Privacy of Smart Devices: TVs, Speakers, Cameras and Cars

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In the article on phone safety we looked at apps, advertising profiles and the microphone question on the device we carry. This article is about everything else that has a chip and a network connection: the television, the speaker, the doorbell, the watch, the robot vacuum and the car. They are in some ways a harder problem than the phone. They have the same microphones, cameras and location sensors, the same companies behind them and the same advertising logic – but usually weaker controls (no permission pop-ups, no indicator dots, no dashboard), and they stay in use for ten years while the manufacturer's support often ends after three.

A Bit of History of Connected Things

The idea of a device that reports to the network is older than the web. In 1982 a Coca-Cola vending machine in the computer-science department of Carnegie Mellon University became one of the first appliances reachable over the ARPANET: students could check from their desks whether the machine was stocked and whether the bottles were cold. The term "Internet of Things" was coined in 1999 by Kevin Ashton, who worked on tracking goods with radio tags (RFID) and wanted computers to know about the physical world without people typing it in. For a long time that remained a technology of factories, warehouses and electricity meters.

In the 2010s the idea reached the living room. The Nest thermostat (2011) was a learning, networked device that Google bought in 2014; Amazon introduced the Echo with the Alexa voice assistant the same year; televisions became "smart" and started to include advertising and recommendation services. In November 2015 the US FTC and the state of New Jersey charged the television maker Vizio with collecting the viewing histories of around 11 million TVs without users' consent; Vizio settled in February 2017 for 2.2 million dollars and had to delete the data. In the autumn of 2016 the Mirai botnet, built from cameras and routers that still used their factory passwords, was used for enormous denial-of-service attacks, among them (on 21 October) one on the DNS provider Dyn that disrupted many well-known websites. Strava's global activity heat map (published in 2017 and widely noticed in January 2018) showed that fitness data can reveal the layout of military bases. In 2018 Amazon bought the doorbell-camera company Ring.

The next period was about standards and the first serious attempts at rules. In December 2019 Amazon, Apple, Google and the Zigbee Alliance started the "Connected Home over IP" project, which led to Matter, released in late 2022: a common standard that lets devices from different makers cooperate, and one that can work locally, without everything passing through the manufacturer's cloud. In December 2022 MIT Technology Review reported that images taken by development versions of iRobot's Roomba, including one of a woman on a toilet, had been labelled by gig workers of a data-annotation contractor (Scale AI), and that at least 15 of them were posted in private social-media groups. iRobot said that the images came from paid collectors and employees who had signed consent agreements and that no customer data was shared; some testers said they had not known that the data would be reviewed by contractors abroad, and iRobot ended its contract with the contractor. In May 2023 Ring agreed to pay 5.8 million dollars to the FTC, which had alleged that employees and contractors could view customers' private videos and that weak protections let hackers take over accounts. In September 2023 the Mozilla Foundation published a review of 25 car brands and found that every one of them failed its privacy and security criteria. The European Union adopted the Cyber Resilience Act (in force from November 2024, fully applicable from 11 December 2027) that requires connected products sold in the EU to be designed with security in mind and to receive security updates, and the Data Act (applicable from 12 September 2025) that gives users a right to the data their connected products generate – and from 12 September 2026 requires new products to be designed so that the user can reach that data directly.

Recent years brought a series of cases. In March 2025 Amazon told owners of some Echo models that the option to process voice requests only on the device would end (from 28 March requests are processed in the cloud, which Amazon connected with its generative-AI features). In April 2025 Meta changed the privacy terms of its Ray-Ban camera glasses (voice recordings stored by default, the option to turn storage off removed). In August 2025 a US federal jury found that Meta had violated the Californian wiretapping law by receiving data from the Flo period-tracking app through an SDK. In December 2025 the Texas Attorney General sued Samsung, LG, Sony, Hisense and TCL over TV tracking, and on 14 January 2026 the FTC finalised an order against General Motors over the sale of drivers' location and driving data.

A short timeline:

Some resources for history:

• Internet of things (Wikipedia)
• Mirai (malware) (Wikipedia)
• Cyber Resilience Act (Wikipedia)
• Data Act (Wikipedia)
• US Federal Trade Commission – the orders and settlements mentioned above
• Computer History Museum

What the Devices Know About You

Each device below has a microphone, a camera, a location or a record of your habits, a network connection and a company in the background that decides what happens with the data. The table is my own selection; the cases named are public court or regulator documents, news reports or manufacturer statements. A lawsuit is an allegation, not a verdict, and I try to mark which is which.

What the devices do and what is known (my own overview, not a complete list):

Services and Protocols – How Devices Talk

To understand what a device can do and what you can control, it helps to know the "languages" it uses. The overview below is my own selection, not a complete list; the general network protocols (TCP/IP, DNS, TLS and so on) are described in the article on computer networks.

Which protocols and services you meet in a smart home:

The Pattern, and the Rules That Are Coming

The common pattern is the same everywhere. The manufacturer wants the data to improve the product, to sell advertising or to sell the data on; the user wants it to work; the permission is hidden in a menu or in a terms-of-service page that nobody reads; and the law arrives with a delay of several years. Three practical principles help much more than reading the manuals: does it really need the network (a TV can work without ever connecting to the Internet – an external streaming box or a small computer gives the picture), does it need the cloud (local control with Home Assistant, Zigbee or Matter avoids sending everything to the manufacturer), and what happens when the company stops supporting it (cloud-only devices stop working, and unsupported ones become a security hole).

In Europe the legal position is slowly improving. The GDPR already applies to the personal data that a manufacturer collects through a device, which gives you the right to ask for a copy of it, to have it corrected and deleted, and to complain to the national authority (in Slovenia the Information Commissioner). The Data Act adds a right to the data that connected products generate, and the Cyber Resilience Act will, once it applies in full, require manufacturers to build security in and to provide updates for the expected lifetime of the product. These rules do not make a bad device good today – but they give you something to cite when you ask the manufacturer for your data and for the support period, and they are a reason to ask before you buy. In the United States, protection comes mostly from the FTC and from state laws and attorneys general, as the Texas lawsuit shows. See also the article on security considerations.

Some resources for devices and rules:

• Mozilla – Nothing Personal (product privacy reviews; the "*Privacy Not Included" guide has moved there)
• Privacy Guides
• EFF – Privacy
• Regulation (EU) 2023/2854 – the Data Act (EUR-Lex)
• European Data Protection Board
• Information Commissioner of the Republic of Slovenia

Examples: Auditing and Controlling the Devices

The aim of the examples is not to throw everything out, but to know what each device does, to switch off what you do not need and to limit the damage when something goes wrong. Start with the first example and the network, which gives the most protection per hour. Menu names differ between manufacturers and versions, so look for the function by name (and in the manufacturer's support pages), not by the exact path.

Example 1 – A one-evening inventory

1. Make the list. Walk through the house, the garage and the children's rooms and write down every device that has a microphone, a camera, a screen with an app store or a network connection: TV, streaming stick, game console, speakers, watches, cameras, doorbell, vacuum, printer, thermostat, plugs and bulbs, toys, tablets, the car. You will probably find more than ten. The router's list of connected clients (or the DHCP table) shows what is actually on the network – compare it with your list.
2. For each device note six things: does it have a microphone or a camera; which account does it use; where does it send data (cloud or local); until when does the manufacturer promise updates; is there a physical switch for the microphone or camera; and do you still use it.
3. Sort into three groups: keep and configure, keep but isolate (a separate network, no cloud, no microphone), and retire (unsupported, unused, or too intrusive). A device you have not used for a year is a risk without a benefit.
4. Check the support period. Search for the manufacturer's statement on security updates. A device that no longer receives them (or never did) should not share a network with your computers.
5. Plan the end of life. When a device is retired or sold, remove it from the account and do a factory reset; for a car and a TV this is especially important (see the examples below).

Example 2 – The smart TV

1. Look for the privacy and advertising menus during setup and later in the settings, under names such as Viewing information services, Live Plus, Smart interactivity, Interest-based advertising, Privacy choices or Terms and policies. Say no to everything that is not needed for the TV to work: ACR, personalised ads, sharing of usage data, voice data collection.
2. Do not sign in with an account unless you really use its services, and do not accept "improve my experience" options.
3. Voice and camera. If the TV has a built-in microphone (or a camera), look for a physical switch or disable the feature in the settings; a remote with a push-to-talk button usually listens only while pressed, which is a better design than a microphone that is always waiting for a wake word.
4. The strongest step: do not connect the TV to the network and use an external source for the picture – a streaming box whose privacy settings you control, or a small computer (a Raspberry Pi with Kodi, or an old PC). The TV then works as a display. If you need the TV's own apps, you can connect it only when you use them.
5. If it stays on the network, put it in the isolated network (Example 5) and look at its DNS requests in the Pi-hole or NextDNS log (Example 7). Blocking the advertising and telemetry domains is possible, but updates or apps may stop working, so test it.
6. Before you sell or give it away: sign out of all accounts, do a factory reset and remove the TV from the manufacturer's account.

Example 3 – Speakers, assistants and glasses

1. Open the history of the assistant in its app (Alexa, Google Home, Apple Home) and see what it has stored; delete it, and turn on auto-deletion where the option exists. Switch off the use of your recordings for improving the service and for advertising, where such an option is offered.
2. Use the mute button for private conversations. The red or orange light that shows the muted state is controlled by the hardware, which is the point of the switch.
3. Be selective about where they stand. A speaker in the kitchen is not the same as one in the bedroom or the home office. Remove the ones you do not use, and turn off the wake word on the phones and watches you do not use for voice commands.
4. Check the settings of purchases and voice profiles (voice purchasing, voice recognition, shared profiles), because they affect who can use the speaker to do what.
5. Smart glasses: look at the app settings for the storage of voice recordings and for the camera AI feature (switching off "Hey Meta" turns off the voice activation), turn off cloud processing of media if you do not need it, delete the history, and respect other people: do not record in changing rooms, toilets, doctors' offices, schools or where the law or the owner forbids it. In many places recording conversations without consent is illegal.

Example 4 – Cameras, doorbells and baby monitors

1. Change the factory password immediately, use a long unique one from a password manager, and turn on two-factor authentication on the account. Check which other people and "shared" users have access.
2. Update the firmware and look at the support period. A camera that no longer gets updates should be isolated or replaced.
3. Reduce the cloud. Where the manufacturer allows it, store the video locally (an SD card, a network recorder or your own server) and turn off cloud storage, "AI detection" in the cloud and sharing with others. Cameras with ONVIF and RTSP can be recorded by open-source software such as Frigate together with Home Assistant, without any cloud.
4. Isolate them. Put cameras in the IoT network, block their access to the rest of your network and, if they only need to be viewed at home, block their access to the Internet completely (see Example 5). For viewing from outside, use a WireGuard tunnel, not a port forward and not a vendor's relay.
5. Point them sensibly. Cover only your own property, do not film neighbours' windows or public spaces beyond what the law allows, and turn off the microphone if you do not need sound. Inside the house, think about whether a camera in a bedroom or a bathroom is ever a good idea – and cover or unplug indoor cameras when you are at home.

Example 5 – Separate the network

This is the single most useful step, and it works for devices that you cannot configure well. The principle is described in the article on computer networks: devices that you do not fully trust go into their own network that can reach the Internet but cannot reach your computers, phones and storage.

1. The simple way – a guest network. Most consumer routers have a guest Wi-Fi with "client isolation". Move the TV, speakers, vacuum, plugs and bulbs to it. Computers, phones and the NAS stay on the main network. The downside: the phone on the main network can no longer find the TV or the speaker for casting, because the discovery (mDNS) does not cross the networks. Some routers have an option to allow access from the main to the guest network.
2. The better way – a VLAN with firewall rules. On a router with OpenWrt, OPNsense, pfSense or a Linux router (see the article on computer networks) create a separate network for the devices, and allow: from the devices to the Internet (and DNS to your Pi-hole), from your phone and computer to the devices; and deny: from the devices to your main network. For the devices that need discovery across networks, an mDNS reflector (for example Avahi) solves the casting problem.
3. The strictest way – no Internet at all. Cameras, local plugs and sensors that you control locally (Zigbee, Home Assistant, RTSP) do not need the Internet. A rule that blocks all outgoing traffic of that group removes the cloud completely, and removes any chance of the vendor's servers reaching in.
4. Switch off UPnP on the router and check that no ports are forwarded to devices you do not remember; the router's port-forwarding and "UPnP" pages usually show them. Use a WireGuard tunnel for remote access.
5. Force the DNS. Some devices ignore the DNS server you give them and use a built-in one (for example Google's 8.8.8.8). A firewall rule that allows DNS only to your Pi-hole (and redirects or blocks the rest) makes the DNS log complete. Encrypted DNS inside the device cannot be seen this way, but it is rare on cheap devices.
6. Test. From a device in the IoT network try to ping or open a page on your computer; it should fail. From your phone, check that casting and the apps you need still work. Keep the manufacturer's old router configuration as a backup in case something breaks.

Example 6 – Local control with Home Assistant

If you choose devices that can work locally, you do not need the manufacturer's cloud for them at all. The smallest reasonable setup is a Raspberry Pi with Home Assistant (see the examples in the article on constructing a cloud). The details depend on the devices you own, so treat this as an outline.

1. Choose devices by their local interface. Before you buy, check whether the device works with Zigbee, Z-Wave, Matter-over-Thread, MQTT or a documented local HTTP API, and whether it works without an account. A device that only works through its own cloud is a bet that the company stays in business and keeps the price and the terms.
2. Add a Zigbee coordinator. A USB stick (with the ZHA integration of Home Assistant or Zigbee2MQTT) lets you pair lights, switches, sensors and plugs from many manufacturers and control them without any cloud. Put the stick on a USB extension cable, away from the Pi and from USB 3 devices, which disturb the 2.4 GHz band.
3. Use open firmware where it fits. Many Wi-Fi plugs and relays, like the Sonoff module in the Network Door Opener article, can run ESPHome or Tasmota, which talk only to your own Home Assistant or MQTT broker. Flashing is not for everyone and can break the device or its warranty, so start with one cheap device.
4. Add Matter devices through Home Assistant or the ecosystem you already use, and keep in mind that Thread devices need a Thread border router (some speakers and hubs include one). Check that "local" really means local: some Matter devices still need the cloud for some functions.
5. Cameras: add them through ONVIF/RTSP and record with Frigate on a small computer; objects are detected locally. This needs more processing power than a basic Raspberry Pi, so a mini PC with a small accelerator is the usual choice.
6. Reach it from outside with WireGuard, as described in the cloud article, not with a vendor's relay or an open port.
7. Back up the configuration and keep the system updated: a home server is also your responsibility. A smart home that works without the Internet is also one that works when the provider has an outage.

Example 7 – Watching what the devices contact

1. Turn on the query log in the Pi-hole or in NextDNS, and give each device a fixed address (a DHCP reservation) and a recognisable name, so that you can see which line belongs to which device. With a separate network (Example 5) the devices are already grouped.
2. Leave the devices for a day in normal use and look at the log in the evening. Sort by the number of requests per device and look at the domains: manufacturer's services, analytics, advertising networks, ACR and other TV-tracking services (the names of these domains change, so search for the ones you find), cloud APIs. A "quiet" device that contacts dozens of different companies is a good candidate for removal or isolation.
3. Block, then test. Add advertising and tracking lists, and if a function stops working, find the domain in the log and allow only that one. Do not block the update servers of devices that still receive security updates, unless you update them some other way.
4. Remember the limits. The log shows the domain and the time, not the content, and a device may contact a fixed IP address without DNS. For the content, a proxy like mitmproxy (see the article on phones) works for some apps and some devices, but most IoT devices use certificate pinning or do not allow installing your own certificate.
5. Compare with the claims. If a device says "all processing is local" and the log shows a stream of requests to the same server whenever you speak or watch something, you have learned something useful. Write down the device, the time and the domains – this is also evidence you can attach to a request for your data or to a complaint.

Example 8 – The car

1. Find the privacy settings of the infotainment system and the manufacturer's app. Look for "connected services", "data sharing", "driving data", "location" and "marketing" and switch off what you do not use. Some manufacturers have a "privacy mode" that stops the sharing of location with the manufacturer, at the price of some remote functions.
2. Do not pair the phone if you do not need the contacts and messages – a cable for the navigation and music is often enough. If you do, choose to share only what you need, and remember that the car stores the contacts and the call logs until you delete the pairing.
3. Check what the insurance or the dealer offers. A discount for a "driving behaviour" app or box means that someone analyses your braking, speed and the times you drive. Weigh the discount against the data.
4. Ask for your data. In the EU you can ask the manufacturer for the personal data it holds on you (GDPR), and from September 2025 the Data Act strengthens the right to the data generated by the product. In the US, the GM case shows that you may also have the right to request a copy and deletion, and to refuse the sharing of precise location, depending on the state and the company.
5. Used cars and rental cars: before you sell, return or give away a car, delete your phone, the profiles, the home address and the accounts from the infotainment, sign out of the manufacturer's app, remove the car from your account and do a factory reset. When you buy a used one, do the same in reverse: the previous owner may still be linked to the car.
6. Be careful with add-on trackers and dongles that plug into the diagnostic port: they usually send everything to a company's cloud, and they have weak security.

Example 9 – Watches, trackers and children's devices

• Check the permissions and the sharing of the watch and the fitness app: location, contacts, public profile, activity maps. If you use an app like Strava, set the privacy zones around your home and workplace and make the activities visible only to friends.
• Health data: before you enter anything very sensitive in a health or period-tracking app, read what it shares and with whom, look at the trackers in the app (for Android with Exodus Privacy, as in the article on phones), and consider apps that store the data only on the device. In the EU you can ask the company to delete your data.
• Bluetooth trackers: keep the "unknown tracker" alerts on the phone enabled, and if you get one, follow the instructions to find and disable the tag; if you feel unsafe, contact the police or a support organisation.
• Children's watches, toys and tablets: prefer devices without an always-on microphone and camera, look at which companies receive the data (a location tracker for a child is also an attractive target), set the parental controls to protect the child, not to watch an adult, and talk with the child about what the device can do. Retire it when the support ends.

A Few More Thoughts

The television that takes a picture of the screen several times a second, the car that reports how you brake, the speaker that now sends everything to the cloud and the glasses that record other people show a common logic: more data, more services and fewer choices, moving into every object we buy. Some of it is a real convenience, and some of it is a business model in which the product is cheap because we pay with data. The lawsuits and settlements of the last years – Vizio, Ring, Echo, Texas, GM – are not a reason for panic, but a sign that the practices are common enough that courts and regulators started to look at them, and that the rules (the Data Act, the Cyber Resilience Act) are finally catching up.

For the user, three habits are worth more than any setting: ask before you buy (does it work without the cloud, how long will it be updated, can I switch the microphone off), isolate what you cannot trust (a separate network costs nothing), and look at the log once in a while. A smart home does not need to be a spying home, but it will not become a private one by itself. And when you do not need the "smart" part – a thermostat, a lock, a lamp – the "dumb" version is a perfectly respectable choice.