Vivint And Alarm.Com Knows When You Are On Vacation

JH
John Honovich
Feb 25, 2017
IPVM

Valuable feature or privacy concern?

At the Barnes Buchanan Conference, Vivint's President and Alarm.com's CEO talked about some of their advanced features. 

JH
John Honovich
Feb 25, 2017
IPVM

One of them was the ability to know with a high degree of accuracy (~95%) if a customer was on vacation.

Vivint's President gave an example of sending a message to customers they believed were on vacation reminding them to adjust their thermostat when they are on vacation. He said they had a remarkably high 50% respond to the message, changing their thermostats, showing the value of being able to measure this to save their customer's money.

Neither executive explained how exactly they did that. I asked Vivint's President but he declined details, noting that their is a certain configuration / baseline of devices needed to provide intelligence and that it took them 3 years to figure out what devices are needed.

Anyone want to guess what devices they are measuring? Motion detectors or Cameras or locks?

Any concerns about privacy issues of using this?

UI
Undisclosed Integrator #1
Feb 25, 2017

It is probably assumable for almost any alarm that is on for more than 12-18/24 hrs in a row

JH
John Honovich
Feb 25, 2017
IPVM

It is probably assumable for almost any alarm that is on for more than 12-18/24 hrs in a row

I don't know but the way they framed it they clearly implied it was more sophisticated than that.

I am sure if that was your only heuristic you would get a fairly decent accuracy rate but I am guessing they combine it with other sensors to get it to the ~95% level they mentioned.

U
Undisclosed #2
Feb 25, 2017

What I find most alarming is that it took them 3 years to figure out how to determine when someone is away for a period of time using a simple inactivity threshold based on established use patterns of their in-home devices.

Avatar
Armando Perez
Feb 27, 2017
Hoosier Security and Security Owners Group • IPVMU Certified

Strangely enough, this is one of my main concerns with using a third party central station that is local. Not just knowing when they are on vacation, but low battery alerts and error signals, missed timer tests and failreally to communicate sign as well can let someone know that your house is not protected.

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