FTC eyes smart home makers over software updates

We hear all too often of smart home products that turn into paperweights with little or no warning, and now the FTC wading into the hot-button issue. 

In a newly released paper, staffers at the Federal Trade Commision said they picked 184 different smart products and looked for disclosures on how long their manufactures would offer software updates for the devices. 

The results were unsurprising, with the FTC researchers saying they couldn’t find details about the “support duration or end date” for 89 percent of the surveyed products. 

The FTC report stops short of a call for action against smart home manufactures who don’t reveal how long they’ll offer software updates for their wares.  

That said, the report does note that smart home makers who don’t say how long they’ll offer software updates for their products might be breaking the law.

Specifically, manufactures who sell smart devices with written warranties but don’t detail how long they’ll release software updates could be violating the Magnuson Moss Warranty Act, which “requires that written warranties on consumer products costing more than $15 be made available to prospective buyers prior to sale and requires other disclosures,” the FTC paper says. 

Smart device makers who keep mum about software updates while making “express or implied representations” on the longevity of their gadgets may also be running afoul of the FTC Act, the government staffers wrote. 

In a related consumer alert, the commission advises smart home shoppers to “consider if it’s worth the price” before plunking down for a new device, and to “consider how the product will work if the manufacturer stops updating the software.” 

Smart home devices have a notoriously short shelf life, and it’s not unheard of for manufacturers to yank online support or software updates for their products only a few years after release. 

Without software updates, smart devices may lose functionality or go dead altogether, and they’ll also miss out on critical security patches.

There have been plenty of examples of smart home devices that have up and died for various reasons, from the doomed Amazon Echo Look (which went dark in 2020 after just two years of service) to Google’s Nest Secure (which turned into a paperweight earlier this year).