Before You Wrap It: A Gift-Giver’s Guide to Smart Device Privacy
Somewhere on your gift list this year, there’s probably a smart something. A speaker for your mom. A video doorbell for your brother’s new house. Maybe one of those talking AI teddy bears for a grandkid, because the box says ages 3 and up and the demo video is adorable.
Here’s the question almost nobody asks in the store: what does this thing do with what it hears?
Not asking it doesn’t make you careless. These devices are useful — I have several in my own house. But a smart device is the one gift category where you’re not just giving an object. You’re placing something in someone else’s home that listens, watches, or reports back. That deserves two minutes of thought before the wrapping paper goes on.
Quick summary: Smart speakers, cameras, TVs, and AI toys all collect data — some far more than others. None of that makes them bad gifts. It means the good gift includes ten minutes of setup: knowing what the device collects, turning off what the recipient wouldn’t want, and being honest about the one category worth skipping this year.
Smart device privacy, gift edition
A useful frame: a smart speaker is less like a gadget and more like a housemate. Polite, helpful, always within earshot. Most housemates are fine. You’d still want to know their habits before moving them into your mother’s kitchen.
The habits vary a lot by category, so let’s take the popular gifts one at a time. (If you want the broader picture of how all these connected things work, my plain-English guide to the Internet of Things covers the territory.)
Smart speakers: mostly fine, with two settings to change
Alexa and Google devices listen for their wake word locally and send audio to the cloud once triggered. The real-world risk here is less “hackers” and more “the company itself keeps too much.” In 2023 the FTC charged Amazon with keeping children’s Alexa voice recordings for years — even after parents asked for them to be deleted. Amazon paid $25 million to settle.
The fix is genuinely easy, and it’s a lovely thing to do as part of the gift: during setup, go into the privacy settings, turn off “help improve” voice-review options, and set recordings to auto-delete. Five minutes. (Curious why some assistants process more on the device itself and others lean on the cloud? I compared the approaches in On-Device AI vs. Cloud AI.)
Cameras and doorbells: great outdoors, think twice indoors
Video doorbells are one of the most-loved tech gifts, and outdoors is where they belong. Indoor cameras are a different conversation. The same year as the Alexa case, the FTC’s action against Ring described employees who had free access to customers’ indoor videos and cameras taken over by outsiders because basic protections were missing. Ring paid $5.8 million and was ordered to overhaul its practices.
Companies do improve after a public spanking, and Ring’s controls today are better. But the lesson generalizes: an internet-connected camera pointed at a living room is a bigger commitment than one pointed at a porch. If you’re gifting a camera, gift the porch kind — and during setup, turn on two-factor authentication before anything else.
The smart TV: the snoop nobody suspects
The sleeper on this list isn’t the speaker. It’s the television. Most smart TVs ship with something called automatic content recognition, which identifies what’s on the screen — streaming, cable, even DVDs — and reports viewing data back to the manufacturer and its advertising partners. It’s typically switched on by default and buried under a friendly name like “viewing information services.” Consumer Reports’ guide to turning off smart TV snooping walks through the menus brand by brand.
If a TV is your big family gift this year, that guide is your setup-day companion. The TV works exactly the same afterward. It just stops taking notes.
AI toys: the one I’d skip this year
This one’s timely, so let me be direct. In mid-November, the consumer group US PIRG released its annual Trouble in Toyland report, and this year’s edition tested a new species: stuffed animals with AI chatbots inside. One of them — Kumma, a $99 teddy bear marketed for ages 3 to 12 and powered by the same kind of model behind ChatGPT — was documented discussing sexually explicit topics and explaining where to find knives and how to light matches. OpenAI cut off the toymaker’s access; the bear was pulled from sale, audited, and back on the market within about two weeks.
The problem isn’t one bad bear. It’s that these toys are conversation partners with no meaningful track record, marketed as a child’s friend, in a product category that got its safety rules written before software could talk back. As of December 2025 there’s no reliable way for a gift-buyer to tell a careful AI toy from a careless one. When that’s true, the calm move is to wait. Kids’ toys will still be there next year — possibly with actual standards. There’s a federal effort called the U.S. Cyber Trust Mark that aims to put a security label on connected products; it was announced back in January and hasn’t reached store shelves yet, but it’s the kind of thing that could eventually make this call easier.
What I’d do: Give the speaker, the doorbell, the TV — with setup included. Put a card in the box: “This gift comes with free installation by me.” Then use these settings walks during the visit. The device plus a privacy-minded setup is a better present than the device alone.
What I’d skip: AI chatbot toys for kids, this year at least. And indoor cameras as surprise gifts — that one’s a conversation, not a stocking stuffer.
One more thought before you head back to the wrapping paper. Every device on this list gets safer when a person who cares does the setup. That’s you. This season you’re not just the gift-giver — you’re the IT department, and honestly, the IT department is the better gift.
Verified resources & documentation
- FTC — Amazon charged over children’s Alexa recordings — the $25M COPPA settlement and what Amazon kept
- FTC — Ring employees illegally surveilled customers — the indoor-camera case in the agency’s own words
- US PIRG — The risks of AI toys for kids — the Trouble in Toyland testing behind the Kumma story
- CNN Business — AI-powered children’s toys are here, but are they safe? — a solid overview of the November events
- FCC — U.S. Cyber Trust Mark — the coming security label for connected devices
- Consumer Reports — How to turn off smart TV snooping features — brand-by-brand ACR instructions
Keep reading
- Smart Home Basics: What Makes a Home Smart, Which Ecosystem to Choose, and Whether It’s Worth It
- Best VPNs and Tools to Protect Your Privacy Online
- What AI Can (and Can’t) Do in 2026 — A Plain-English Update
This is general information, not personal advice. Your situation may differ — verify with a professional for high-stakes decisions.