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.
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
I wish companies would at least offer a “no data collecting/selling” price option. Like, how much would they make from selling my data? Just give me the option to pay that extra amount so I can buy a vacuum without thinking about how it’s spying on me.
Do they not just a cheaper version that could come without wifi or Bluetooth? I usually get that option where available for any products. because I’m a cheap ass.
How is this legal?
This shit is two months old. How many times is it going to recirculate?
The fact that this isn’t considered outright fraud is disturbing. This person OWNS the device, yes? They’re not leasing it.
FFS, this should be illegal.
I agree with you that this should be illegal. I expect this was in the terms of service, though. Since we have no laws restricting this kind of bullshit, the company can argue that they’re within their rights.
We need some real legislation around privacy. It’s never going to happen, but it needs to. We need a right to anonymity but that is too scary for advertisers and our police state.
How often are the terms of service evident at the time of purchase? It’s unreasonable to assume at the checkout that the price is only for a limited time of use. I doubt the put it on the box or on the Amazon page when you purchased stuff like this. Are you supposed to buy it and then return it after reading the fine print in the instruction booklet after opening it up?
Terms of service need to stop being treated like law.
They’re not law as long as you can afford the lawyers and legal costs to fight them. Which is, of course, the problem and the system working as designed.
Just because something’s written in the terms of service, doesn’t mean it’s legal.
When an authoritarian country does it, everyone goes crazy
When a company does it to make more money and take more control, it’s just business as usual.
Just like work. If a government tried to treat us like that, we would have a revolution tomorrow. Yet, we’ve all been groomed into just accepting it.
I expect this was in the terms of service, though
While I expect the same, there’s also just a reasonablility standard. If Meta and Google updated their TOS to say that users agreed to become human chattle slaves to mine cobalt and forfeit their rights, no court (…right, SCOTUS?..right?) would uphold that. A TOS is a contract, but it’s mostly for the protection of companies from liability. Takign active steps to brick someone’s device over the device not connecting to it’s C2 server (the company had zero evidence this was done intentionally and a router firewall misconfiguration could just have easily done the same thing), is IMO something that should result in a lawsuit.
There needs to be a huge neon orange warning on the Front of these products that explains, clearly, that you don’t own it, your privacy will be invaded and the company can disable it at anytime. This will stop people from buying this garbage, and hopefully companies will stop if they want our money.
My life rule is, if it says Smart on it, it’s never going to be smart. It will always cause trouble.
IMO “Smart” refers to the lawyers that got paid to write a 900-page TOS that lets a company do whatever they want.
No that’s called “smarmy”.
Say it with me. If buying doesnt mean 100% ownership…
then they will buy it
Stalkerware is criminal digital slavery. It is sale and ownership of a part of a person to manipulate and exploit them.
I think your comparison to slavery is a bit overblown and minimizes the tragedy of actual slavery. But I agree with the sentiment.
But someone making money off of me without my consent is literally slavery. No one is saying that this form of slavery is equivalent to chattel slavery, so I don’t understand how this minimizes that? Do you also think that wage slavery or forced prison labor are not slavery?
My robot vac will only operate when connected to the Internet so it’s only allowed to communicate when actually in use. As soon as it returns to the charger Internet access is automatically blocked.
Unfortunately the manufacturer has deliberately made this as inconvenient as possible. If communication is blocked for more than a few hours the vacuum loses all maps and will no longer even load saved maps from the Tuya app. To use it the vac must be powered down and the app killed. Only then can a saved map be restored.
It’s too bad it’s so useful.
Name and shame.
from the Tuya app.
it’s only allowed to communicate when actually in use.
What’s the point? The manufacturer is interested in the map of your apartment and usage statistics. What do you think it’s sending when not in use? Does it have a microphone or something?
Since I haven’t pulled it apart or tried to decrypt the ssl traffic I have no idea whether it has “a microphone or something.” That’s the point.
Keeping it offline some of the time isn’t effective against passive data collection unless you’re willing to take the inconvenient step of factory-resetting it each time you’re about to use it. Anything it collects it can just hold onto until it next gets the chance to upload.
SmartTVs will hold onto your data as long as they have storage, even through a factory reset. So if you sell it and the next person hooks it up to the Internet then the data is uploaded.
I know it can be done, so it wouldn’t shock me at all to find out that it does happen, but do you know of any manufacturers who have been proven to do this?
SSL bold of you to assume that
If I don’t own it 100% then reimburse me if you disable it.
For me the worst part is that someone developed the functionality to monitor and track, until the signal is lost, and if so, kill. It’s really crazy how daring this is.
There’s something not working in this article.
They say it “makes sense” for the device to basically send the plan of your home to some online server, because the vacuum is not powerful enough to process this data on its own. This is already a bit horrifying to me, but okay.
And then when that guy blocked it out, the vacuum “worked for a while” before something sent the kill command through an update.
How come is it still working at all if navigation requires that server?
It is total BS. Offline vacuum cleaners do mapping and localisation just fine. It is just an excuse to spy on your home.
It’s not the navigation that requires the server but the processing of the mapping data.
Which in itself is BS because most of these vacuums come with hardware roughly equivalent of a top of the line smartphone from about 5-6 years ago. They can easily do the raw data to map conversion, even if it’s a bit slow and takes 20-30 seconds.
Also if you read the article it specifies that the damn thing is already running Google Cartographer which is a SLAM 3D map builder software - one of the better pro-grade mapping software suites, mind you. So the whole claim of cloud needed for processing is BS.
My VR headset can create pretty accurate 3D maps of my environment like nothing, and it only uses cameras to do so, so I can imagine it’s doable.
Then, yeah, it doesn’t “make sense” for that thing to externalize that.
It’s not that it’s impossible, but it requires effort, skill, and time. Instead of hiring a bunch of programmers who would make it run on the device locally, you can just throw the same amount of money at Amazon and it will run whatever unoptimised version of the renderer you stole on some random Chinese forum. As a bonus, you got to enrich a multibillionaire and make a world slightly worse place, which is a second and third priority of every CEO after getting money.
Having not read the article: “Let’s apply Hanlon’s Razor: Oh, probably it just collects the data locally and caches it until the vendor’s servers are reachable. After a while the data partition was full and it stopped working as this case was never deemed possible when this was developed.”
Having read that the kill command was logged and he found it in the logs: “ok, there are no technical details, so there might still be a misunderstanding, but that’s not what I expected!”
As useful a smart device are, it’s very annoying that the company behind it are always either: 1) a scumbag that will collect data and will lockdown the device if people doesn’t use it their way; 2)incompetent idiots that can’t make a good software to save their life. So by using these device you basically have to pick the thing that you’re willing to lose.
It’s really too bad because robovac save me a lot of time and mental exhaustion.
Had a kill command actually been sent, or does the device just not work without a remote server talking to it every so often?
Because the second one is probably worse from a “what if this company goes bust” standpoint.
Don’t worry, the quality of the modern hardware is so shitty, it will not outlive the company for long
Man itd be great if there was an answer to this. Maybe in an article somewhere. Guess we’ll never know.
I have just purchased a Dreame L10s Ultra and have had the PCB for a breakout board made and components for setting it up ordered. In a few days I should get the last bits and I will be able to root the device and have it connect to Valetudo managed through Home Assistant. Fully local operation with basically the same features but none of the privacy issues. As soon as I can get it connected I will be able to use it just like a robot I actually own should without some random third party being involved in every single operation.
Just looked at the PCB board and man that guy is such a insufferable, gatekeeping twat.
I can see why you would feel that way but I came to a different conclusion. I agree with much of what he says given his position and circumstances.
The project is open source and anyone is welcome to fork it. He is not making something which will make money, provide a living, and secure his station as an open source guru. He is making something because he thinks it should exist and because he finds it interesting. He is not making something for end users, it isn’t for them, it is for people who have enough interest and knowledge to figure it out given the massive leg up he has provided already.
This means he does not do a bunch of things that would pull beginner users in. For example, there is not a simple GUI installer for this. He doesn’t sell kits to root your device. He doesn’t sell little server boxes based on a raspberry pi. He doesn’t have an app for quick discovery and configuration. All of these things would entice beginners and therefore induce them to install unsupported firmware on their several hundred to over a thousand dollar robot vacuum.
This would be hell. Each user with a new and unique way of not understanding the instructions would come up with new failures in an area where bricking your very expensive machine is easy. Can you imagine how much of a dick he would have to be to say “Nah, this is super easy, come give it a go” when the outcome would definitely be causing at least some people to lose hundreds of dollars in a few minutes? That would be him acting like a dick.
What he is doing has a second function. I have just ordered my first custom PCB. I have some components on the way and will be doing my second major electronics project once the parts arrive. I am much more experienced on the software end of things so I get all of the basics around using a terminal etc but now I am learning about using the UART interface and while it is a little bit sink and swim I am at a level where I understand how far outside my knowledge base this is and can take a reasonably informed risk. I am learning and growing and I am actually really excited. If it doesn’t work I will know enough to be helped through by the community but my expectation is I will fail at first and maybe take a few weeks to figure it out. Because of that expectation I am not doing this after my last vacuum broke and now I just desperately need this to work, that would add so much stress, instead I am doing this in the least stressful and most enjoyable way possible.
If I had been correctly scared off early I wouldn’t have lost a bunch of photos accidentally wiping a drive while installing Linux for the first time, so I would have used virtual machines for longer, but I also would have eventually gotten there. I got there by losing some data, but if I had a community around me it would have been better. He actively encourages community building and sharing knowledge. I think that is cool and would be an awesome outcome. I know I will be posting about my spare adapters once I am done making them to see if anyone else wants to learn how to do it.
I specifically got one which can run valetudo and it works great for over two years now. Without sending images of my flat to china or the us
