ 15 are made available to possible buyers before sale and require other disseminations,” says the FTC article.
The manufacturers of intelligent devices that keep the mother about software updates while making “express or implicit representations” about the longevity of their devices may also be in conflict with the FTC law, government employees wrote.
In a related consumer alert, the commission advises buyers of smart houses to “consider whether it is worth the price” before falling for a new device, and “consider how the product will work if the manufacturer stops updating the software.”
Smart domestic devices have a notoriously short useful life, and it is not unknown that manufacturers obtain online support or software updates for their products just a few years after launch.
Without software updates, smart devices can lose functionality or disappear completely, and critical security patches will also be lost.
There have been many examples of intelligent domestic devices that have increased and killed for several reasons, from the condemned Amazon Echok (which darkened in 2020 after only two years of service) to Nest Secure from Google (which became a Pisapales earlier this year).
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