In a bid to crack down on organized retail crime, Home Depot is piloting a program the place energy instruments should be activated through Bluetooth at checkout—or they received’t work. It’s a intelligent answer to discourage theft, however it additionally highlights how know-how can generally change gadget possession in unintended methods.

Apparently, energy instruments are a lovely and profitable goal for retail shoplifters. Earlier this yr, a Florida man stole more than $17,000 worth of power tools from numerous Home Depot shops within the state. A MarketWatch report notes that the Bluetooth tech is on the system itself, not the packaging, so even when a thief was profitable in filching the instrument, it wouldn’t activate. Home Depot can also be working with different companions on this system and will prolong it to different objects like sensible dwelling devices. Business Insider reports that Home Depot has already examined this tech in a number of shops, and can now be rolling it out extra extensively with the goal of finally introducing it to each Home Depot within the U.S.

The pondering behind including the additional step of Bluetooth activation is it turns objects with a excessive resale worth from an “easy score” to one thing extra troublesome. The different additional benefit is Home Depot can keep away from having to maintain this stuff in locked show instances.

There’s no denying that retail theft is an issue. A 2020 National Retail Federation survey discovered organized retail crime prices greater than $700,000 per $1 billion in gross sales.

However, including connectivity to units typically opens the door to some unintended penalties. For starters, loads will depend upon how subtle this methodology is—and the way straightforward it’s to crack. As Hackaday factors out, that is fairly pointless if it may be dismantled by a big magnet. It feels like Home Depot is hoping the inconvenience is what deters criminals—however when has that ever stopped them from discovering methods round built-in safety measures? More worryingly, it additionally raises the query of what occurs if and when a official buyer decides to repromote an influence instrument? Does that then imply you must switch registration or threat bricking your system?

This calls to thoughts the time Sonos supplied reductions to clients buying and selling in older units. To benefit from the recycling program, customers must fully brick their units earlier than dropping them off at an e-waste recycling heart. At the time, Sonos stated the transfer was meant to guard their clients’ safety, however it truly ended up forcing recycling facilities to strip completely useable {hardware} as they might now not be refurbished and resold. Sonos later backtracked on the coverage after buyer backlash.

What Home Depot’s doing right here isn’t an actual 1:1, however it’s comparable in that provides new restrictions to what was beforehand a easy transaction. Right now, there are a number of unanswered questions ought to this pilot program become profitable. For occasion, does this solely apply to instruments purchased in brick-and-mortar outlets, or does it additionally have an effect on instruments purchased on-line? If so, does that imply you must exit of your technique to go to a Home Depot to activate one thing you purchased on-line? (Ideally not, as a result of you must full a transaction earlier than an internet order is shipped to you.) On the one hand, it could assist in stopping stolen objects from being re-sold on-line to unsuspecting customers. On the opposite, it might find yourself like HP’s disastrous “free ink for life” plan, or when the corporate added safety chips to cartridges in a bid to forestall customers from utilizing cheaper third-party choices.

Pilot applications don’t all the time work out, or in the event that they do, the tip consequence would possibly look dramatically completely different. However, there are causes for customers to be cautious. We’ve seen this play out earlier than. Companies introduce this type of mechanism within the title of safety, just for it to show right into a subscription-based mannequin that limits choices a number of years down the road. It’s too early to inform, however often including “smart” features to beforehand dumb units is a gateway for deliberate obsolescence. It doesn’t have to finish that manner, and hopefully, Home Depot’s pilot program avoids this entice. After all, the very last thing anybody desires is permission to make use of energy instruments they supposedly paid to “own.”