I wonder if home automation is one of those things that eventually gets figured out and we look back at today thinking, “we tolerated that?” or if it never gets solved at a standards level and we just have egregiously subpar experiences delivered by vendors all naively attempting to dominate the market with a crippled product.
Also, I think the spying has the potential for being more insidious and more passive. Im thinking of sound beacons, at human-imperceptible frequencies, sent by a TV or smart speaker that lets some data aggregator determine what is being played in a home or who is at home.
> potential for being more insidious and more passive. Im thinking of sound beacons
I have some bad news for you - what you describe as a dystopian future hellscape was up and running by 2015. If you want to so much as slow it down, stick to F-Droid or ditch your smartphone.
I think this is tinfoil hat energy. The power adapter can't provide any meaningful information. I leave it on for days sometimes when I'm not even in the yard. Does that mean I was home or not home? Totally irrelevant. It doesn't have its own screen and once it's synced to my Google home I don't even have to think about it. Google home even lets you setup automations based on sunset and sunrise. How does that figure into this data?
Even just pushing one of those IoT buttons tells them you are at home and is probably used for some ad placement or credit score or whatever.