Use by date for IOT equipment.

Everything you buy for your home that connects to the internet should come with a use by date!

Listen to BBC Radio 4 You and Yours today Thursday 12th April. Last part of programme about Cyber Security which you can select after you start playing.

I do have a Samsung mobile phone. It has rarely if ever had an update to the Operating System, just endless updates to the apps.

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

I do have a Samsung mobile phone. It has rarely if ever had an update to the Operating System, just endless updates to the apps.

My S7 Edge (over a year old) is getting a system update every couple of months at the moment.

It has always been the case for security updates - no company is willing to invest resources on older devices as it takes too much time to write and test everything for every device so generally they have an End Of Support date. MS with Windows support for a long time but Android tends to be much shorter and dependent on the manufacturer as it is the manufacturer's responsibility to do the testing.

Apple tends to be about 5 years for IOS if I remember rightly.

I suspect mobile phones have been discarded particularly in the past because the new ones based on more advanced technology are so much better. If I had an IOT fridge I would expect it to last more than a dozen years.

If you buy an IOT fridge and the IOT is important then you would have to check up front how long it will be supported for. As most white goods seem to be designed for a 5 year lifespan then that may be all they guarantee software support for.

If the IOT requires access to a service provided via the Internet then the manufacturer could go bust at any point and the IOT could then cease to function - this is a significant risk for anything that requires Internet provided services. Likelihood is the fridge itself would continue to operate for the core function but may lose the IOT features.

Edited by ian72 (Fri 13-Apr-18 13:07:29)