Smart meters (SMs) can play a key role in monitoring vital aspects of different applications such as smart grids (SG), alternative currents (AC) optimal power flows, adversarial training, time series data, etc. Several practical privacy implementations of SM have been made in the literature, but more studies and testing may be able to further improve efficiency and lower implementation costs. The major objectives of cyberattacks are the loss of data privacy on SM-based SG/power grid (PG) networks and threatening human life. As a result, losing data privacy is very expensive and gradually hurts the national economy. Consequently, employing an efficient trust model against cyberattacks is strictly desired. This paper presents a research pivot for researchers who are interested in security and privacy and shade light on the importance of the SM. We highlight the involved SMs’ features in several applications. Afterward, we focus on the SMs’ vulnerabilities. Then, we consider eleven trust models employed for SM security, which are among the common methodologies utilized for attaining and preserving the data privacy of the data observed by the SMs. Following that, we propose a comparison of the existing solutions for SMs’ data privacy. In addition, valuable recommendations are introduced for the interested scholars, taking into consideration the vital effect of SM protection on disaster management, whether on the level of human lives or the infrastructure level.