Eufy Smart Lock Touch

Smart locks are one of those connected devices that seem to worry lots of people. The pros: They offer a lot of convenience with multiple ways to unlock the door to your home, a way to track who comes and goes from your home, they can allow you give out a keypad number to people like a babysitter and then revoke that when they no longer need access, and they can help you make sure you locked your front door when your anxiety kicks in on vacation. The cons: They can be vulnerable to any number of things such as power outages, lost or compromised phones, ransomware attacks on the company who made your lock, product security vulnerabilities, WiFi and/or Bluetooth vulnerabilities, home hub vulnerabilities, bad software updates, data leaks, and more.

With all that said, how does Eufy’s Smart Lock Touch stack up? This lock operates over Bluetooth, so you need to be within about 30 feet to lock or unlock it using your phone. It also uses a fingerprint, which also seems generally safe, especially as Eufy stores your fingerprint data locally on the device rather than on the internet in the cloud where it could be more vulnerable. We found no known security breaches of their smart locks

Unfortunately, Eufy has had some significant security vulnerabilities with their security cameras. In June 2022, security experts foundthree security vulnerabilities in Eufy's Homebase 2 video storage and management device that could have allowed hackers to take control of the hub, control it remotely, or steal video footage. Eufy/Anker developed fixes for these security vulnerabilities and released them to users in a timely manner. And in May 2021, Eufy was forced to apologize for a bug that exposed the camera feeds of 712 users to strangers. Eufy said the glitch happened during a software update and “users were able to access video feeds from other users’ cameras.” Eufy said in a statement the glitch was fixed an hour after it was discovered.

So, the bad news is, Eufy’s security cameras have had some serious security issues. The good news is, Eufy as a company seems to have stepped up and immediately fixed these bugs and to get the updates out to their users quickly. While these security oopsies happened to their video cameras, not their smart locks, it’s a good reminder that software updates can go wrong, which wouldn’t be good for your smart lock..

On the privacy front, Eufy’s privacy policy says they can collect a good deal of personal information on you -- things like name, email, gender, birth date, location, device information, and more. And while Eufy says they don’t sell your personal information -- which is good -- they say they can use that information to show you ads from them and third party advertisers, which isn’t so good (but also pretty standard on the internet these days). They also say they can collect personal information on you from third parties who provide it to them, such as law enforcement authorities. This worries us a bit because the way that line in their privacy policy is written is rather vague and seems like it could leave open the possibility they could collect information on users from a variety of third parties, for example, data brokers.

What’s the worst that could happen? Well, it is a smart lock that can be unlocked with your fingerprint ID. We've watched enough movies to know there's always a chance someone could chop your finger off and use it to get in your home. We really hope that never happens to you. We also hope Eufy doesn’t share your home comings and goings with third parties. That’s just not information anyone needs to have but you.