Most smart televisions will allow you to cast media apps, such as Netflix or YouTube, directly from your phone or laptop if connected to the same Wi-Fi signal. This is a safer, and in a lot of cases, more efficient way to view your favorite media without having to compromise your login credentials.

Many devices in your smart home, from your Wi-Fi router to a new baby monitor, may ship with a default username and password, such as “admin” for both credentials. You should change them as soon as possible to avert exposure to botnets designed to take over devices with easily guessed login credentials.

Before selling a smart device, consider factory resetting after backing up any media you’d like to keep. A factory reset can usually be performed through the settings menu of any smart device. This assures that all of your personal data and accounts are deleted and can’t be accessed. Be sure to boot up the device […]

If you don’t want your smart speaker hearing your conversations, but you don’t want the hassle of consistently muting and unmuting it or using a voice remote, you can try Paranoid. Paranoid is a device that sits on the mute button of the smart speaker and only turns it off when it hears the wake […]

You might want to limit the amount of personal information readily available in your Google Nest device to protect against hackers or guests in your home whom you don’t know very well yet. If that’s the case, you can disable personal results on your Google Nest device, because it keeps track of private information like […]

If your Alexa device hears you incorrectly, it might send a text message or email you did not intend, or it might call someone you didn’t mean to call. Disable the address book sharing feature on your Alexa device to prevent this. To block your address book: Open Conversations in the Alexa app. Tap the […]