China spying on you through your coffee maker: yeah, it's serious

US researcher Christopher Balding has said that he has evidence that China is siphoning data from Americans' smart coffee machines.

IoT home appliances have absolutely ballooned in popularity and use over the last few years, with Balding's new report at New Kite Data Labs adding that China spying on Americans through smart coffee machines isn't the worst of it -- it's the issue with the always-connected, connect-everything, Internet of Things future we're living in.

The data collection from coffee machines is part of a larger effort of China, and I'm sure many other countries -- all behind the US and its alphabet agencies of course -- with low security and data policies that aren't clear to most people. Balding said: "China is really collecting data on really just anything and everything. As a manufacturing hub of the world, they can put this capability in all kinds of devices that go out all over the world".

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New Kite Data Labs' report says that the affected smart coffee machines in question are reportedly made by Kalerm, located in Jiangsu, China. If you're using one of the spying-on-you-coffee machines, it will be taking your production information, payment data (credit card details), and your personal data which includes the location and time.

The report explained: "While we cannot say this company is collecting data on non-Chinese users, all evidence indicates their machines can and do collect data on users outside of mainland China and store the data in China. The data is collected at the point of operation from software embedded in the coffee maker".

"Most countries of any significant size probably have interest in devices like this - make zero mistake about that. I think the thing that is unique about China is the breadth and depth of their data-collection efforts".