The “Internet of Things” (IOT) is a term which implies internet accessibility by a wide variety of household and industrial devices.  For example in a typical house, appliances, air conditioners, plumbing fixtures, and electronics might be Internet connected.  As of 2015 the IOT has been steadily emerging.  It is an easy and cheap feature addition to a stove for a manufacturer to promote it as “Internet Connected,” as opposed to basic product innovation.  That takes years and substantial investment.

Single chip solutions to wirelessly Internet device connectivity are approaching pennies in cost instead of dollars, so it may be expected that many common household devices get connected.

This has consequences:

• there are practical reasons why this would benefit a homeowner;
• there are marketing reasons why businesses would want the data from spying on their customers;
• there are other parties, including government agencies, who might want that data.

For example, if a milk producer could see inside your fridge, they would know if you were using a competitor’s brand.  Then they could send you spam promoting their milk.  Your tailored spam would, of course, arrive just the day before your next grocery store trip, since it would be obvious to the spy when the store trips were from the times the fridge got resupplied.

Many low level devices, such as hard disk drives, USB drives, and thumb drives, support rewriting of their own firmware, and thus it is possible that a n intruder might inject a virus or worm into common home appliances, and then use them for ulterior purposes.

Yes, the NSA could soon be listening to you through your coffee machine.

Reference to MofM:

NSA minor subplot.  NSA hack coffee makers and cause them to do daily reporting, then hackers take the coffee machine virus and reporting functions out, along with disabling the NSA office coffee machines.