Good reason not to have wifi on your refrigerator

[wtg]

A new kind of cyberattack.

Dozens of supermarkets across seven European countries have been hit by a cyber-attack affecting their refrigerators and freezers.

Around 40 Delhaize supermarkets in Belgium and Luxembourg were affected, while a smaller number of shops were hit in Sweden, Ireland, the Netherlands, Estonia and Finland.

Sabcobel, a Belgian company that manufactures some of the affected refrigerators, said the units' evaporators were switched to defrost mode, causing them to warm up, in what is believed to be the same method used in last month's incident that hit hundreds of French supermarkets.

Millions of euros worth of food had to be thrown away in October, local media reported at the time.

Stephan Moelans, the CEO of Sabcobel, which operates Delhaize's systems, on Monday told the Belga news agency that the incident was a cyber-attack and that the company had been "working all night and morning to disconnect the affected units from the network".

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq1kd1nee80eo

These are commercial units, but no reason that I know of the same thing couldn't happen to residential units. Imagine every LG frig going south, all on one day?

[Mik]

I refuse to buy any refrigerated appliance that is connected. My GE Cafe stove is, but it's only good for firmware or software updates. I deleted the app on my phone as I really don't need to start the oven from the family room.

[CHAS]

You don't want your household appliance information in a data center???

[Mik]

I don't see the benefit to me. I do see the benefit to the manufacturers for applying software or firmware updates remotely. There's a remedy for that for laundry at least. it's called Speed Queen. Simple machines that just do the basic function.

[AdagioM]

I don’t have wifi on my appliances (too old), and don’t ever plan to have wifi on future appliances. Stupidly unnecessary.