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The Day My Smart Vacuum Turned Against Me

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240B:
The Day My Smart Vacuum Turned Against Me[/b]

Code Tiger
By Harishankar
Oct 7, 2025



Would you allow a stranger to drive a camera-equipped computer around your living room? You might have already done so without even realizing it.

The Beginning: A Curious Experiment
It all started innocently enough. I had recently bought an iLife A11 smart vacuum—a sleek, affordable, and technologically advanced robot promising effortless cleaning and intelligent navigation. As a curious engineer, I was fascinated by its workings. After leaving it to operate for the entire year, my curiosity got the better of me.

I’m a bit paranoid—the good kind of paranoid. So, I decided to monitor its network traffic, as I would with any so-called smart device.

Within minutes, I noticed a steady stream of packets being sent to servers located halfway across the world. My robot vacuum was constantly communicating with its manufacturer, transmitting logs and telemetry that I had never consented to share.

That’s when I made my first mistake: I decided to stop it.

All I did was block its data logging IP address—just the logs, not firmware updates or OTA channels. Simple enough, I thought.

At least, I thought so.

(more)
https://codetiger.github.io/blog/the-day-my-smart-vacuum-turned-against-me/

Kamaji:
Pretty scary story for how bad security is on all of these internet-connected appliances.

Weird Tolkienish Figure:
Huge trust issue with all these devices. i'm hoping the Matter standard fixes this issue, but it will take a long time before people trust these things again. I remember buying a smart lightbulb and seeing that it was connecting to some cloud server in China. Yeah, no thanks.

240B:
The article says that any so-called 'Smart' device is likely communicating with its manufacturer home office.

This is why anything with a camera or a microphone should be treated with caution and suspicion. The only thing in my home with either of those is my phone. And I do treat it carefully by watching what I say around it. There is no detail about your life that is so miniscule or insignificant, that NSA, Google, and Amazon will not collect it and store it. They want to know every single thing about you ... all of it. Your bathroom schedule is important to them. If you order a vanilla shake at Sonic at 2:47 pm on a Tuesday, they want to know about it. Everything you do is recorded somewhere, including if you do nothing at all.

I would never do any banking by cellphone. I am simply not that trusting of the device or the WiFi.

roamer_1:
This is so weird for me.

Just a few years ago, I was among the most adamant about my local privacy. I stayed flip-phone for the longest time, denying local wifi access to everything.

Nothing was on my system except my own boxen, and temporary access to
client machines.

Now, I will admit that I relaxed that just a little when I finally went to a smart phone... And later a tablet...As Droid invaded my system, things had to lighten up a bit. But I was still very mindful. I could identify every.single.thing living on my router.

Since I became disabled, that changed remarkably.

I can invoke Giggles, right out of the air, in nearly every room in my house.
I purposefully bought a GoogleTV oriented TV BECAUSE it would interface with everything else -and will do it again for the bedroom tv.

My kid wants internal cams, so that if he cannot get a hold of me, he can peek to make sure I am alright. That's where the line is right now... I don't like the idea of cams in my house.

I WILL have an exterior cam so I can see who is at my door, and a door lock I can tell to unlock on command. I will be able to command my porch lights and emergency lights by command. All that is coming, for sure.

It's weird. Some of it is needful and cool - I have a smart watch tied to my phone that keeps perfect track of my heartbeat... Invoking Giggles from anywhere, even if my phone fails, and even if my watch fails - All of that is prudent, considering my condition.

I spent so much time in hospitals and doctor's offices that there are trackers on my buggy and my pack to keep them from getting lost in those systems. Again, a matter of prudence.

but the aggregate effect is an assault on privacy.

Man, oh man! To go from being able to walk off and disappear for a month with *NO* electronics - No possible tracking - To THIS! Quite the change.

 

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