Your air fryer could be SPYING on you! Which issues urgent warning to users that popular kitchen cookers listen in to conversations and send data back to China
Air fryers are undoubtedly the must-have kitchen gadgets of the moment, with celebrities from Sir Mo Farah to Drew Barrymore professing their love for them.
The device uses hot air instead of hot oil to prepare food and offers a fast and healthy alternative to deep fryers.
However, new research might have you reaching for the oven instead.
Experts of what? have warned that several popular air fryers are spying on unsuspecting users.
The consumer champion analyzed three air fryers sold in Britain and found that all demanded permission to listen to users’ conversations.
“Our research shows how smart technology manufacturers and the companies they partner with are currently able to collect consumer data with apparent reckless abandon, often with little or no transparency,” said Harry Rose, Which? magazine editor.
The findings follow a series of terrifying stories about the kitchen must-have, which can be bought for just £25 and suddenly goes up in flames.
Last year, Rebecca Sim, 52, from Manchester, revealed how her one-year-old Tower fryer could have ‘burned down the kitchen’.
Experts of what? have warned that several popular air fryers, including the Aigostar (pictured), are spying on unsuspecting users
For the analysis: Which one? rated three air fryers in six categories: consent, transparency, data security, data minimization, trackers and data deletion
For the analysis: Which one? rated three air fryers in six categories: consent, transparency, data security, data minimization, trackers and data deletion.
Based on these ratings, the researchers gave each product an overall privacy score.
The analysis found that all three products – Aigostar, Xiaomi Mi Smart and Cosori CAF-LI401S – knew the exact location of their customers and wanted permission to record audio on the user’s phone.
The Xiaomi app linked to its air fryer, connected to trackers from Facebook, Pangle (the TikTok for Business advertising network) and Chinese technology giant Tencent (depending on the user’s location), while the Aigostar air fryer wanted to know the user’s data gender and date of birth when creating an account.
Meanwhile, both the Aigostar and Xiaomi air fryers sent personal data to servers in China – although this was highlighted in the privacy statement.
In response, a Xiaomi spokesperson said: “The permission to record audio in the Xiaomi Home app does not apply to the Xiaomi Smart Air Fryer, which does not work directly via voice commands and video chat.”
A spokesperson for Cosori added: ‘We prioritize privacy, and depending on our internal compliance requirements, smart products must comply with GDPR.’
Aigostar did not respond to a request for comment.
In addition to the problems with air fryers spying on you, data suggests that the number of fires caused by air fryers is higher than ever.
Firefighters must document the cause of a fire in their Incident Recording System (IRS), which collects the data that can then be used to help firefighters know the latest hazards they face and how best to deal with them .
To document the cause of a fire with the tax authorities, they must choose from a list of options, but the air fryer is not on that list.
Data released by the Department of the Interior shows that the number of times the word “air fryer” was listed in the extra free text box on the IRS has increased sixfold in the past two years.
At the time, the trendy gadgets became the third most used appliance in British kitchens.
But the additional text entries are not an accurate way to detect air fryer fires, as some may only be incidental. For example, additional text recorded by a crew could read: “Fortunately the fire did not reach the air fryer.”