Life's A Breach

For every gift you give, there are actually two gifts. The first gift is the thing itself, something the recipient wants or needs. The second gift is the vetting of the item. It’s the gift of time, in other words; you’re saving the recipient valuable hours they’d otherwise have to spend conducting their own research to ensure they’re getting something good. And also safe.

This was a lot easier to investigate back when potential gift hazards included little more than sharp edges and small pieces. But now, with whole product categories filled with devices built specifically to listen and record you, there are entirely new safety concerns.

So how do you responsibly give gifts in the era of the privacy breach?

The simple solution is to avoid anything that connects to the internet at all. Take these 2-packs of Red Copper cookware we’re selling today. Whether you go with the square pans or the “Brownie Bonanza” set, there is no privacy breach possible. Because they’re pieces of copper-infused ceramic bakeware, and nothing more. They accept heat and use it to cook what’s inside them without even having to connect to your wifi.

Maybe you could argue that, if you polished one with some sort of reflective finish and then accidentally hung it up on the wall at just such an angle that passers-by on the sidewalk could look up and see, on the pan through the window, the reflection of your home office where you keep all your important documents…

You know what? On second thought, you actually can’t argue that. Because it’s really dumb. We shouldn’t have even brought it up.

At any rate, this isn’t a real solution. Not everyone wants pots and pans for Christmas. Some want a smart speaker or a baby cam or a portable game system. So, if you happen to shopping for one such person, might we recommend a visit to Mozilla’s *privacy not included Buyer’s Guide.

Real talk: we’re not associated with this guide and we’re not getting any money from Mozilla to say this. We just think it’s cool. Basically, it’s a list of hot gift-able gadgets that Mozilla evaluates against their minimum security standards. They also let users vote on how creepy a given product seems on a cute sliding face-scale-thing and use this to arrange the page. (Bonus: it’s really fun to watch the face get more distraught as you scroll down.)

So, there they are, your two options: check out Mozilla’s helpful guide, or buy these pans. That’s it, the only choices you get. Sorry. We don’t make the rules.