On Sat, 22 Oct 2011 15:44:29 PDT, "Rob, grandpa of Ryan, Trevor, Devon & Hannah" said:
> How horrendous! If someone can crack the encyption, figure out the band > being > used, and figure out how to trigger the meter dump, they can find out whether > you've been using a lot of electricity! But that's not the actual problem. Unless it reveals that I use *so* much electricity that I'm probably growing pot plants in the attic, a one-shot number doesn't reveal much. When it gets interesting is if I do it every hour or every 15 minutes. I can build up a nice plot of energy usage - and then use that to infer other things, like when you're running major appliances, when you go to sleep, when you wake up, when you leave the house, and when you return. Suddenly it becomes a lot more interesting data for the enterprising burglar or stalker. > (Surely it would be easier to read the dials on the existing meters ...) Yes, but if I'm trying to figure out what hours you are and aren't at home so I can burgle you or otherwise do something nefarious, it's a heck of a lot safer to ask your electric meter every hour from a remote location than sneaking up to your house and looking at it every hour. Plus I can easily automate naving a PC do a network probe every hour, even when I'm asleep or cooking dinner or something. Getting my PC to sneak up to the meter every hour and read the meter is a bit of a challenging robotics project. ;)
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