I kicked my smart bulbs off my main Wi-Fi and you should too

Smart light bulbs can change so much in your home. The aesthetic is only one aspect; you can adjust the bulb’s brightness with either voice commands or your phone. Some of them are also multicolored, so you can swap out the white light for a blue, green, red, or pink whenever you like.

The best part of smart light bulbs is being able to turn them on without being in the room. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve walked up the stairs and yelled to my Amazon speaker to turn on the light bulbs upstairs, so I could see where I was going as I carried a heaping pile of laundry, kids’ toys, and, many times, kids. But after I initially set up my smart light bulbs on my main Wi-Fi network, I decided to make a switch, one that I’ve found has been for the better.

Smart bulbs are a way in for hackers

It can be a dangerous starting point

Smart bulbs are great, in principle. They offer flexibility when setting up a room and deciding how to turn on the lights. They can help keep your home safe, as you’re able to make it look like you’re home by having the ability to turn on the lights when you aren’t there. They can also save you money on your energy bill, as many of them are energy-efficient.

However, smart bulbs are vulnerable to hacking, something many fail to consider. They can be an easy way in to your network for hackers, as they frequently have firmware vulnerabilities. They may not always be updating their security protocols, making them a weak point in your home network’s overall security.

If a hacker compromises one of your smart bulbs, they can gain access to other devices connected to the same network. For bulbs connected to your home network, you typically have two options for setting them up. The first way is via Bluetooth, as it can take credentials from your network to join. It’s a common way to link up with other devices on the same network.

The second way is to do a manual setup. If you opt for this route, the smart bulb will create its own separate network. When it does that, you connect your phone to it, and the light bulb and your phone are on the same network. That process is incredibly vulnerable, as there are no protections to stop other devices from joining the network at the time. Once you are connected to that, it sets up the light bulb and joins your Wi-Fi network, connecting anything on that network to yours.

So, at the end of the day, smart bulbs aren’t that safe to add to your home network, no matter the way that you add them. Does that mean you still shouldn’t use them? Not necessarily.

You should consider a secondary network for your smart bulbs

This may seem like a hassle, but it is safer

By keeping your devices on a separate network, you’re saving them from being on the same network as your most important devices. Whether it’s your laptop, smart cameras, smart TV, or phone, if your smart bulbs are vulnerable to hacking, they could affect all of them if they are on the same network. This means your most sensitive data is exposed.

If your smart bulbs are hacked, there are some negative aspects, such as the ability to change lighting schedules and cause issues with your electrical units in your home. But the real damage could be the ability to grab data or deploy ransomware across the network to which they are connected. The bulb can basically go through to your router, which then kicks the leak out to anything else also on that network.

Having your smart bulbs on a guest Wi-Fi or a virtual local area network (VLAN) might make a lot of sense. Putting anything that might be clogging up your network or opening up your network to malware is a risk. Many times, people assume these kinds of issues won’t affect them. But you can never be too safe.

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Ways to connect your bulbs to networks other than your main Wi-Fi

Make it easy on your network

Credit: Kanika Gogia / MUO

Setting up a guest Wi-Fi network with your router is an option. Many routers offer guest Wi-Fi options for anyone who is visiting or for other devices that you may not want to congest your main network. You can usually do this either through the app that you use for your router or through a browser. Find the website on the router itself and log in to your account to create a guest Wi-Fi network. From there, you can share the guest’s Wi-Fi with others or add your smart bulbs to it, so they have their own Wi-Fi network.

Using a VLAN is much safer than using Wi-Fi, as it is based on a physical network. It takes one physical network and segments it into multiple virtual networks. It creates an offshoot that makes traffic on the virtual network harder to trace and harder for hackers to reach. You can set up your smart bulbs on their own separate broadcast domains to keep them off your normal network.

Smart bulbs should be separated from your regular network

Investing in smart bulbs can make your life a lot easier. Being able to control your lights from an app or with your voice is a level of comfort that many are pleased to indulge in. However, smart bulbs are a vulnerability from a security aspect. They don’t offer the safest protection for your home network, leaving it exposed to potential hackers. Keeping your smart bulbs on a guest Wi-Fi or their own VLAN makes more sense to protect your privacy.