The smart vacuum cleaner was remotely bricked for not collecting data.

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.

  • zalgotext@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    16·
    3 days ago

    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.

    • whoisearth@lemmy.caEnglish
      1·
      3 days ago

      Disagree. My experience is they still don’t get everything, can’t do furniture or corners well or under furniture. They’re stupid. They’re expensive and if you really can’t spend 10 minutes or less to vacuum your house daily or every other day it speaks volumes on the type of person you are.

      I stand by what I said. More money than brains.

      • zalgotext@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        2·
        3 days ago

        They’re not a replacement for a regular vacuum/broom, they’re a supplement. This is like complaining that the washing machine can’t completely remove red wine stains by itself. And there are robot vacuums at every price point, just like normal vacuums.

        I’m glad you can vacuum your whole house in 10 minutes, but the rest of us don’t live in a shoebox and have pets with fur. You making judgments on a person’s character based on the chores they want to make easier speaks volumes about the type of person you are, you soggy walnut.