Yonomi & IFTTT Discontinue Support for Amazon Echo Smart Home Voice Control Door Unlock Function
In a previous video I showed you how to use the Yonomi app to unlock your door lock using voice control. Basically, this is a threat to your smart home security. In that video, I even warned you that this was a bad idea. Well, Amazon caught up with Yonomi and basically said the same thing. Today, Yonomi sent out an email announcing that the capability to unlock via the Echo is being removed. This is also going to affect your smart garage door opener.
Affiliate LInks:
Amazon Echo: http://amzn.to/2ilEROy
Wink Hub: http://amzn.to/2i7qE8n
Smart Door Lock: http://amzn.to/2i7onKf
Here’s a summary of the email I received dated December 21st 2016:
Due to a request from the Amazon Alexa team, we are disabling the ability to Unlock your lock via Alexa when that action is included within a Routine.
According to the email, this change will go into effect within 24 hours, which means that as of today, December 22nd 2016, you can’t unlock via the Echo any more.
The good news is, Using the Lock action within a Routine that is executed by Alexa is still supported for home automation, and Unlock actions will continue to work when triggered by other means. Other means being other routines that are not executed by voice commands through Yonomi and IFTTT.
Yonomi has stated that they plan to revisit supporting this functionality once there are better means to limit access to security devices via your voice.
Personally, I’m happy to see that Yonomi has listened to Amazon on this one. In my previous video I explained may of the ways this could go wrong.
After reading this email, I looked at the IFTTT integration between Alexa and the Wink Hub, and noticed that any shortcuts with Lock or Unlock commands are not available within the IFTTT app. So it looks like Amazon is aggressively locking this down, which I think is pretty cool.
