An engineer got curious about how his iLife A11 smart vacuum worked and monitored the network traffic coming from the device. That’s when he noticed it was constantly sending logs and telemetry data to the manufacturer — something he hadn’t consented to. The user, Harishankar, decided to block the telemetry servers’ IP addresses on his network, while keeping the firmware and OTA servers open. While his smart gadget worked for a while, it just refused to turn on soon after. After a lengthy investigation, he discovered that a remote kill command had been issued to his device.
Old news that’s been posted several times in the last weeks
Louis Rossman should do a segment on them.
I am planning to make a list of devices I really do NOT want near me. Starting with this one.
Reject bottom feeder, Embrace Rigid vacuum.
broom chads stay winning
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.
Jesus christ, just vaccuum your own house already. This is the largest tradeoff I have ever seen for the minor inconvenience of a single household chore.
This comment is fucking insane lol
I dont even vacuum. I get on my knees and clean my floors by hand.
I can’t do that, I have bone spurs (actually though)
That’s why this invasive tech is criminal. Just plain criminal.
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.
Do they not just a cheaper version that could come without wifi or Bluetooth? I usually get that option where available for any products. because I’m a cheap ass.
There are older models you can get that work that way. They’re just less convenient in that you have to clean them out yourself. I had one for a long time, but I wanted one that is self-emptying.
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
How is this legal?
Shitty terms of service.
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.
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.
Too bad he’s an engineer and not a lawyer.
If it were illegal, that would be a huge infraction to FREEDOM®🦅🦅
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.
How often are the terms of service evident at the time of purchase? It’s unreasonable to assume at the checkout that the price is only for a limited time of use. I doubt the put it on the box or on the Amazon page when you purchased stuff like this. Are you supposed to buy it and then return it after reading the fine print in the instruction booklet after opening it up?
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.
Pre-Trump47 I was in the first camp. I’m not going to lie about how long it took me to figure it out. It was always obvious that the system was broken, but I’ll admit that for a long time I was foolish enough to believe the system worked well enough that it was worth trying to fix, that the fundamentals were sound and there was enough good there to want to save it.
Recent events have shown and continue to show me how naive I’ve been, none of this is an accident, it’s all part of the poker game and we’re all putting in most of the chips that keep it going whether we know it or not. And I have to be thankful that Russia, China, USA, Israel, Europe, and even my own country’s governments have made this all so abundantly clear that even I (and hopefully a lot of other people) can finally see it. I’m joining the resistance. Fuck the system and all the crooked people involved in it, it’s time for a cyberpunk revolution.
I expect this was in the terms of service, though
While I expect the same, there’s also just a reasonablility standard. If Meta and Google updated their TOS to say that users agreed to become human chattle slaves to mine cobalt and forfeit their rights, no court (…right, SCOTUS?..right?) would uphold that. A TOS is a contract, but it’s mostly for the protection of companies from liability. Takign active steps to brick someone’s device over the device not connecting to it’s C2 server (the company had zero evidence this was done intentionally and a router firewall misconfiguration could just have easily done the same thing), is IMO something that should result in a lawsuit.
I agree with you. The problem is that lawsuits cost money. Fighting the company on this requires the right plaintiff who is willing to risk money on the problem.
Just because something’s written in the terms of service, doesn’t mean it’s legal.
And just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s ethical.
When an authoritarian country does it, everyone goes crazy
When a company does it to make more money and take more control, it’s just business as usual.
Just like work. If a government tried to treat us like that, we would have a revolution tomorrow. Yet, we’ve all been groomed into just accepting it.
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.
IMO “Smart” refers to the lawyers that got paid to write a 900-page TOS that lets a company do whatever they want.
And, unfortunately, a 900 page TOS guarantees that the average consumer never reads it.
No that’s called “smarmy”.
Unfortunately this is from a Chinese company and China will never make it illegal; hell they’re more likely to pass a law requiring ILIFE to share the personal data with the government than tell them not to collect them. This could be enforced for US based companies but as long as we buy luxury goods from China this is going to be a fact of life.
Say it with me. If buying doesnt mean 100% ownership…
… FUCK THE DMCA!
What did I win?
then they will buy it
Stalkerware is criminal digital slavery. It is sale and ownership of a part of a person to manipulate and exploit them.
I think your comparison to slavery is a bit overblown and minimizes the tragedy of actual slavery. But I agree with the sentiment.
There are other types of slavery besides American chattel slavery.
No. This robot vacuum situation is basically the Holocaust, and if you can’t see that then you are complicit. /s
Yeah down with the oppressors! Robot vacuums are also people!
This shit is two months old. How many times is it going to recirculate?
until something meaningful is dore about it i hope
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.
My robot vac will only operate when connected to the Internet
That would trigger me to return it to the store. “It doesn’t work”
Name and shame.
from the Tuya app.
it’s only allowed to communicate when actually in use.
What’s the point? The manufacturer is interested in the map of your apartment and usage statistics. What do you think it’s sending when not in use? Does it have a microphone or something?
Since I haven’t pulled it apart or tried to decrypt the ssl traffic I have no idea whether it has “a microphone or something.” That’s the point.
Keeping it offline some of the time isn’t effective against passive data collection unless you’re willing to take the inconvenient step of factory-resetting it each time you’re about to use it. Anything it collects it can just hold onto until it next gets the chance to upload.
SmartTVs will hold onto your data as long as they have storage, even through a factory reset. So if you sell it and the next person hooks it up to the Internet then the data is uploaded.
I know it can be done, so it wouldn’t shock me at all to find out that it does happen, but do you know of any manufacturers who have been proven to do this?
SSL bold of you to assume that
Should have read up on it before buying this crap.
Lol. Read what? Does your TV manual or privacy policy tell you what’s being transmitted? Have you ever even bought a connected appliance?
