Electricity Gas Meters Spying: Today, almost everyone has electricity connections in their homes. Along with this, connections for water are also installed in people’s homes. At many places, gas is also supplied through pipelines. Meters are installed for this as well. Earlier, the meters installed for the use of all these things used to be operated manually.
But now smart meters generate bills digitally. While people have benefited from these smart meters, there is news about smart meters that they are in your house and also spy on you. You must be surprised to hear this. Let us tell you what is the truth behind this.
The company keeps an eye on
If we look at the past few years, the meter system has changed all over the world. Now, Advanced Metering Infrastructure or AMI is used in most places. These are new types of meters. They keep track of the electricity, water, gas used. They include things like hardware, software, displays and controllers, meter data management software. They are part of a large smart grid. Before these AMI meters, there used to be automatic meter reading systems.
In which there used to be only one-way communication from meter to meter. But now AMI meter is a two-way communication system in which instructions and orders can also be sent. It works on wireless system. If they need to be turned off, they can be turned off from a distance. In February 2021, 150 people lost their lives in snowfall at a place in Texas, America. When a hacker tried to find out where the power had gone. So the company refused to give information. That is, the company knew which houses had lost power. But did not give the data.
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Can be operated remotely
Generally speaking, it may seem that power outages during snowfall are common. But if this was the case, then why did the company not release the data? The hacker demanded an answer from the company. When he investigated this matter himself and started reading the wireless communications around him, he read more than 7000 smart meters. And he found that the areas where most of the power was lost were mostly inhabited by black (non-white) people. That means this may have been done intentionally.
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Spying can be done by hacking
How can a smart meter be hacked? How can it be used for spying? An example of this was seen in America. When a hacker put ransomware and shut down the pipeline system in many areas of America. Which was later restored by the US government by paying millions of dollars. That means anyone can spy on you by hacking your smart meter.
Companies can sell your information
Companies that operate smart meters keep an eye on your activities through smart meters. Companies also know when and which electric device you have used. Nowadays many companies are collecting people’s data and selling it.