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| Image from Pixabay |
In
the past, 100 to 150 children drowned every year in France. A significant
portion of these tragic accidents occurred in private swimming pools. That is
why legislation was introduced in 2004 requiring safety measures. The number of
annual drownings in private swimming pools fell to 20-50.
Nowadays,
French private swimming pools must have a fence, cover or alarm system. During
the holidays we encountered the latter, which was intended to alert parents if
a child falls into the water. The owner of the house had explained to us how it
worked: hold down one button on the remote control, then press the other and
voilà, the alarm was turned off and the pool was open for business.
If
you forgot to turn it off and jumped into the water, you were treated to a loud
alarm sound just a moment later. Then someone had to quickly grab the remote
control and press the buttons. It soon became apparent that this did not work
properly: only after several attempts did the alarm go silent. It was unclear what
was wrong. A light came on on the remote control, so apparently the batteries
were still good. The buttons were soft and vague to the touch, so you tended to
press harder and harder. Perhaps the circuit board under the buttons had become
damaged over the years. Anyway, this couldn't go on any longer.
Fortunately,
there was an alternative. There was a magnet in the garage with which you had
to touch the alarm box in the swimming pool to switch off the alarm. That
worked flawlessly and saved us from a lot of hassle. Although sometimes things
still went wrong, because if no one had been in the pool for fifteen minutes,
the alarm was automatically activated. If you didn't think about that at the
next refreshing dive, you were still in trouble.
The
lights on the alarm didn’t really help, either. There were two of them: one
red, the other green. If the green light was on, you were not allowed to
swim, and if the light was red, you were all right. From the alarm’s point of
view, I get it: if the alarm is on, the swimming pool is protected, and
therefore the green light is on. Alarm off means unsafe, so red. But from the
user's point of view, this is not convenient, because one usually crosses the
road when the light is green.
No concerned
neighbors showed up on the doorstep in the event of a (false) alarm. They
simply lived well out of earshot. But what would this be like in a more densely
built-up environment? I don’t think that the entire neighborhood would show up with
swimming rings and rescue hooks at the first beep. Only if the alarm continued,
a slightly irritated neighbor might perhaps come and take a look. But isn't it
already too late then?
And
yet the legislation appears to be quite effective. I think that a sturdy fence
with a child-resistant lock works best - preventive measures prevent misery,
while detective measures only signal that there is a (possible) problem.
Prevention is better than cure; not being able to fall into the pool is better
than having to be fished out half drowned.
I could
make a clever link to my field of expertise here, but you get the idea
yourself. Automatically throwing away a phishing email before it ends up in
your inbox causes less hassle than clearing up the mess after you have clicked
on that link. Blocking access to a rogue website is more effective than having
to respond to a malware infection. Not asking your customer for data that you
don't actually need is more sympathetic than having to inform your customer
that their data have been leaked - yes, sometimes not doing something is
also a measure.
Of
course, this is not a disqualification of all those security systems that
signal that something may be wrong. We really need that too. Defense in depth
means that you build up protection in layers. If someone has left the pool
gate open, an alarm system can still prevent a lot of grief. Just as it is very
important that you recognize phishing and handle it correctly - in case the security
systems fail to catch it. It's a shame that French legislation only requires
one measure.
And in the big bad world...
- it's a bad idea to save passwords in your browser.
- you can of course also hack the gears of expensive racing bikes.
- Household robots are also not safe from hackers.
- There are still programmers who think hardcoded passwords are a good idea.
- Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to connect all our solar panels to the internet.
- the Dutch Data Protection Authority warns against incidents involving artificial intelligence. [DUTCH]
- Electronic equipment is now forbidden during Cabinet meetings. [DUTCH]
- the Prime Minister himself explains the importance of this measure. [DUTCH]
- this Android malware plunders your bank account using your physical bank card.
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