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.

That’s like a month old news article No one should be outraged. That is how all robovacs are working - use LIDAR to map area -> send back to server -> server calculates optimal cleaning route -> sends back info to vac -> vac cleans. Vac cant ping back to server - server thinks vac is dead. No killswitch is needed. Also, app is not a necessity except we are forced to use it. But many would not like to lose an ability to track progress or start and stop cleaning from their phone outside of the home network. For these features, app and external server is a must. The only real issue with robo vacs is that it is an IoT device. We should make manufacturers and brands to let us choose if we want to selfhost their software. But that would never happen. This article IMO is full of bs and ragebait.

What I don’t understand is why the person that owns the device wrote the following in their blog post: How could a simple IP block disable a vacuum cleaner that is supposed to work offline as well? - Source This seems like that device was sold to him as “offline” capable. Where does that claim even come from? From a cursory glance I don’t see that product advertised that way anywhere. Now, I’d be totally in favor that such devices working offline should be the norm, but then again, the person writing the blog should know how these devices currently work.