They aren't that expensive. $80-155AUD in Australia (Kmart). Spreading the purchases out over a few weeks would be doable on a maccas salary.
I have converted some tuya bulbs in the past, but its never been a good time. The exploit methods tend to get patched, so I had to open the bulbs and solder wires to flash, and the bulbs don't go back together nicely. Better to just avoid that headache imo.
Yeah, there would be a lot of potential for leaks, but if they are one-time-codes that wouldn't be too bad.
Esphome or ZigBee bulbs are the way to go, avoid tuya for WiFi bulbs
https://www.athom.tech/esphome
ZigBee bulbs I have gotten from aliexpress, they are usually pretty good, but you'll need a ZigBee antenna or bridge.
Tuya require a cloud connection, so best to avoid.
I've had the same though re. shipping addresses, but I don't think it scales well. You'd need every postie to have an online device that allows them to link QR code/uuid code to the real address, and delivery just gets a lot harder.
In Australia, AusPost allows you to generate a "virtual" PO box, which is a lot easier to deal with, but you have to go to the post office to pickup.
Your website is dead.
If the merchant is hoarding the data, they want to do it. If they want to do it, why would they use your framework?
Also, merchants need your name and address to ship the product to you...
Detecting motion is relatively easy, but actual positioning would require knowledge of where the WiFi router is placed within the home, and where the other static WiFi devices are. So position detection is realistically about as much as they could do without calibration.
The xfinity one is more about smart home stuff, and is opt-in (and it's a fair point to distrust that).
The reason I don't think they are tracking motion/position within your home is that there just isnt any useful way to turn that into a targeted ad, and therefore has no viable revenue path. At best, they could count how many times you go to the bathroom, maybe target a metamucil ad, but its so niche (and likely extremely noisy data) that its just not useful.
They know when your at home already, as your phone will connect to your network, and your network traffic (VPN/encrypted or not) will spike. They don't need WiFi positioning to determine that.
I'm not saying people should just trust things are okay, its more that there are much higher priorities to tackle. WiFi positioning is way down the list of realistic concerns.
Damn, thats weird. I've had very good luck getting refunds from aliexpress, usually its very easy.
If all goes well, you should get a refund from Ali, and then you can rewire it anyway. Good luck
Thats how it works in theory, but in practice it comes down to trust more than anything else.
Its more effort to read and validate your list than it is to just go and download the installer directly. So you need people to trust you.
Cut the plug of and rewire it?
At least swaped LN in a rack is slightly less of a problem, unless you have a rack mounted toaster. The live and neutral are both safely terminated inside the PSU's, so you can't accidentally touch live.