Smart Homes Won’t Scale Until The Privacy Problem Is Fixed
Smart Homes Won’t Scale Until The Privacy Problem Is Fixed
Publish Date: 2026-05-28 10:00:00
Source Domain: www.forbes.com
Smart Home Technology
Getty Images – Issarawat Tattong
For years, smart home technology promised lower energy bills, improved security and homes that adapt automatically to the people inside them. But despite steady improvements in AI and automation, adoption lagged industry expectations and has begun to slow. The reason isn’t hard to identify. Consumers are increasingly weary that smart home devices come with hidden tradeoffs like invasive data collection, questionable data sharing practices, and cybersecurity risks.
The challenge facing smart homes isn’t technological readiness, but consumer trust. Without trust, even the most advanced connected technology stalls at the point of adoption.
According to a recent survey from my company, Prosper Insights & Analytics, fewer than half of U.S. adults agreed that Amazon’s Alexa or Google Assistant feels “like a friend.” That skepticism is reinforced by a steady drumbeat of headlines, like Amazon removing key privacy settings, Google continuing to collect data from discontinued devices and ongoing regulatory scrutiny of Meta’s data practices.
Prosper – Alexa and Google Assistant Like A Friend
Prosper Insights & Analytics
The message consumers are absorbing is simple – smart home devices collect more data than they should, share it more widely than people expect and offer too little visibility into what happens after installation. Whether that perception is always fair doesn’t matter. That perception shapes behavior, and right now, it’s suppressing adoption.
“Smart home technology has reached a reckoning point,” said Brendon O’Toole, vice president smart home and energy management for Copeland. “Companies can treat privacy as a design constraint to be optimized away or as a foundational requirement for growth, but only one of those paths allows the category to scale in a meaningful way.”
The Transparency Gap
Smart home manufacturers nearly always disclose privacy information, but it’s often buried…
