Smart Home Glitches Reveal Power Theft

"If your smart home starts acting up, don't just assume it’s a glitch. A woman named Sarah

started noticed her smart speaker playing music at 3:00 AM every Tuesday. Then,

her smart thermostat would drop to 60 degrees while she was at work. She called tech

support, thinking she was being hacked, but they found no outside logins.

One day, she came home and noticed her vacuum robot was stuck in the middle of

the hallway—but it was turned off. Sarah didn't call a priest; she called an electrician.

He didn't look at her phone—he looked at the wiring behind her smart hub. He found a tiny,

homemade 'bridge' device drawing power. It turns out, her neighbor—who was a former IT