Baby monitors are technically similar to home surveillance products, and are often now made by home security companies. For many, convenience and peace of mind was worth it.Ĭonnected baby monitors change the equation dramatically. The privacy trade-off, then, was straightforward there was a small risk your neighbors could listen in. These radio signals didn’t go very far, and were easily blocked by walls and trees. However, the ability to listen to neighbors’ devices was limited. ![]() The analog baby monitors of previous decades were notoriously susceptible to eavesdropping from nearby devices like cordless phones, walkie talkies, and other baby monitors, all of which operated on the same radio frequencies. Where parents used to face only a small risk of nearby snoops, connected monitors expand their concerns to include tech companies, data brokers, and intrusions from anywhere on the internet. Over time, these broadcasts expanded from audio to video, and from local live listening and viewing to internet storage of footage and health data. It is hard to imagine something more private than what happens in a small child’s bedroom, and a baby monitor’s basic function is to broadcast these moments. There have long been complicated privacy questions around baby monitors. Some allow you to record video and save it to the cloud, and some will even analyze the footage for you. Many include options like movable cameras, infrared night vision, room humidity and temperature readings, and monitoring of the baby’s breath, movement, heart rate, temperature, and more. ![]() Most new baby monitors are wifi-connected and controlled through smartphone apps. Now, they’re part of a constellation of home surveillance devices gathering huge amounts of private information.įor those whose memory of a baby monitor resembles the ubiquitous walkie-talkie styled one-way radio that was a fixture of the 1980s nursery, the array of new features may be dizzying. Like many other products in the past decade, baby monitors have moved past their analog roots, connected to your wifi network, and joined the Internet of Things (IoT). Parents have placed baby monitors crib-side for decades, buying the tech-enabled peace of mind that comes with knowing, from a distance, if their baby is safe.
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