Your Outlet Knows: How Smart Meters Can Reveal Behavior at Home, What We Watch on TV

A senior energy technician for Commonwealth Edison holds a standard electricity meter, left, and a new "smart" meter in North Riverside, Ill. on Sept. 6, 2013. Photographer: M. Spencer Green/AP Photo
Lock
This article is for subscribers only.

Smart meters may be getting too smart for our own good.

As businesses look for new ways to gain insight into consumers, utility meters that wirelessly transmit energy-usage data are increasingly drawing attention because of what they can reveal about our behavior at home, such as when and how often we use certain appliances.