On Fri, 20 Dec 2019 17:49:57 +0000, Andy Burns wrote:

Being able to, for example, control the heating remotely, turn on
the
electric blanket, etc when you are out is great.

Irrational, but in my mind, that equates to "Alexa, burn down my house"

Similar thoughts here as well. Why do people need to control the
heating remotely? That's what thermostats, preferably programmable
ones, are for. Even if some one is living alone and away for
unpredictable periods of time most places warm up pretty quickly. If
they don't then the heating is never "off" but always under control
of the programmable stat.

Electric blanket, again how long does that take to warm the bed? Do
people really come through the front door and dive straight into bed?
If they do the bed won't stay cold for long...

I'm also uncomfortable with something "out there" knowing the status
of the heating system, various sockets or lights. These things are
"free" to the consumer but still cost someone somewhere money to
provide. That money has to come from somewhere and that is by selling
the data they gather. They say it's "anonymised" which for any given
single dataset is probably true but buy a few different datasets and
start mining them and any anonymity soon disappears.

--
Cheers
Dave.