Deep fryers are undoubtedly the must-have kitchen gadget right now, with celebrities from Sir Mo Farah to Drew Barrymore confessing their love for them.
The appliance uses hot air instead of hot oil to cook food, offering a quick and healthy alternative to deep fryers.
However, new research could have you turning to the oven.
Experts on what? have warned that several popular air fryers are spying on unsuspecting users.
The consumer advocate analyzed three fryers sold in the United Kingdom and found that all three required permissions to listen to users’ conversations.
“Our research shows how smart technology manufacturers and the companies they work with are currently able to collect consumer data, seemingly with reckless abandon, and this is often done with little or no transparency,” said Harry Rose, Which ? magazine editor.
The findings follow a series of terrifying stories about kitchen must-haves, which can be bought for as little as £25, suddenly bursting into flames.
For example, Rebecca Sim, 52, from Manchester, revealed last year how her year-old Tower fryer “could have burned down the kitchen”.
Experts on what? have warned that several popular fryers, including the Aigostar (pictured), are spying on unsuspecting users
For analysis, which ones? rated three fryers in six categories: consent, transparency, data security, data minimization, trackers and data deletion
For analysis, which ones? rated three 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 revealed that all three products (Aigostar, Xiaomi Mi Smart and Cosori CAF-LI401S) knew the precise location of their customers and asked for permission to record audio on the user’s phone.
The Xiaomi app linked to its fryer connected to trackers from Facebook, Pangle (TikTok’s ad network for businesses) and Chinese tech giant Tencent (based on the user’s location), while the Aigostar fryer wanted to know the user’s location. gender and date of birth when setting up an account.
Meanwhile, both Aigostar and Xiaomi fryers sent personal data to servers in China, although this was noted in the privacy notice.
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 Cosori spokesperson added: “We prioritize privacy and, subject to our internal compliance requirements, smart products must comply with the GDPR.”
Aigostar did not respond to a request for comment.
Beyond the problems with fryers spying on you, data suggests that the number of fires caused by fryers is higher than ever.
Firefighters must document the cause of a fire in their Incident Recording System (IRS), which collects data that can then be used to help fire services know the latest hazards they face and how best to deal with them. .
To document the cause of a fire to the IRS, they must choose from a list of options, but the deep fryer is not on that list.
Data released by the Home Office shows a six-fold increase in the number of times the word “deep fryer” was mentioned in the IRS’ additional free text box over the past two years.
At the time, the trendy appliances became the third most used appliance in UK kitchens.
But additional text mentions are not an accurate way to track fryer fires, as some could simply be incidental. For example, additional text recorded by a computer might read: “Fortunately, the fire did not reach the fryer.”