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‘People have no idea’: How smart devices spy on us and reveal information about our homes
(english.elpais.com)
this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2023
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Privacy Guides
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Having to hack even bulbs to avoid being spied on is a new level in dystopia.
Oh, I could make it worse if you’d like? That tool isn’t made for just the bulbs I got at Costco, it’s made for any device in the Tuya ecosystem. What’s Tuya? They’re a Chinese white-label manufacturer that makes smart devices that other companies can slap their brand on. They’ll throw you together an app too, but all of the API calls go through their infrastructure. Bonus, they also make security cameras that send footage to their servers, and smart locks too. They’re literally everywhere, but I’m in Australia so that’s where I’m basing this list:
And that is, quite literally, only to name a few.
Thanks mate.Moving forward I am Not going to buy anything "smart"
I mean, there are still plenty of ways to have smart things that don’t communicate with the internet. Ikea’s stuff is all zigbee, they don’t have wifi at all. You can get one of their hubs to control from your phone, or they sell remotes with zigbee you can pair directly to control a set of bulbs. They never have to see internet at all.
@princessnorah @yoz rlly??? I might have to look into this!
Yeah. As well, if you want to upgrade to a Home Assistant setup down the line, all you need is a $50 Zigbee USB adapter. If you’re more tech-savvy then you can also buy bulbs from somewhere like https://www.athom.tech that come pre-flashed with open source firmware. Either ESPHome, Tasmota or WLED are available. These are wifi, but everything is local, and you can block them on your router without issues. ESPHome is what I have running on the bulbs I rescued.
Good link for that site. Currently shopping bulbs for my just recently arrived home assistant green and hard to find consistent information on best bulbs to be using. Love that these are flashed with open source already but I think due to the amount of bulbs I need and their location I'll be better suited with Zigbee. Will definitely check this place for future devices as I build out the system.
Are you new with Home Assistant in general? I’ve got it running in a VM on a rack server, but those HA Green’s sure do look like a tidy little bit of kit. Ikea stuff works well with it Zigbee-wise, I’ve got some of it around. You can get their remotes working via HA to control other things too. Here’s the Blueprint I used: https://github.com/niro1987/homeassistant-config/blob/main/blueprints/automation/niro1987/zha_ikea_tradfri_5button_remote_custom.yaml
Thanks for the info! I am somewhat new to HA, my only experience with it was temporarily checking it out on a VM on my windows Plex server but at that time didn't have my own place was just checking it our for the eventual move. I think I'm going to add Sky Connect for Zigbee and eventually Matter/Thread devices.
The newer version of Ikea's Tradfri bulbs (they aren't selling the old ones anymore) have thread/ matter support on the chips. They should be getting a firmware update soon to enable it. You can also check out the Integrations section on Home Assistant to find devices/brands that are private and work well. The Shelly integration is rated Platinum, and has Local Push: https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/shelly/
Edit: Also, feel free to hit me up here or on Matrix (link in my profile) if you have any questions or just wanna chat about HA or other self-hosted stuff 😊
@princessnorah that’s awesome! When I move out imma buy all this lmao
And also entirely unnecessary with WLED.
FOSS is the answer. Corpo shit is the enemy.
I have flashed all the bulbs and ceiling lights in my house and they work locally on FOSS firmware now 😉 It is not a big deal. I have very poor soldering skills, and I did this anyway.