A Verge story on hacking your robot vacuum so it doesn’t phone home.
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At certain points – and I think needing to flash a third-party firmware into your robot vacuum to safeguard your privacy is one of those moments – you really need to ask whether this shit is worth it.
You’re not wrong. At a certain point it becomes exhausting. However please don’t lose sight of the fact that this is exactly what company’s want. They want us to give up all of our data because it’s too inconvenient to be upset about it.
So yes, there is likely a line drawn for when having to flash all your devices with custom firmware becomes not worth it for the individual, however the amount of data that gets collected from “smart” devices is absolutely fucking disgusting and we desperately need actual comprehensive data privacy laws.
I’d say it’s about harm reduction at this point rather than harm elimination. Do what you reasonably can to protect your privacy but don’t let your mental health suffer because you’re paranoid that someone is going to hack your robot vacuum.
I’ve been browsing valetudo, I was a bit surprised that almost all installations are rated to some degree “easy”, even though many devices require things that are not at all accessible such as assembling and soldering your circuit board; I don’t want to know what a device rated as difficult would be like.
