According to E-on, my electric meter has come to the end of its life, and needs to be replaced:
"Click here to order your new Smartmeter".
Attempting to order a non-smart replacement is, not surprisingly, very tortuous, and impossible. I was able to opt-out of future correspondence about Smartmeters, but the only way I could tell them that I didn't want one was to send an e-mail message. I wonder what will happen.
The calibration may be out. Even before smart meters there was a target (always missed) for replacing meters every 10 years. I had one non-smart meter replaced as part of this ongoing calibration process.
…of the Electoral Commission
…the PSNI
…Capita
…and plenty of previous data breaches of other organisations:
formatting link
UK organizations lost billions in data breaches between 2019 and 2022, with hundreds of millions of their customers suffering compromise of their personal information, according to a new analysis from Imperva.
The security vendor studied 99,490 breaches reported to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) between April 2019 and December 2022, as well as the “most notable breaches” identified by Chartered Institute of Information Security (CIISec) members in its annual report.
It found that data on over 200 million Brits was compromised during the period; the equivalent of every citizen’s data being stolen at least three times.
Interestingly, the analysis also revealed that malicious attacks such as malware, phishing and ransomware accounted for just a third (33%) of breaches reported to the ICO, versus 40% of incidents caused by insider threats.
In my case, because a tenant in one of my factories had one installed. After they left, it decided that an empty factory unit, with the electrics turned off at the main switch, was consuming enough electricity to land me with a £4,000 bill that took two years to sort out. When another tenant moved in, they couldn't get the supplier of their choice, because the meter was not compatible with their systems.
Worth keeping in mind that even customers with dumb meters will still have all their information held in the suppliers database waiting to be breached anyway.
(although at least the supplier can't remotely disconnect your dumb meter!)
The only difference being a breach from a smart meter will reveal your meter readings, and hence your electricity bill. Although it's possible to find out anyone's annual electricity consumption anyway (put in an address into switching sites[1], some of them tell you the current supplier and the annual consumption). With a smart meter, you can set it to only report monthly readings so there's not much more information revealed.
Mavis and Ethel heard about the furore in the papers about remote cutoff, loose terminal fires, spying and radiation, smart sounded complicated and the in-home display scared them that they would have to learn something?
I have told them that I don't want a 'Smart' meter, but they are welcome to replace it with a meter similar to what is there now. But the idea of having a dumbed-down 'Smart' meter is interesting, if they insist on installing one. Would wrapping one in tin-foil spoil the signal?
Out of interest, I log my reading every morning when I get up, and have managed to drastically reduce my background useage, and with no 'Smart' meter involved. Just a spreadsheet.
Apparently most of the non smart ones being supplied are currently refurbished ones, because there is little call for them these days. That is what the EDF man told me, but this was only because I enquired what happens to those who live in basement flats. Brian
Or by bad actors. I bet Putin's codesmiths already have a way in, like the Israelis with stuxnet targetting Iranian Philips PLCs controlling centifuges. My utility meter is read-only. The only problem is when Putin orders the shutdown of the Uk, the whole supply system will loose load at exactly the same time and blow up all the generators, so my supply will go out at the same time, thanks a lot.
And also the knowledge that they could turn your meter into a pre-pay meter without you even knowing about it. It doesn't matter that it is unlikely to happen, it's knowing that it can be done that is the problem. People are very unlikely to be hit by lightning, but they are, I knew one guy who had been hit twice. He sort-of deserved it, though.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.