Louis Rossman should do a segment on them.
this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2025
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He did. Where he said the article looked AI generated and so he wasn't going to waste any time with it.
I am planning to make a list of devices I really do NOT want near me. Starting with this one.
Gonna be a long list....
Time to run off into the forest I suppose
This is every single 'smart device' out there. The way I was able to block everything in 2 Roborocks at home was by setting them up in Home Assistant over Matter, blocking everything and using it from HA only (us the schedules, those remain in the robots). It's less than convenient allowing it access to the update servers once per month to see if there's any and then blocking it again, but it's something.
We're preparing our 'smart home' for our new house that's not finished yet by choosing only devices that are matter over wifi (not thread) so that I can set it all up to work locally ove Home Assistant. That, in my opinion, is the best way to keep some convenience while shutting those assholes out.
Most of them, sure. Every single one until proven otherwise, yes. Every single one, no qualifiers? No.
Brands like Shelly allow you to completely disable the cloud, which AFAIK makes them stop phoning home completely except for update checks.
I think a lot of “Home Assistant certified” brands are good privacy-wise, as that means that they don't care about pushing you onto their proprietary cloud.
Reject bottom feeder, Embrace Rigid vacuum.
broom chads stay winning
I wish companies would at least offer a "no data collecting/selling" price option. Like, how much would they make from selling my data? Just give me the option to pay that extra amount so I can buy a vacuum without thinking about how it's spying on me.
My concern is that they'll include the equipment for spying on you, and just enable it later.
I bought a Hue because it said "no online account required!" Later they changed their mind.
I want the promise plus open standards and a base of libre software. I want them to tie themselves to the mast.
Yeah, good point. Owners of Samsung "smart" refrigerators started seeing ads on them recently.
I'm sure there was some sort of legal terms that users had to agree to to enable that, but it still feels like a scam. Some amount of those fridge owners would not have bought the fridge if they knew there would be ads on it at any point in time.
I mean, if I felt I could control the little computer in a smart fridge without expending excessive effort to do so, I might be interested in getting one myself. Absent other concerns, a tablet integrated into my fridge could be handy to monitor the appliance, make quick or even automated grocery list updates, etc. Not earth shattering, but still marginally useful.
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The fact that this isn't considered outright fraud is disturbing. This person OWNS the device, yes? They're not leasing it.
FFS, this should be illegal.
If it were illegal, that would be a huge infraction to FREEDOM®🦅🦅
Too bad he's an engineer and not a lawyer.
I agree with you that this should be illegal. I expect this was in the terms of service, though. Since we have no laws restricting this kind of bullshit, the company can argue that they're within their rights.
We need some real legislation around privacy. It's never going to happen, but it needs to. We need a right to anonymity but that is too scary for advertisers and our police state.
Terms of service need to stop being treated like law.
They're not law as long as you can afford the lawyers and legal costs to fight them. Which is, of course, the problem and the system working as designed.
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There needs to be a huge neon orange warning on the Front of these products that explains, clearly, that you don't own it, your privacy will be invaded and the company can disable it at anytime. This will stop people from buying this garbage, and hopefully companies will stop if they want our money.
My life rule is, if it says Smart on it, it's never going to be smart. It will always cause trouble.
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How is this legal?
Shitty terms of service.
Same story with this guy (in french)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGMRUiBOFj0
Highly recommend watching his stuff, might be very technical but also super methodical
My robot vac will only operate when connected to the Internet so it's only allowed to communicate when actually in use. As soon as it returns to the charger Internet access is automatically blocked.
Unfortunately the manufacturer has deliberately made this as inconvenient as possible. If communication is blocked for more than a few hours the vacuum loses all maps and will no longer even load saved maps from the Tuya app. To use it the vac must be powered down and the app killed. Only then can a saved map be restored.
It's too bad it's so useful.
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Stalkerware is criminal digital slavery. It is sale and ownership of a part of a person to manipulate and exploit them.
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If I don't own it 100% then reimburse me if you disable it.
For me the worst part is that someone developed the functionality to monitor and track, until the signal is lost, and if so, kill. It's really crazy how daring this is.
There's something not working in this article.
They say it "makes sense" for the device to basically send the plan of your home to some online server, because the vacuum is not powerful enough to process this data on its own. This is already a bit horrifying to me, but okay.
And then when that guy blocked it out, the vacuum "worked for a while" before something sent the kill command through an update.
How come is it still working at all if navigation requires that server?
It is total BS. Offline vacuum cleaners do mapping and localisation just fine. It is just an excuse to spy on your home.
It's not the navigation that requires the server but the processing of the mapping data.
Which in itself is BS because most of these vacuums come with hardware roughly equivalent of a top of the line smartphone from about 5-6 years ago. They can easily do the raw data to map conversion, even if it's a bit slow and takes 20-30 seconds.
Also if you read the article it specifies that the damn thing is already running Google Cartographer which is a SLAM 3D map builder software - one of the better pro-grade mapping software suites, mind you. So the whole claim of cloud needed for processing is BS.
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Say it with me. If buying doesnt mean 100% ownership...
As useful a smart device are, it's very annoying that the company behind it are always either: 1) a scumbag that will collect data and will lockdown the device if people doesn't use it their way; 2)incompetent idiots that can't make a good software to save their life. So by using these device you basically have to pick the thing that you're willing to lose.
It's really too bad because robovac save me a lot of time and mental exhaustion.
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