Lots of reasons. But primarily to force you to download an app that hoovers up your data, sells it to advertisers, and serves you ads at the same time, all while holding your expensive appliances hostage behind a monthly subscription that they can raise at any time. So, primarily, to fuck you.

Honestly I don't mind that, at all. What I mind is if it's mandatory and only through proprietary applications.

WiFi, BT, Zigbee, Z-wave etc are not per se a problem. The question instead is who practically owns the device. If the behavior is force on you as a customer, then it's easy, it's not YOUR device. Consider then buying OSHW or whatever alternative you need, including potentially non connected devices that you yourself connect on your terms.

Edit: check which devices are compatible with GadgetBridge and/or HomeAssistant then reviews from actual customers. That should help you find out which devices can match your requirements.

@tdTrX@lemmy.ml your account is (accidentally?) flagged as a bot so your posts won't be seen by anyone who has disabled bot posts. You might want to check your account settings.

because they want your data

Why? Cuz companies mistakenly think stalking customers is savvy business.

Simple, get an engineering degree and disable them. Alternatively, you could refuse to buy devices with those features. If you can't find new ones that exclude those features, maybe buying used devices is your best move.

Bot account

I prefer cables over Bluetooth and wifi:

• Ethernet over WiFi
• USB cable over Bluetooth
• cabled headphone over Bluetooth headphone

While this increases convenience this also introduces new attack vectors (denial of service by jamming for example, tracking, or impersonation and mtm attacks).

Every person who uses wireless devices constantly emits signals into space. These can be obviously monitored, according to the laws of physics the inverse square law limits the range of such detection capabilities. Also depends on the electromagnetic noise in your environment: Jammers/other people.

• Geolocation with wifi environment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_jammer

I've heard that new apppliances, etc will have 5g built in to circumvent you when you don't connect it to your WiFi. So if they then have a microphone installed it'll still upload that data without your permission.

Just... don't connect them to the internet? Or if you must connect them for dumb shit like system updates, put them behind some access control where the only access they have is the server they get updates from.

You can still buy all of those without any "smart" capabilities easily.