Anyone else get this email from Leviton about their decora light switches and their changes to ToS expressly permitting them to collect and use behavioral data from your devices?
FUCK Leviton, long live Zigbee and Zwave and all open-sourced standards
My Leviton
At Leviton, we’re committed to providing an excellent smart home experience. Today, we wanted to share a few updates to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. Below is a quick look at key changes:
We’ve updated our privacy policy to provide more information about how we collect, use, and share certain data, and to add more information about our users’ privacy under various US and Canadian laws.
For instance, Leviton works with third-party companies to collect necessary and legal data to utilize with affiliate marketing programs that provide appropriate recommendations.
As well, users can easily withdraw consent at any time by clicking the links below.
The updates take effect March 11th, 2024. Leviton will periodically send information regarding promotions, discounts, new products, and services. If you would like to unsubscribe from communications from Leviton, please click here. If you do not agree with the privacy policy/terms of service, you may request removal of your account by clicking this link.
For additional information or any questions, please contact us at dssupport@leviton.com.
Did you really expect them to not collect your usage patterns?
I’m not defending them, I’m saying stop supporting these companies.
I have exactly zero of these automation devices in my house. Wait, that’s a lie, I have one, a temp monitoring device for a freezer - and only because I needed it in a hurry.
I’m currently working on self-hosted solutions with no web-based account.
Simply don’t use these automation devices, it’s very clear they collect your data - why else would they host a web service for it for free, when it could just was easily be self-hosted today.
I found this on github to activate tplink kasa plugs and switches to a local IP and never phone home. It swaps the internal server lookup, and allows you to Activate to your wifi SSID with no app
https://github.com/jkbenaim/hs100
Most people aren’t aware of these terms when purchasing, installing, or acquiring a home with these products. Removing and replacing devices throughout a home is expensive and time consuming, and they assume (rightfully) that most people won’t go to the trouble
Even if you are aware of products that may require internet access or poll home to work, it’s still difficult not to end up with them in your house anyway. Try buying a tv or bluetooth speaker without smart features today - it’s not as easy as it should be. And there’s no guarantee that even locally hosted products will stay air-gapped in the future. Why should we normalize the practice now?
most of these products start out as cheap and noninvasive options when they hit the market, and switch their ToS and brick their products through firmware updates without internet connections (e.g. Hue bulbs)
That said: of course i advocate against these brands. I have several zigbee dimmer switches ready to swap out with leviton already. But that doesn’t mean this information shouldn’t be widely circulated when it surfaces, so that other people know the landscape better when they go to purchase.
Hue Bulbs are zigbee. They weren’t bricked. You can use them with any zigbee adapter plugged into home assistant, hubitat, etc. I believe you are thinking of the hue hub that began requiring a hue account for “security reasons”
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !selfhosted@lemmy.world
A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don’t control.
Rules:
Be civil: we’re here to support and learn from one another. Insults won’t be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.
No spam posting.
Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it’s not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.
Don’t duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.
Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).
No trolling.
Resources:
selfh.st Newsletter and index of selfhosted software and apps
Did you really expect them to not collect your usage patterns?
I’m not defending them, I’m saying stop supporting these companies.
I have exactly zero of these automation devices in my house. Wait, that’s a lie, I have one, a temp monitoring device for a freezer - and only because I needed it in a hurry.
I’m currently working on self-hosted solutions with no web-based account.
Simply don’t use these automation devices, it’s very clear they collect your data - why else would they host a web service for it for free, when it could just was easily be self-hosted today.
I found this on github to activate tplink kasa plugs and switches to a local IP and never phone home. It swaps the internal server lookup, and allows you to Activate to your wifi SSID with no app https://github.com/jkbenaim/hs100
Couple things:
That said: of course i advocate against these brands. I have several zigbee dimmer switches ready to swap out with leviton already. But that doesn’t mean this information shouldn’t be widely circulated when it surfaces, so that other people know the landscape better when they go to purchase.
Hue Bulbs are zigbee. They weren’t bricked. You can use them with any zigbee adapter plugged into home assistant, hubitat, etc. I believe you are thinking of the hue hub that began requiring a hue account for “security reasons”