this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2023
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depends on the device.
If the device dont provide local connection, there is nothing home assistant can do about it. Some device will also send data to the cloud even it is locally controlled by HA.
Oh for sure. But unlike smart things or any other hub, only the data that needs a cloud connection will go through the cloud...
Home assistant is great at what it does, but the problem is too big for HA to really fix it by itself.
It's the end-devices that are the biggest culprits, paired with the apps installed on your phone. It's the reason Google was basically giving away their home-mini's the last couple years.
If you use a smart device that comes with - or requires - an app, it's almost guaranteed that app collects a certain amount of data from you to be sold or utilized for user profiling.
The problem is that everyone has half a dozen of those devices already, and swapping them all out takes time, effort, and money that most people simply don't have.
It's a challenge even for the truly dedicated and privacy-minded individual to know which devices are locally hosted and which ones use local internet access or a permissive phone apps to function. Even if you DO manage to keep a clean slate, there are always companies that change their policies once they have high-adoption and force cloud integration on their users. See Phillips, Chamberlain, Microsoft, Google, Amazon...
I love Home Assistant, but it's a nightmare trying to cut out all the unsecured bullshit I've found myself with even in the past two years.
Thanks to laziness of the device manufacturers, a lot of them either expose some data endpoints locally, or just use Zigbee which can be easily paired to be used local-only.
Those that require Wi-Fi access can be filtered on the router to disable internet access.