Sometimes, worrying about “trust” is unnecessary.

I have discovered only this week a post from 2018 announcing “A Trustmark for IoT: separating the Internet of Shit from the Internet of Things”.

That “Trustable Technology Mark” evaluates 5 dimensions that are essential to establish the trustworthiness of a connected device, namely:

• Privacy & Data Practices
• Transparency
• Security
• Stability
• Openness

What is missing, or not given the right importance

None of those “dimensions” is wrong. If anything, they are obvious, meaning that every product from space shuttles to nail clippers, should give some level of guarantees on all those points. But the more guarantees (and watchdogs) there are, the better, so go Trustable Tech.

Still, that list may have been written differently. To begin with, “Openness”, as defined by Trustable Tech itself:

“How open are both the device and the manufacturer‘s processes? Is open data used or generated?"

should be in the first place, because if there is real openness in a product, most of those other guarantees are either already present, or are much easier to have.

The other thing I find missing, even if it does overlap only partially with the purpose of an organization about “trust”, is purpose. If a gadget is a useless gadget, as it is the case with so much consumer IoT products these days, how “trustable” it is has very little importance, or meaning.