Mainstream tech advice treats cheap Wi-Fi smart plugs as harmless convenience, totally glossing over how much telemetry leaks out to overseas cloud servers by default.
Expecting casual users to set up VLANs and firewall drop rules just to stop a £10 light bulb from phoning home is a bit of a joke.
True privacy means local control without corporate middlemen.
Original content by The Unknown Universe, written by a human and not AI generated!
I believe that you are both correct. 8 to 10 years ago I realized how much data these companies and governments gather about me, and it scared the shit out of me. I was not aware before that, so I had Alexas all over my house, smart devices, a Samsung SmartThings, the works.
Then my slow walk to privacy started. My home is fully automated now, down to the sprinklers, but it’s all via Home Assistant, frigate for my cameras (inside home assistant), not one of my IoT devices has access to the internet, they live in an isolated VLAN, and I haven’t had any mainstream social network account or WhatsApp for over 8 years now.
The fact is that a lot people don’t care because they don’t know, like me back then, but finally knowing is what jump-started this path.
I do agree that there’s no helping someone that doesn’t want help, that’s a hard fact, but if we do move this information around, we stand to “cure a few normies” along the way.
Holy shit. I didn’t know it was possible to acknowledge more than one perspective. You just blew my mind, man.
Kidding. Thank you for actually thinking non-binarily
I knew and I didn’t care still don’t about some things. And I know others who have an idea but don’t care. I’d say right now I’m more anti american then anything else aobtrying to move away from their companies.
American companies are, easily, 90%+ of this shit, so I think you’re on the right path.
Smart home stuff is dominated by Tuya, which is Chinese. Even a lot of the american branded stuff is Tuya rebranded. Phillips hue is Netherlands based, and from a quick look isn’t tuya. IKEA is also not tuya. The rest, I would basically guarantee are all tuya based.
Yeah, this is a fact, however, the servers used by these companies to server clients are either in the US, Europe or China. The rest of the companies are either Japanese, South Korean or American, and those companies all have to follow US laws on surveillance if they want to do any business with US citizens. And then there’s the fact that every single one of them has Oauth via Google, X and meta to use the services. So, 90%+ still sounds like the correct number. I could be wrong, could be.