this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2025
402 points (98.8% liked)

Technology

77084 readers
2595 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] GreenShimada@lemmy.world 159 points 1 day ago (12 children)

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.

[–] Vorticity@lemmy.world 45 points 1 day ago (7 children)

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.

[–] FartMaster69@lemmy.dbzer0.com 44 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Terms of service need to stop being treated like law.

[–] MalReynolds@slrpnk.net 19 points 22 hours ago

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.

load more comments (5 replies)
load more comments (9 replies)