As a millennial mom who tries to keep her child off of the internet, I’ve made a pact with my husband not to post our daughter to any social-media accounts. But our mission extends beyond keeping her face away from the AI of Zuckerberg & Co. We want to keep everything about her as analog as possible, including her sleep habits. So, when it was time to buy a baby monitor, we set out to find a non-Wi-Fi model — something we quickly discovered is not as easy as it seems.

Most of the “must-have” baby monitors these days use Wi-Fi to transmit video. Nearly every mom I know has a Nest Cam in her kiddo’s bedroom, and the latest technological advances in baby-monitoring — like the Nanit system that provides analytics on your baby’s sleep — are all Wi-Fi-dependent. While they may be state of the art, one of our biggest concerns about Wi-Fi-equipped devices is that they’re susceptible to hacking. (This isn’t a fantastical fear: Last month, video of hackers terrorizing kids over Ring’s Wi-Fi camera system went viral.) According to Adam Wright, a senior analyst at the International Data Corporation, Wi-Fi monitors work by transmitting video from the camera to your home’s wireless router, which sends the feed up to “the cloud,” which then bounces it back down to your parent monitor or an app on your phone. “By accessing your home network, that is potentially exposing your network to intrusions and hacking,” he explains. Jen King, the director of consumer privacy at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, adds that “hackers often use devices like baby monitors as training grounds to test their skills.”

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Most of the “must-have” baby monitors these days use Wi-Fi to transmit video. Nearly every mom I know has a Nest Cam in her kiddo’s bedroom, and the latest technological advances in baby-monitoring — like the Nanit system that provides analytics on your baby’s sleep — are all Wi-Fi-dependent. While they may be state of the art, one of our biggest concerns about Wi-Fi-equipped devices is that they’re susceptible to hacking. (This isn’t a fantastical fear: Last month, video of hackers terrorizing kids over Ring’s Wi-Fi camera system went viral.) According to Adam Wright, a senior analyst at the International Data Corporation, Wi-Fi monitors work by transmitting video from the camera to your home’s wireless router, which sends the feed up to “the cloud,” which then bounces it back down to your parent monitor or an app on your phone. “By accessing your home network, that is potentially exposing your network to intrusions and hacking,” he explains. Jen King, the director of consumer privacy at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, adds that “hackers often use devices like baby monitors as training grounds to test their skills.”