According to Financial Times, connected devices are being turned against partners and family members for surveillance, intimidation, and harassment. Smart home technology marketed as convenience and remote control has become a vector for domestic abuse. When intimacy is wired into apps, so is power.
This story exposes how the information economy sells total visibility and remote control as premium features, then acts shocked when abusers exploit them exactly as designed. Device makers and platforms have built command systems without building escape routes. Victims face locked accounts, no audit trails, and no clear way to regain control. That's a product liability problem. It looks like a lifestyle choice.
Platforms need to add real safety features: clearer account ownership, emergency resets, and logs showing who changed what and when. Regulators will matter too. Product liability and safety standards stop being theoretical the moment a door lock or baby monitor becomes evidence in a domestic abuse case.
Tech coverage spent years treating the smart home as a lifestyle upgrade. That lens missed the obvious: a connected house is a command system, and command systems attract coercion. Media outlets are finally catching up to a blunt fact. When companies wire intimacy into apps, they wire power into them too. Design choices become a safety story, not a product-review footnote. How smart tech is being weaponised in the home isn't a bug. It's what happens when you sell control without thinking about who holds it.
Filed to the Media desk · Jul 20