Every Gadget Should Come With a Software Expiration Date on the Box

This is an opinion piece. The views are the author’s own.

A carton of milk tells you when it goes bad. A box of cereal tells you how much sugar is inside. A new refrigerator comes with a yellow sticker estimating what it will cost to run for a year.

A smart thermostat, a doorbell camera or a phone that costs hundreds of dollars tells you almost nothing about the single most important fact for anything with a chip and an app: how long the company plans to keep it working.

That’s absurd, and it’s fixable. Every connected gadget sold in the United States should carry a plain, honest date on the box and on the product page: “Security updates guaranteed until at least …” Not a vague promise. A date.

The problem isn’t hypothetical

Software support is no longer an extra. It’s what keeps a connected device safe and, often, what keeps it working at all.

Ask anyone who owned an early Nest Learning Thermostat. Google ended support for the first- and second-generation models on October 25, 2025. The thermostats still heat and cool, and you can still turn the dial, but they were removed from the Nest and Home apps. Remote control, app notifications, Home/Away features and integration with other assistants all stopped, and Google said there would be no more software or security updates. Owners bought a smart thermostat. They now own a regular one.

Or ask the people who paid $499 for Humane’s AI Pin. When HP bought most of Humane’s assets for $116 million in February 2025, the company announced that the pins would stop connecting to its servers on February 28. No calls, no messages, no AI answers. Only buyers from the previous 90 days were eligible for refunds. Buyers got about ten days’ notice that their device was becoming a paperweight.

These are not stories of companies breaking the law. They’re stories of companies doing what they’re allowed to do, because nobody required them to say up front how long the product would last.

Most companies don’t tell you

This isn’t just my impression. In November 2024, staff at the Federal Trade Commission looked at 184 smart products, from hearing aids to security cameras and door locks, and checked the manufacturers’ websites for information about how long the devices would get software updates. For nearly 89% of them, the agency couldn’t find any.

The FTC staff also pointed out that hiding that kind of information could run into existing law, including the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, which requires written warranties on consumer products over $15 to be available before purchase. Samuel Levine, then head of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, warned that consumers stand to lose a lot of money if their smart products stop delivering the features they paid for.

A staff report is a warning shot, not a rule. Nearly two years on, as far as I can tell, there is still no general federal requirement that a manufacturer tell you, clearly and before you buy, when support ends.

Other places already do this

This is not some radical idea. Other countries are already doing it.

Since April 29, 2024, the United Kingdom has required makers of most consumer connectable products to publish the minimum period during which they will provide security updates. The same rules banned universal default passwords and required companies to explain how to report security flaws.

The European Union went further for phones and tablets. Its ecodesign rules, which took effect June 20, 2025, call for operating system updates to be available for at least five years after a model’s last unit is sold, alongside requirements for battery durability and spare parts. There’s debate about how strictly that update rule can be enforced, and some brands still lag. But the direction is clear, and many manufacturers now publicly promise long support periods. Google and Samsung, for example, now advertise up to seven years of updates on recent flagship phones, according to a survey by the German tech publication heise.

Notice what happened there. Once long support became something buyers could compare, it became a selling point.

The U.S. tried a label. It stalled.

To be fair, Washington hasn’t ignored this. The Federal Communications Commission created the U.S. Cyber Trust Mark, a voluntary security label for smart home devices. Its QR code is supposed to tell shoppers, among other things, how long a product will get security updates.

But voluntary programs only help if companies sign up and the program actually runs. The firm chosen to lead it, UL Solutions, withdrew from that role in December 2025, after the FCC’s chairman raised concerns about the company’s ties to China, and in January 2026 the FCC was still taking applications for a replacement. Meanwhile, shoppers are still standing in store aisles squinting at boxes that say nothing useful.

A label you have to scan, that only some products carry, run by a program that keeps getting delayed, is not the same as a requirement.

What a good rule would look like

I’m not asking for every gadget to be supported forever. That’s unrealistic, and it would make cheap devices disappear. I’m asking for honesty. A sensible rule would include:

A real date, not a range. “Security updates until at least March 2031” beats “up to five years of updates,” which can quietly mean five years from launch for a product you bought in year four.
Placement where people decide. On the box, on the retailer’s product page and in the app store listing, not buried in a support PDF.
A promise that sticks. If a company is sold or shuts down, the promise should come with it, or buyers should get a partial refund.
A graceful ending. When cloud support ends, devices should keep any feature that can reasonably work locally, the way the old Nest thermostats still work from the wall.

The objections

Companies will say they can’t predict the future. Fine; then promise a minimum. Car makers can’t predict the future either, yet they manage to put a number of years and miles on a powertrain warranty.

They’ll say most customers don’t care. The FTC’s findings suggest customers can’t care, because the information isn’t there to compare. When Europe made update periods visible, long support became a marketing line.

And they’ll say it adds cost. Maybe a little. But the current system has costs too; they’re just shifted onto buyers, who pay for a replacement sooner, and onto everyone else, who has to live with unpatched devices sitting on home networks.

Until then

Until a rule exists, do what the FTC suggests and ask before you buy. Search for the product name plus “end of support” or “security updates.” If a company won’t say how long it will support something, assume the answer is “not long,” and price it accordingly.

We put an expiration date on yogurt. A camera watching your front door deserves at least the same courtesy.

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