This article just screams rage-bait. Not that I am against making people aware of this kind of privacy invasion, but the authors did not bother to do any fact checking.
Firstly, they mention that the vacuum was “transmitting logs and telemetry that [the guy] had never consented to share”. If you set up an app with the robot vacuum company, I’m pretty sure you’ll get a rather long terms and services document that you just skip past, because who bothers reading that?
Secondly, the ADB part is rather weird. The person probably tried to install Valetudo on it? Otherwise, I have no clue what they tried to say with “reprinting the devices’ circuit boards”. I doubt that this guy was able to reverse engineer an entire circuit board, but was surprised when seeing that ADB is enabled? This is what makes some devices rather straight forward to install custom firmware that block all the cloud shenanigans, so I’m not sure why they’re painting this as a horrifying thing. Of course, you’re broadcasting your map data to the manufacturer so that you can use their shitty app.
The part saying that it had full root access and a kill-switch is a bit worse, but still… It doesn’t have to be like this. Shout-out to the people working on the Valetudo project. If you’re interested in getting a privacy-friendly robot vacuum, have a look at their website. It requires some know-how, but once it’s done, you know for sure you don’t need to worry about a 3rd party spying on you.
I have a friend who set up a Dreame L10s Ultra. I helped them solder the breakout board, and was there when they flashed the new firmware. Relatively straight forward! Just follow the guide on the website and you should be good.
The robot is now accessible only on the local network, and they got it working in Home Assistant. The only feature that is missing now is direct camera view, which the original robot had. Basically, you could get a live feed of the robot’s camers at any time. Looked fun, but it was not necessary.
I am assuming the individual described in the article is based in the US, but nevertheless, many countries do not allow spying, fraud and criminality as long as you have a TOS that says you are allowed to do so.
This is a very provincial manner of thinking and shows how deeply tolerance of corruption and criminality dominates the American mind.
Same with the kill switch, it is essentially a fraudulent scheme, a criminal activity.
Americans are conditioned to do a lot of things without thinking about it, but if they ever really stopped to consider it, they’d be outraged.
For instance, those heart-tugging ads for St Jude’s Children’s Hospital. It’s a great thing they do, taking in cancer kids, and covering all the expenses, even housing and food. They show grateful parents crying, because their kids have a chance because of the charity of St Jude and the viewers, and viewers shed a tear and donate.
It never occurs to anyone that in almost every other country in the world, such a place wouldn’t be necessary. Their cancer kids would simply be taken care of. No pomp about it, no commercials begging for donations, curing cancer kids is just business as usual.
But in America, your kid will just DIE unless you’ve got good health insurance (which is about to get a LOT more expensive), a lot of money, or hit the charity lottery.
But that never occurs to Americans watching that ad. They will dig into their pockets to send money to St Jude, before they will give money to a progressive candidate to change our health care system so it doesn’t require tear-jerking marketing to operate.
For instance, those heart-tugging ads for St Jude’s Children’s Hospital. It’s a great thing they do, taking in cancer kids, and covering all the expenses, even housing and food. They show grateful parents crying, because their kids have a chance because of the charity of St Jude and the viewers, and viewers shed a tear and donate.
What really gripes my ass more than anything else is how all these horror stories are twisted and presented as “feel good” stories that should make us all go “Awww, isnt that wonderful?!”
Like the stories about 6 year olds putting in hundreds of hour of labor to earn the money required to pay off their classmates student lunch debt (and don’t even get me fucking started on the abysmal fucking evil idea that that created the idea of student lunch debt to begin with)
Or those “feel good” stories about someone with a wheelchair thats in complete shambles and a hardware store or something cobbles it back together and fixes it, for free, so the owner isnt stuck sitting somewhere with no mobility.
Or someone coming down with cancer, and their coworkers donating vacation days to them so they don’t lose their fucking job and the insurance they need to pay for the actual fucking treatment.
Like…
How are these feel good stories?
These are fucking the most egregious failure of civilization horror stories.
and Americans, ever indoctrinated, see these stories and smile and feel emotionally uplifted because of the “good” that was done.
Every heartwarming human interest story in America is like “he raised $20,000 to keep 200 orphans from being crushed in the orphan-crushing machine” and then never asks why an orphan-crushing machine exists or why you’d need to pay to prevent it from being used.
This article just screams rage-bait. Not that I am against making people aware of this kind of privacy invasion, but the authors did not bother to do any fact checking.
Firstly, they mention that the vacuum was “transmitting logs and telemetry that [the guy] had never consented to share”. If you set up an app with the robot vacuum company, I’m pretty sure you’ll get a rather long terms and services document that you just skip past, because who bothers reading that?
Secondly, the ADB part is rather weird. The person probably tried to install Valetudo on it? Otherwise, I have no clue what they tried to say with “reprinting the devices’ circuit boards”. I doubt that this guy was able to reverse engineer an entire circuit board, but was surprised when seeing that ADB is enabled? This is what makes some devices rather straight forward to install custom firmware that block all the cloud shenanigans, so I’m not sure why they’re painting this as a horrifying thing. Of course, you’re broadcasting your map data to the manufacturer so that you can use their shitty app.
The part saying that it had full root access and a kill-switch is a bit worse, but still… It doesn’t have to be like this. Shout-out to the people working on the Valetudo project. If you’re interested in getting a privacy-friendly robot vacuum, have a look at their website. It requires some know-how, but once it’s done, you know for sure you don’t need to worry about a 3rd party spying on you.
Just checked out Valetudo. Gotta love the FOSS community. Can I ask if you’ve used it? If so, which vacuum did you set it up on?
I have a friend who set up a Dreame L10s Ultra. I helped them solder the breakout board, and was there when they flashed the new firmware. Relatively straight forward! Just follow the guide on the website and you should be good.
The robot is now accessible only on the local network, and they got it working in Home Assistant. The only feature that is missing now is direct camera view, which the original robot had. Basically, you could get a live feed of the robot’s camers at any time. Looked fun, but it was not necessary.
Thank you for the information!
I am assuming the individual described in the article is based in the US, but nevertheless, many countries do not allow spying, fraud and criminality as long as you have a TOS that says you are allowed to do so.
This is a very provincial manner of thinking and shows how deeply tolerance of corruption and criminality dominates the American mind.
Same with the kill switch, it is essentially a fraudulent scheme, a criminal activity.
Americans are conditioned to do a lot of things without thinking about it, but if they ever really stopped to consider it, they’d be outraged.
For instance, those heart-tugging ads for St Jude’s Children’s Hospital. It’s a great thing they do, taking in cancer kids, and covering all the expenses, even housing and food. They show grateful parents crying, because their kids have a chance because of the charity of St Jude and the viewers, and viewers shed a tear and donate.
It never occurs to anyone that in almost every other country in the world, such a place wouldn’t be necessary. Their cancer kids would simply be taken care of. No pomp about it, no commercials begging for donations, curing cancer kids is just business as usual.
But in America, your kid will just DIE unless you’ve got good health insurance (which is about to get a LOT more expensive), a lot of money, or hit the charity lottery.
But that never occurs to Americans watching that ad. They will dig into their pockets to send money to St Jude, before they will give money to a progressive candidate to change our health care system so it doesn’t require tear-jerking marketing to operate.
What really gripes my ass more than anything else is how all these horror stories are twisted and presented as “feel good” stories that should make us all go “Awww, isnt that wonderful?!”
Like the stories about 6 year olds putting in hundreds of hour of labor to earn the money required to pay off their classmates student lunch debt (and don’t even get me fucking started on the abysmal fucking evil idea that that created the idea of student lunch debt to begin with)
Or those “feel good” stories about someone with a wheelchair thats in complete shambles and a hardware store or something cobbles it back together and fixes it, for free, so the owner isnt stuck sitting somewhere with no mobility.
Or someone coming down with cancer, and their coworkers donating vacation days to them so they don’t lose their fucking job and the insurance they need to pay for the actual fucking treatment.
Like…
How are these feel good stories?
These are fucking the most egregious failure of civilization horror stories.
and Americans, ever indoctrinated, see these stories and smile and feel emotionally uplifted because of the “good” that was done.
Yep. It reminds me of this .