It seems unbelievable, but we are starting to see real incidents of connected products that are being abandoned by their manufacturers well before their end of life, leaving buyers with unusable hardware. The case of the Revolv hub sets an ominous precedent that should give us all pause for thought when buying any new hardware devices in the future. Essentially, they've decided to turn the products that people bought from them into bricks.

Anything we might buy in the future, from light bulbs to cars, can (and probably will be) connected to the Internet. This fact, in itself, presents some risks that many security experts are trying to understand and communicate to people. But a more fundamental risk we all need to start considering is what happens if the manufacturer or vendor goes out of business, gets purchased by another company, or just decides to stop supporting the devices? You could be stuck with a brick, or at least a less useful version of what you thought you were buying. It might even cause more serious impacts.