WTF?! In the age of the smart home, every device seems to need a Wi-Fi connection and a smartphone app: lights, doorbells, door locks, garage door openers, televisions, lawn mowers, vacuum cleaners and even coffee makers. A recent incident shows how the accumulation of IoT devices in a home increases the likelihood that a fault will clog the network.
An IT worker was recently shocked to discover that his parents’ Keurig coffee maker had uploaded more than a terabyte of data in just 10 days. Although a bug is the likely cause, the episode highlights the growing risks associated with connecting increasingly common devices to the Internet.
Twitter user @NomadsGalaxy noticed Keurig’s extreme data usage in UniFi while examining his parents’ network, where an access point was overloaded. After seeing about 1TB uploaded and almost 10GB downloaded within 10 days, he said he would immediately unplug it and buy his parents a replacement.
— Nomad (@NomadsGalaxy) October 6, 2026
Luckily, most of the traffic never left the local network and a reboot would probably have fixed the problem. Still, Nomad decided it wasn’t worth investigating further and allowing his parents to continue using an internet-connected Keurig.
For those wondering why a coffee maker needs an internet connection, Keurig’s smart coffee makers use the company’s mobile app to brew coffee remotely, allow users to purchase coffee online, and set up recurring deliveries. Nomad half-jokingly theorized that Keurig might eventually use DRM to limit its coffee machines to the company’s pods, mirroring HP’s business model for inkjet printer cartridges.
As smart homes and IoT devices become more popular, so do the risks. In addition to overloading the network, IoT devices can also become a vector for cyberattacks, especially since many manufacturers do not prioritize security. Smart devices can also become unusable if their manufacturers go out of business, stop providing software updates, or fire the engineers who maintained the firmware.
Robotic lawn mowers can be particularly risky because they record footage, property floor plans, and Wi-Fi network information. This year alone, lawn mowers from two companies have been exposed to espionage and remote control due to security vulnerabilities, potentially exposing the personal information of thousands of owners worldwide.
Despite the risk, tech giants continue to expand their smart home ambitions. Apple is scheduled to hold a product launch event on October 13, where the company is expected to unveil its first smart home hub with a display that will compete with similar devices from Google and Amazon.
