this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2025
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An engineer got curious about how his iLife A11 smart vacuum worked and monitored the network traffic coming from the device. That’s when he noticed it was constantly sending logs and telemetry data to the manufacturer — something he hadn't consented to. The user, Harishankar, decided to block the telemetry servers' IP addresses on his network, while keeping the firmware and OTA servers open. While his smart gadget worked for a while, it just refused to turn on soon after. After a lengthy investigation, he discovered that a remote kill command had been issued to his device.

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[–] aceshigh@lemmy.world 1 points 21 hours ago (5 children)

As a layman, can someone explain what the ramifications of smart devices sharing your data is. I know it’s bad, but I don’t understand why it’s bad and how it’s used against you.

[–] JustinTheGM@ttrpg.network 1 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

One aspect to consider is exactly what data these devices are exfiltrating from your network. You usually can't see the contents of the telemetry sent, but given that a LOT of smart devices have cameras and/or microphones, do you really trust that your IoT devices are not sending back audio and or video recordings of the inside of your house?

[–] pigup@lemmy.world 1 points 16 hours ago

I'm sure theres more than a few programmers here that secretly work on crap like this at work.

[–] Sir_Premiumhengst@lemmy.world 1 points 20 hours ago

A detailed room-mapping scan is basically a wealth report disguised as vacuum telemetry: square footage, room count, layout complexity, “bonus” spaces like offices or nurserie; all of it feeds straight into socioeconomic profiling. And once companies have that floor plan, they’re not just storing it; they’re monetizing it, feeding it into ad networks, data brokers, and pricing algorithms that adjust what you see (=and what you pay) based on the shape of your living space.

And a mapped floor plan also quietly exposes who lives in the home, how they move, and what can be inferred from that.

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[–] Hadriscus@jlai.lu 1 points 5 hours ago

Same story with this guy (in french)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGMRUiBOFj0

Highly recommend watching his stuff, might be very technical but also super methodical

[–] stiffyGlitch@lemmy.world 0 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

what...? how much money did that Roomba cost for him to spend that much time and effort on recoding it?!

[–] Qwel@sopuli.xyz 1 points 14 hours ago

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

And just like that, my $300 smart vacuum transformed into a mere paperweight.

[–] Geth@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 16 hours ago

First, it isn't a roomba, second it says in the article how much it cost, third some people have hobbies and sometimes those hobbies are tinkering, dismantling and hacking things they supposedly own and that sometimes leads to revelations like this. Hope that helps.

[–] Rhoeri@lemmy.world -3 points 7 hours ago

This shit is two months old. How many times is it going to recirculate?

[–] imetators@lemmy.dbzer0.com -4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

That's like a month old news article

No one should be outraged. That is how all robovacs are working - use LIDAR to map area -> send back to server -> server calculates optimal cleaning route -> sends back info to vac -> vac cleans. Vac cant ping back to server - server thinks vac is dead. No killswitch is needed.

Also, app is not a necessity except we are forced to use it. But many would not like to lose an ability to track progress or start and stop cleaning from their phone outside of the home network. For these features, app and external server is a must.

The only real issue with robo vacs is that it is an IoT device. We should make manufacturers and brands to let us choose if we want to selfhost their software. But that would never happen.

This article IMO is full of bs and ragebait.

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