My friend in Denver said his smart fridge tried to join a public wifi network at the airport

He was picking someone up and his phone got a notification asking if his fridge should connect to 'DEN_Free_WiFi'. It made me realize how many gadgets we have that just try to connect to anything. I spent the next hour going through my own home network and turning off auto-connect on everything from my thermostat to my kid's toy. What's the weirdest device you've caught trying to get online?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_jennifer2mo ago

That fridge at the airport is wild. My robot vacuum tried to connect to my neighbor's network once. It's a weird feeling.

michael_wright902mo ago

Actually @the_jennifer, that was your vacuum's old saved network list.

drew_reed622mo ago

Yeah that "weird feeling" is so true. My buddy had his smart speaker start playing music from a house two doors down because it latched onto their weak signal. He said it felt like his own stuff was being haunted, just these random voices in another room. Took him forever to figure out why his alarms kept getting changed. He had to reset the whole device and make his wifi password way stronger. Just a creepy side of all this connected gear.