this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2025
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Privacy

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Product website: https://www.tingfire.com/

The ever important privacy policy: https://www.whiskerlabs.com/privacy-policy/

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My insurance company sent me one of these in the mail, for "free". They say it helps avoid fires caused by electrical faults. But it needs to be both plugged in to an outlet and connected to my wifi, so the data can be sent "home". And so I can use their app, of course.

How Ting prevents 4 out of 5 electrical fires: Ting detects dangerous electrical arcing signals – the precursor to most electrical fires. It leverages advanced AI to analyze 30 million electrical signals per second, enabling detection with unmatched precision and speed.

What do you all think? Might the benefits outweigh the obvious privacy problems with a device like this?

Or, is there any home grown way to achieve the same thing? Thanks!

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[–] henchman2019@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I just did a quick search. I'm guessing your insurance company is state farm. Someone pointed out that in the terms it states that the insurance company will use the data from the device to decide whether or not you'll get a claim if something should happen... Another person claimed that it didn't see a very obvious fault of an outlet arcing and turning bright red. It sounds like the big scam of the car insurance companies asking you to plug in the monitoring device on your car to get a better rate. I, myself, would stay far away from this thing.... But I'm just some random internet human.

[–] B0NK3RS@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

Seems like it's just unnecessary so I personally wouldn't bother.

[–] MysteriousSophon21@lemmy.world 2 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Arc fault circuit interrupters (AFCIs) are a better solution imo - they're built into your breaker panel, don't need wifi, and can actually cut power when they detect arcing, not just send you a notification after the fact... you can check out some options on gearscouts.com if you want portable protection for emergencys too.

[–] perishthethought@piefed.social 1 points 5 hours ago

Thank you! I've not seen this before but I was surprised nobody knew of an alternative to ting.