We hope that R. Martin in Tulsa is still able to open their garage door manually, but this episode raises questions about the flaws of connectivity and the enormous responsibilities we give tech companies, seemingly without much scrutiny. If a relatively small outfit like Garadget – take a look at their Indiegogo crowdfunding page here – can summarily interfere with a user's home, it doesn't take much to imagine similar meddling with, say, connected cars.

Self-driving vehicles are poised to become a much bigger part of British life. These machines are expected to be able to make life-or-death decisions within five years, outpacing legislation and in some ways even our understanding of ethics. But if the makers of an app are able to remotely disable parts of a user's house, there are very serious implications about what this might mean for the vulnerabilities of driverless technology. We wouldn't want Garadget to have anything to do with a moving vehicle, that's for sure.

Is the user a victim of terrible customer service, or is Garadget entitled to behave the way it has? And is this situation an unfortunate side-effect of the march of progress, or a horrifying vision of a dystopian, connected world? Let us know in the comments.