FTC Commissioner Terrell McSweeny. (Photo via Wikimedia Commons)

Imagine life without your smartphone. While some may say they can live without it, consider this: In the U.S. alone, Americans collectively look at their smartphones around 8 billion times a day, found a 2015 study by Deloitte. When accounting for all age groups, that checks out to 46 times per day, per person.

These smartphones are just one of many devices encompassing the ” Internet of Things ” (IoT). These devices are web-enabled and can “ communicate” with one another—from the tablet where you check your email to the Amazon Echo that plays any song you might want to hear at any given moment, the devices making consumers’ lives easier, faster and more connected are already leaving massive fires to be put out by legal.