If this is about me, I wouldn’t say my post was unkind and petty — more like it was light-hearted teasing, hence the tongue-emocon (which failed to load properly)….I’m sorry if you interpreted as insulting.

Why else do you think that I devote so much of my time in writing of these things and, unlike most authors, make the full content of these books freely available?

And do you really believe this deserves unkind and petty comment?

In regards to your comment “This is the kind of hypothetical BS we always get from people who don’t have a real product yet”, our network is actually already in use and we do already have very happy customers using our network for their connected objects.

Very real evidence indicates the rather imminent implementation of the next, (non-biological) phase of the on-going evolutionary “life” process from what we at present call the Internet.It is effectively evolving by a process of self-assembly. You may have noticed that we are increasingly, in a sense, “enslaved” by our PCs, mobile phones, their apps, and many other trappings of the increasingly cloudy net and its ever-growing insidious peripherals..

We are already largely dependent upon it for our commerce and industry and there is no turning back. What we perceive as a tool is well on its way to becoming an agent.

Consider this:

There are at present an estimated 2 Billion Internet users. There are an estimated 13 Billion neurons in the human brain. On this basis for approximation the Internet is even now only one order of magnitude below the human brain and its growth is exponential.
That is a simplification, of course. For example: Not all users have their own computer. So perhaps we could reduce that, say, tenfold. The number of switching units, transistors, if you wish, contained by all the computers connecting to the Internet and which are more analogous to individual neurons is many orders of magnitude greater than 2 Billion. Then again, this is compensated for to some extent by the fact that neurons do not appear to be binary switching devices but can adopt multiple states.

Without even crunching the numbers, we see that we must take seriously the possibility that even the present Internet may well be comparable to a human brain in processing power.
And, of course, the degree of interconnection and cross-linking of networks within networks is also growing rapidly.The culmination of this exponential growth corresponds to the event that transhumanists inappropriately call “The Singularity” but is more properly regarded as a phase transition of the on-going “life” process.
An evolutionary continuum that can be traced back at least as far as the formation of the chemical elements in stars.

The broad evolutionary model that supports this contention is outlined very informally in “The Goldilocks Effect: What Has Serendipity Ever Done For Us?” , a free download in e-book formats from the “Unusual Perspectives” website

In reality any initial encryption set up so that “the company is the only one who knows how to access the information” will eventually leak out. Then new keys must be distributed in a secure manner. Is all of that built into your 100 microwatts? Wait! I know the answer…”It could be.” Right?

Good luck! The hackers will have a ball with this. I’m already looking forward to freezing everything in your refrigerator and burning out your microwave!

If you send data over a network, wireless or not, then there’s of course a risk in regards to someone intercepting the data. That goes for Sigfox and any other network solution out there. That being said, Sigfox does provide a good level of security on the network level. It’s definitely not easy to get access to the messages transmitted over the network.

Another important aspect is how our customers decide to format the messages they send over our network. Messages are not necessarily sent in clear text, so if a customer wants an extra level of security they can easily encrypt the messages and ensure that only they know how to extract the actual message contents.

To conclude, we do not recommend sending the nuclear launch codes in clear text over any wireless network. If however you have less sensitive data, then you can easily send it over a network such as Sigfox, and you can add your own security mechanisms to ensure that you and only you know how to interpret the messages.

We are more than happy to answer any questions the readers may have, so don’t hesitate to contact us!

Thanks

Thomas Nicholls
Sigfox – http://www.sigfox.com – @SIGFOX_Network

1st) Covertly dim down the fridge thermostat while everyone is sleeping for a few days until food is almost stale but still imperceptible so, so they wont have time to save it the day you decide to LOCK the whole fridge.

2nd) Also lock all doors and gates, while hooking all phones to the victim pacemaker, so if anyone tries unsuccessfully to call for help, they just hasten the inevitable.

The car starts to hover, and finally flies away.

Well, depending on the kind of “cyborg” we are talking about, we don’t need to hack anything.Just use the right frequency (radio device?) and there you go.

With the internet of things there will be a plethora of new possibilities. We saw one of them a few days ago with the possibility to hack a pacemaker to deliver 500+ volt shocks (see e.g. http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9232477/Pacemaker_hack_can_deliver_deadly_830_volt_jolt)

Why, o why am I thinking of such devilish applications first?

I think I don’t like the forthcoming all encompassing “internet of things”.