Our lives are becoming increasingly intertwined with the Internet, making it that much harder to switch off or disconnect. For most people, checking their phone first thing in the morning is part of their routine. For others, it’s using smart home commands around the house.
Broadband connectivity powers everything that we do from work to entertainment and everything in-between. Some will see this as convenient and helpful, which of course, it is. But the harsh reality is that this “always-on” connectivity is eroding our data privacy – and most users are oblivious to the fact.
The line between public and private life has been significantly blurred by broadband. Apps that you use have to track your location to be able to deliver personalised experiences. Smart home devices that connect to the Internet could be hacked into by cybercriminals.
Most people don’t realise that the more they use the Internet, the bigger the digital footprint that they are leaving behind. And the most unfortunate part is that they only realise it after something has gone wrong, like a fraud attempt or data breach.
So what do industry experts think?
Our Experts
- Hommer Zhao: Electronics Manufacturing Expert and Spokesperson at OurPCB.
- Michael Benoit: Founder of Contractor Bond and Insurance Services.
- Dario Ferrai: Co-founder at All-in-One-AI.co.
- Andrei Komissarov: Founder at DEVAR and OpenWay.AI.
Hommer Zhao, Electronics Manufacturing Expert and Spokesperson at OurPCB
When broadband never sleeps, neither do our devices. Data flows out constantly, even when we’re not actively using anything. We recently checked out some apps popular with kids and found something concerning: location tracking, device IDs, and activity logs, all running quietly in the background. And it’s not just the apps we use. Almost everything in the home is now connected, including our phones, TVs, tablets, speakers, and even kids’ toys, which have Wi-Fi. They stay online day and night, quietly passing along bits of information we never see. All that data eventually adds up and can end up in places we don’t realise.
Could you check which permissions your apps actually need? Does a game really need your location? Probably not. Turn off what’s unnecessary and revisit it a few times a year. Put your smart home devices on a guest network through your router. Set up child accounts and use the privacy controls built into your devices rather than relying on app settings. Before you download something new, see what data it collects about you personally. If it’s collecting way more than it needs to work properly, find an alternative.
Michael Benoit, Founder of Contractor Bond and Insurance Services
My job includes the evaluation of financial risks to contractors and data security has been a major concern. The high level of constant connectivity puts even smaller construction companies at a high risk due to the sensitive client financial information and project plans.
Contractors currently work with interconnected tools and cloud solutions. My team regards this combination of project management software with onsite IoT gadgets as posing new vulnerabilities. From my experience, cyberattacks on these systems are a common occurrence that interferes with project schedules and compromises confidential data.
According to clients, the financial consequences of a data breach are harsh and can be as expensive as over $150,000 in recovery costs and legal expenses alone. An incident like this can put a tiny shrinking organisation in bankruptcy in a span of six months. The loss of customer confidence and the downtime of business operations represent additional costs that destroy a business reputation.
Most entrepreneurs wrongly believe that their general liability insurance protects them from these digital threats. Most of the standard policies that I use in my practice specifically disregard cyber incidents. This creates a risky loophole in coverage that cannot be adequately addressed without specialised cyber liability insurance to properly manage the financial risk of operating in an always-on world.
Dario Ferrai, Co-founder at All-in-One-AI.co
We ran a week-long test and confirmed it – about 8% of our total outbound traffic came from non-essential background syncs. The fix was simple but unusual: we built “quiet hours” into our infrastructure. Between midnight and 6 a.m. local time, the system pauses all background data transfers and caches them until the morning.
The result was immediate. Bandwidth dropped by 11%, latency improved slightly, and exposure windows shrank. It also changed how our team thought about connectivity – always-on doesn’t have to mean always-transmitting.
My advice would be: treat idle data as active risk. Just because no one’s using your system doesn’t mean it’s silent. Small leaks add up, and the fix often lies in rethinking what “connected” really needs to mean.
Andrei Komissarov, Founder at DEVAR and OpenWay.AI
In the age of always-on broadband connectivity, the biggest privacy concern isn’t surveillance – it’s loss of ownership. People create enormous volumes of data every day, but those data are no longer personal assets; they’re raw material for algorithms that serve corporate interests. We stopped being the users. We became the product.
The irony is that most individuals don’t even realise the potential value of their own digital footprint. These data could help people understand themselves better, improve decision-making, or even build personalised AI tools, but they remain scattered, unstructured, and exploited elsewhere.
Counterintuitively, AI can also be the remedy. Personal AI agents – running on-device or in privacy-preserving enclaves – can act as data stewards: classifying what we generate, enforcing consent by default, negotiating data access on our behalf, and keeping an auditable trail of who used what and why. With encryption, data minimisation, and edge inference, these agents can answer queries without handing raw data to third parties. If we design them to serve the individual first, AI stops extracting value from people and starts defending it, turning our digital exhaust into a protected personal asset rather than a corporate resource.
