Smart meters and burglaries

Mr.Generous

I suppose to some extent Ginger Bob has a point, credit card company know one person is away, they don't know who else is at home. We generally have a car or two on the drive home or away, blinds are closed most of the time downstairs, who gets milk delivered? I'd say the chances are slim of anyone using this but every so and so wants our data for something, and its not usually for our benefit.

Carrot007

GingerBob wrote: »

I think this is not correct. They will, if given the opportunity, collect it half-hourly.

No 100% it is collected daily. but it collects 48 periods each day. THis is a big misconception.

You think they want to pay to have a data connection every 30 mins for everyhouse? No once a day is fine as the data is small and muchthe same cost for 1 or 48 reads.

I think this is a big misconception by people of what half hourly data means, really no data in the industry is gathered more frequently than daily.

prosaver

Carrot007 wrote: »

No 100% it is collected daily. but it collects 48 periods each day. THis is a big misconception.

You think they want to pay to have a data connection every 30 mins for everyhouse? No once a day is fine as the data is small and muchthe same cost for 1 or 48 reads.

I think this is a big misconception by people of what half hourly data means, really no data in the industry is gathered more frequently than daily.

why would they want to know how much you use a day?

Carrot007

prosaver wrote: »

why would they want to know how much you use a day?

Again they colllct daily, but record 48 usage points along it.

Your commetn reads why would they even want to know how much I used! However.

They want to know this because the electricity generation market sets a price each half hour. You purchase in advance for X of pay Y on the day.

This means eventually domestic customers can be properly settled against the market rather than using a esitimated profile.

Save

Egmond

Some fairly feeble replies to this, then. Does anyone still have newspapers and milk delivered? It's unheard of these days in most places. Credit card companies, airlines and hotels have no way of knowing from their bookings if their customers are leaving behind empty properties, and often people vacate property without using airlines, hotels or credit cards.


Many people rarely use landlines anyway these days, broadband can be down for days in an occupied property and lack of use isn't a very good identifier of groups of temporarily unoccupied properties on a database. A zero use of electricity for a few days is, on the other hand, a pretty good clue.


Lots of sarcasm and criticism on here but not one plausible comparison or sensible rebuttal of the fact that smart metering provides a ready made database showing a pretty reliable indication of properties in any given area that might warrant closer inspection by prospective burglars.


If it's such a joke, why do police forces recommend taking steps to disguise absence from the property?

Egmond

matelodave wrote: »

People have a fair idea when I'm away. The car isn't on the drive, the caravan may be away as well. We've got a couple of lights on a timeswitch but the curtains don't open and close.

As said above my broadband and phone usage drops to zero and I tend to use my credit cards in other parts of the country so a smart meter would be the very least of my concerns.

Where do people get these weird ideas from

This totally misses the point. It's not about watching your property in particular and looking for these other signs. To spot your missing car/caravan etc means trawling the streets and spotting your absence almost at random, or watching your property in particular. A database showing properties in a given area where power usage has dropped off for a few days, perhaps during peak holiday periods, gives a prospective burglar a list of places to focus on and watch to see if that strong indication can be confirmed.


Many people rarely use landline phones, and broadband use is very variable so there is no comparable database. Everyone uses power, usually in a routine way.

matelodave

You believe what you will, but I reckon that there are a lot of easier ways of working out whether I'm home or not than try to analyse my leccy meter readings from a data base. Anyone clever enough to do that will have already hacked my bank account details from the said database and raided my bank account.

It's probably only the slightly less than intelligent who come and jemmy open windows and doors nowadays.

Norman_Castle

Egmond wrote: »

Lots of sarcasm and criticism on here but not one plausible comparison or sensible rebuttal of the fact that smart metering provides a ready made database showing a pretty reliable indication of properties in any given area that might warrant closer inspection by prospective burglars.


If it's such a joke, why do police forces recommend taking steps to disguise absence from the property?

In theory it could be used but thieves that are this organised would have other ways of finding empty properties and are likely to target specific properties. Most housebreakers are petty criminals and won't have access to this information.

Energy use won't be zero. Items will still be using energy and holidaymakers can still disguise their absence.

Worry about this if it actually happens.

System

GingerBob wrote: »

Where do you get that from?

Sorry, I missed this one. There was evidence in the HoC's Science and Technology report that from mid-2018 onwards that suppliers would be told that all meters that needed to replaced on end-of-life grounds would have to be replaced with a smart meter.

eddddy

So your concern is that energy company employees could query customer data to find "Customers addresses in a specific town whose energy consumption has dropped to near zero in the last few days".

Companies have a legal duty to restrict access to this type of data. Unless there is a specific business related reason to see the data, they won't be allowed to.

Just like...

A bank employee can't query "Show me how much money people living in my street have in their bank accounts, and how much their employer pays them each month"

And an M and S employee can't query "Show me the names of addresses of everyone in my street who's ordered a bra in the last 6 months - including colour, style and cup size."