What do you like to drink these days as the weather begins to cool off in Guangdong? Tea? Coffee? Whatever caffeine-filled concoctions you’re knocking back each morning, I suggest you start boiling the water in a pot on the stove. Stay away from the kettle. Far away. Better yet, throw it out the window.

Yes, that’s right, your loyal kettle is in fact your worst enemy. Even right now, as you read this on your home Wi-Fi network, it’s storing all your online activity and data in a tiny microchip hidden who knows where — probably in the base.

At least that’s the mad claims made by Russian investigators, and reported by the country’s media, at the end of October when they allegedly discovered as many as 30 China-imported kettles with “spy microchips that send some data to the foreign server”.

Do you need to worry? I should think not. I would be more inclined to point your worries in the direction of China’s air quality, which has again been in the headlines this week after Beijing’s smog levels became so bad as to obstruct security cameras’ visibility — thus putting the country’s very national security at risk, as one publication put it.

Anyway, back to kettles. I always knew they were up to no good.

Photo credit: The Daily Mail