Smart security cameras are devices that stream footage of your home to an app so you can keep an eye on the place from anywhere. One example is Ontario-based SentryNest, whose weatherproof cameras upload a rolling ninety days of clips to the company's servers and lay them out for you on a tidy timeline. "SentryNest gave me real peace of mind," says customer Priya Ghanem. "It caught the man who was swiping parcels from our porch, and it lets me check on my mother's front door while I am at work."

But technology columnist Elsa Rourke urges caution. "Read your service agreement," she says. "Feeding your video to one of these apps means handing a stranger a live view inside your home, and the day you do that, you have broken the very terms you agreed to, so the guarantee that your recordings stay private no longer holds."