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Smart devices can testify against you: How home robot data is being used in court
(www.the-independent.com)
I recently paid extra to get an A/C with no connectivity. I can feel that. And the only incriminating thing one can get out of my fridge is the smudge of sticky stuff in the bottom drawer, not entire transcripts of the last two weeks -_-
I use homeassistant, it even keepa tabs on my homelab, etc. Only way to do smart home right is with ZigBee,zwave and esphome. None of these devices need internet access. Everything I have on my smart home is local and on its separate vlan. Again this isn't for everybody because it does take a lot of time if you don't know what your doing. Home assistant has come a VERY LONG way though and is very much user friendly now.
Time to de-digitize your life.
Soon, every fuckin' thing you buy that plugs in will have an app, and demand to connect to the internet, and do it's damnedest to make that happen, whether you let it or not. There's probably a generic, dedicated chipset or board that does just this available for OEM purchase that they just wire into whatever they're building. Fans, speakers, TVs and monitors, every appliance, lights, clocks, push vacuums, pet feeders, smoke alarms, anything you can think of. They'll add some feature that no one wants to justify the camera, mic and internet connection. Or, they'll just hide it, because whatever law might be used against them for doing that would not be strong enough to outweigh the profits, if it's enforced at all.
If you have old appliances without these "features", do your best to keep them working.
This won't stop until we kick the capitalist out of our governments.
There’s probably a generic, dedicated chipset or board that does just this available for OEM purchase that they just wire into whatever they’re building.
Yup. It's called an Espressif ESP8266, and it's spawned a bunch of variants including the more powerful ESP32. It's a little microcontroller on a circuit board with an antenna on the board, cost about $1-$2 in quantity, out of the box it speaks WiFi and most variants now have Bluetooth also. It's got enough intelligence on board to run a simple IoT gadget, and if you want more it'll act as the communication module for your larger system board. And since it's got all the RF approvals (FCC, CE, etc) already done, it means you can add RF communication to your product without expensive RF certification.
In fact, use an external low voltage power supply (which comes with its own certification), and pretty much the only regulatory testing you need to do is to prove it won't spontaneously catch fire.
Anyway there's over a dozen variants of ESP-family chips and boards with various capabilities. Here's an example. Or that same example mounted on a breakout development board. See the pinout here- this little module is a proverbial tub of Legos with TONS of capability to unlock.
Then throw in some cloud platforms like Tuya that will handle most of the cloudiness so all the developer needs to do is write an app and sell products.
The last LEGO set i bought needs an app to run it, haha.
There's also a social factor in play: yes, I could refrain from having "smart" apparata (and face the crushing social ostracism stemmed from this choice), but if one of my neighbors have a "smart" apparatus, depending on which one it is, it could technically be used to spy on me. I mean, the whole polemic involving Meta's Creep-Glass has to do exactly with how those things can be used and are being used to spy on others, unbeknownst to said others who never ever purchased a Creep-Glass.
Exactly. Even if you do everything right as an individual, if the society you live in is shit, your personal discipline will not protect you.
And then some ahole will tell you not to take any of it personally. Because if the bad thing is only happening to you, it's horrible and you deserve to be angry. But if the same thing is happening to everyone, then you get to smile and carry on like it's normal, and like it is supposed to be like that.
smart device... more like... narc device ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
Imagine getting snitched on by your Roomba. Fuck that noise, my broom ain't snitching on me.
A smart home is in reality a vulnerable home, and a smart device a vulnerable device. Reduce their use as much as possible.
Smart home stuff can be done right.
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You need to focus on the use case. Is what it is doing actually necessary? E.g. smart lights are amazingly useful, smart washing machine? Why?!?
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The S in IoT stands for security. Smart devices need to be treated as security risks. Mine have their own WiFi to play on. They don't get to play with my important devices. Also, internet access is a privilege, not a right. ZigBee is often superior to WiFi too. Control the bridge and you have absolute control of their internet access.
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Open source for the win. A lot of IoT options can run open source firmware. This helps break open the black boxes and let you see if they are doing bad things. Home assistant, EspHome, and Tasmota are the big 3 to look into.
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If you're not the customer, you're the product. Google etc sell smart speakers at a loss. If you must have them, treat them as actively hostile. I'm still trying to find a good alternative to some of their functions, but getting there.
smart lights are amazingly useful
I'm not saying your wrong, but I also don't understand the use case? Maybe I'm a Luddite, but things like like dimmers, motion sensors and two way light switches seem to meet my needs well. It's also not difficult to buy high CRI lights in the color temperature we like.
What am I missing?
Mine are all on schedules to gradually turn on in the morning and off in the evening. I very rarely set an alarm for the mornings, as the lights gently wake me up. The gradual evening dimming is also quite effective at making me go to bed at a reasonable hour without much effort.
Off the top of my head.
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Adjusting from the sofa, or bed.
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Auto off when you leave the house.
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Auto off when the room is unused for a while (great with kids).
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Colour temperature and brightness adjustment to match sunlight (great for conditioning children to go to bed easily).
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Party Mode
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Auto dim turn on at night(avoids waking you up to much on bathroom runs).
Also, internet access is a privilege, not a right. ZigBee is often superior to WiFi too
I'm setting up a smarthome from scratch the last few days. After having Philips Hues and a Google Home for ages at my previous home, my new place has downlights rather than edison screws so none of my lights work and after a year I'm finally trying things out properly. Got a server with Home Assistant and border routers for Thread and Zigbee, bought a bunch of no-brand Zigbee downlights and Ikea sensors with Matter over Thread. No wifi is a hard requirement for me. For security reasons and for performance. I don't want a dozen extraneous devices littering my wifi network.
Smart washing machine: ours is in the basement and my wife and I used to regularly forget we had laundry in it. I now have Home Assistant text us when a load is complete. But it only texts us if we are home and can do something about it. If nobody is home it waits until one of us gets home to text us.
BUT: The washer and dryer are still dumb, pre-IoT generation. I built light sensors that are taped to the displays, and Home Assistant relies on those to determine if the appliances are on or off. No need for cloud-based monitoring, etc. A little creativity like that can work just as well or better than a convenient cloud-based solution.
I've considered that, for the same reasons. My machines are obnoxious enough to be heard through half the house on their own however.
The built in smart ones seem to be the worst of all worlds. They farm you for data, while not providing much of use. They try to tie you into ecosystems, that stop you using the data elsewhere.
My solution was going to be to monitor current draw, via a power monitoring plug, running Tasmota. Once it's below a threshold for long enough, send an alert.
I have my electricity smart meter display in my study so I can see on there when the oven is done preheating
I've been trying to find a IoT thermometer that can survive oven temperatures long term (or at least its probe can). No luck so far. I currently don't really trust its own settings.
I solved this problem by making it a habit to set up a timer on my phone after I started the washing machine.
I am stunned by the brilliance of this comment. I'm taking notes. Thank you @cynar@lemmy.world for sharing this.
I've been playing with my smart home for years now. I'm well past the "oh wow" honeymoon phase and into the "just do your job" phase.
I forgot to mention WAF, Wife Acceptance Factor. Any smart system should fall back to a dumb one, if something goes wrong. E.g. You should never require WiFi to turn your lights on. There should always be a switch that will just work. Central control computer crashes? The wife is annoyed the house is now just dumb, not that the house is now dead.
Thank you so much for that tip as well. You also have a great sense of humour, which I'm certain your wife appreciates! (Assuming the use of WAF was meant from your perspective - I apologise if I'm wrong.)
A bit of both. It's a mindset that keeps me from doing anything too stupid, and a good one to pass on to others. I can play around, so long as I don't make her life harder.
It mostly stops me putting brittle, or janky setups into use. I need to actually streamline and ruggedise them. I benefit from that too, in the long run.
One of the reasons I bought the (smart) car charger i did was because it supports OCPP (open Charge Point Protocol) and a vendor-provided secondary firmware that more easily supports OCPP (and the ability to rent out your charger to people on the network).
I would say the way that most people use smart devices, yes. But if you have the time and patience to select the correct smart devices and set them up properly, you're fine.
Of course, people are lazy, so for most folks, inviting Google Alex or Nest into their house leads to...chicanery.
PS: pick a robot vacuum cleaner that can work without sending shit to someone else's server. And make your own "Alexa"
if you have the time and patience to select the correct smart devices and set them up properly, you’re fine
Yup. If your smart devices use Thread or Zigbee (specifically not wifi—though wifi can be ok too if you use an entirely separate network for smart things) to communicate to a Home Assistant server in your home, the security and privacy risks and minimal.
Thread? Zigbee?
No no no, you want either Parasol, GwimGwab, or Hamtato.
Haven't you heard of them?
You are right. And always consider the worst case scenario. When my father-in-law ended up in hospital, I had to take care of his apartment, and I couldn’t find out how to turn the lights on. It took me 15 minutes to understand his remote control 🤪
Ah - been there, done that as well.
i like to be the smart device. i like to mentally remind myself im doing laundry and check it when i get home.
and discover to empty dishwasher on my own.
have a smart mop but i only ever use the button on it rather than an app
because of these habits i get a lot of steps on my smart watch tho. also found my memory improving.
Thats why my robovac runs valetudo https://valetudo.cloud/
The case mentioned here (in the beginning) is a husband manually using the camera of their robot vacuum to catch her cheating on him and using the recording as evidence in court (and subsequently have it used against him for unlawful recording). This can happen with your valetudo vacuum (assuming it has a camera) too, since it's just user based behavior.
Valetudo runs alongside the existing software on the robot vacuum though, does it not?
From what I gather, valetudo sits between the firmware and the cloud, co-opting cloud functionality and serving that from the vacuum. Since nothing is going to the cloud, only the information stored on the robot, or that you've stored yourself, can be used against you. So while your vacuum may have a microphone or camera, it shouldn't be recording what you say or do anywhere. I have yet to start my valetudo journey and have barely started my robot vacuum journey precisely because of scenarios like this.
I'm not convinced this actually holds. To be able to use Valetudo at all, you at minimum do need to connect it to a wifi network which you are connected to as well on some kind of device. Unless you happen to be setting up some kind of firewalling on the robot vacuum, it is at that point free to start logging whatever information it deems appropriate.
The code is open source. Like any open source software, unless it's been vetted, you're relying on trust. The premise is that the software is running on the vacuum, so there is no cloud or remote storage. So, just like anything else self-hosted, unless your network is compromised or you configure it to allow it, nothing external is accessing it. If you don't trust it, vet it. Read the code or check your network logs.
I'm not talking about the code in Valetudo - I'm talking about the code that's already running on the robot vacuum before installing Valetudo. It remains on the device after you install Valetudo.
Basically, any concerns about privacy stemming from the original software on the robot vacuum do not get eliminated by installing Valetudo
Valetudo actively blocks the cloud connections. Also, only firmware versions specifically installed with Valetudo is supported (so no chance an update to the original device firmware happens, and does new things).
I think there's a very low chance something escapes to the vendor cloud.
None the less, I personally run these on a separate VLAN without internet access.
Valetudo actively blocks the cloud connections.
Are you sure about that? It'd be a pretty big feature to implement, and surely it would be something that the Valetudo author would mention in the docs for the project.
It's just DNS based, and iirc dont require any major effort other than patching the hosts file. Of course it is possible it is not enough, but I have high confidence in the authors after also having watched various talks at I.e DEFCON, that i would be surprised if they missed the firmware doing other nasty things.
Patching DNS is specifically possible to enable/disable on the firmware build tool: I.e https://builder.dontvacuum.me/_dreame_r2416.html and the source for that is here https://github.com/dgiese/dustbuilder-script-public/blob/7afed16999711833a8ac0b3b482e935c3ef77219/modifys8image.sh#L169
Interesting.
This seems to be a model-specific quirk and moreso a side effect of getting Valetudo to work rather than an explicit goal - the same option does not appear in DustBuilder for my model (Roborock S5, still going strong after 941 hours of cleaning time).
I feel like I should check out this DEFCON talk though.
I learned something new today, thank you for that
From what I can see, one of two things happens. First, the main cloud communications are intercepted and handled by Valetudo. It replaces the cloud infrastructure with the firmware it adds to the vacuum. Second, some require connectivity to your router or the internet in general. Connections to your router shouldn't be harmful, and he specifically leaves blocking connections to the internet (which shouldn't be required for the vacuum to function). I'm only speculating here, but given the open-endedness of the comment I'm guessing explicitly blocking certain connections could be considered an illegal circumvention by laws such as the DMCA. I'd like them to note which vacuums those are so they could be more easily avoided.
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Thankfully, everything I am surrounded with has a reason to plead insanity.
Hereby, I now submit to the court, Exhibit X! My first edition copy of "How To Stop Worrying And Start Living"
Jury gasps
And it's companion piece, "How To Win Friends And Influence People", also a first edition
Jury begins vomiting on each other, furiously
May I now request that Exhibit X approach the bench?
Judge becomes visibly moist
Alexa, what is an 'attack surface'?
... hrm ...
Alexa, widen scope of 'threat actors'.
Oh.
Oh dear.
Actual article, by The Conversion.
RUNNING OBJECTION.EXE YOUR HONOR.
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this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2026
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