Charlotte 
/Cinny 
charlotte
everyone is like “don’t connect freezers to the internet” as if these are personal home freezers in your kitchen you can just walk to and if they are out of range you will probably be fine and not on the hook for health code violations or worse
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Ben Lubar (any pronouns)
ben@lubar.me@charlotte how would a freezer that's inaccessible to the people who work in the grocery store be useful
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Ben Lubar (any pronouns)
ben@lubar.me@charlotte there's a huge difference between a freezer that can report its temperature to some kind of meter that gets read remotely and a freezer with a remote code execution exploit that lets you turn it into an oven
I'm pretty sure the power company can read the power meter plugged into the back of my house from a car on the street but there's no way someone can unlock and unplug the meter from the street
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Charlotte /Cinny
charlotte
@ben those are two separate issues actually. the “why is the freezer connected to the internet” turns a decent idea into The Problem while the real issue (almost nonexistent security controls) gets ignored because “you should have shrimply not connected it to the internet”
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Ben Lubar (any pronouns)
ben@lubar.me@charlotte if a store has (presumably) multiple refrigerators, then those refrigerators should not be directly connected to the internet but rather have their data aggregated and accessible via whatever device is aggregating the data
just like how anything in your house shouldn't be connected directly to the modem unless you're sure it's only got ports listening for things that it should be listening for
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Ben Lubar (any pronouns)
ben@lubar.me@charlotte I don't think the person who installed it had any ability to decide whether the refrigerators would receive commands from the internet
that's a design issue
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Charlotte /Cinny
charlotte
@ben the new problem: tho device aggregating it has a hardcoded password (presumably these freezer web panels cover complete installations anyhow, but the issue is specifically not the “connecting it fo the internet part” but the “anyways we have zero security and neither does our client” bit)
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southie wusky
southpaw1312@yiff.life@charlotte if freezers were never connected to satellites then technically there'd be absolutely no monitoring of refrigerated cars/trailers on trains and trucks
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sarah the deer-mouse / Matilda Love
matildalove@wetdry.world@charlotte personally i don't require folks to be so precise in their language when they're clearly complaining about corporate surveillance and weren't remotely thinking about normal temperature monitored devices
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Charlotte /Cinny
charlotte
@matildalove i should also point out, again, these aren’t freezers that people just have in their home. businesses buy and run them. and open web interfaces isn’t something an end user is going to accidentally configure in their own home
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Charlotte /Cinny
charlotte
@matildalove an instant “don’t connect [x thing] to the internet” response is about as useful as a “don’t click links” one to the latest phishing scam because at best it completely dismisses what the other person is trying to do offering zero alternatives
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