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.
Ugh. Stop shaming people for wanting to automate mundane tasks. No one’s playing a stupid game here, the problem isn’t robot vacuums. The problem is that manufacturers insist on holding features hostage on the basis that you connect said vacuum to the Internet, so they can harvest (and then sell) your data. Be mad at that, not at normal people wanting to make a boring chore less burdensome.
Yup. A good robot vacuum is an amazing quality of life thing if you have lots of furry pets. They’re not great for deep cleaning, but they’re fantastic for daily maintenance. Just have it run every day after you leave for work, and you never start to accumulate fur. You just need to touch up the corners and edges every now and then.
The real issue is that the makers seem absolutely laser-focused on packing as much data collection into the things as they possibly can. There’s no real reason for it except capitalism.
Imagine making fun of people for using a dishwasher or a clothes washer/dryer. Those are tasks that can be easily automated, so why wouldn’t you? Until recently, manufacturers were happy to ship those things without the invasive data collection. Pretty much everyone would agree that a washing machine beats spending 6 hours a week hunched over a washboard and hot water basin. And a clothes dryer allows you to do the laundry even when it has been rainy and cold for six fucking weeks, which would make a clothesline impractical. The automation isn’t the problem. An automated vacuum is no different, except for the fact that it has wheels. The problem is the manufacturers shoehorning data collection into fucking everything.