A U.K. police chief has called for a security rating for household appliances that connect to the Internet amid growing concerns that the expanding Internet of Things will fall prey to hackers.

Chief constable Mike Barton, who also heads the U.K.’s National Police Chiefs Council, said smart TVs, refrigerators and the like should be given a rating just as some household appliances are given energy efficiency ratings.

“It’s not just that they are going to get into your fridge and find out how many yoghurts you eat a week,” Barton said, referring to cybercriminals. “The fact is that your Internet of things are all plugged into the same network and that provides the criminal with a back door into your network.”

It’s not only the external appliances Barton is worried about, but also the many connected devices that we carry around with us. With growing fears that connected pacemakers or baby monitors could be hacked, Barton believes it’s more than likely that hackers will invade the home and hold its occupants for ransom.

It’s thought that by 2020 there will be something close to 25 billion connected devices in the world, and while lives will run more smoothly day-to-day, this state of hyper-connectedness is not without its critics.

“You’ve got a situation where we don’t know what the security is like in the devices we are buying in the Internet of things,“ Barton said. “It’s just not reported. And yet that is the most significant component of what it is you are buying.”

Barton didn’t say how a ratings systems would work, but he said it was up to the industry to make it happen. The police chief said it’s better to think now about how such a ratings system could be implemented rather than ignore the risks and move headlong into the future. “I don’t want to look back and be accused of not actually waving a flag to say we should be doing more,” he said.

Image: Heidi via Flickr