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The Smart Home Wi-Fi Trap: Are We All Being Conned by Convenience? (unknownuniverse.uk)
submitted 1 month ago by to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
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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!

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[–] 2 points 1 month ago (1 child)

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.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago

    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.

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