Image rights from top: Ring, Athom.
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states: “Only the things that are
absolutely necessary for Homey to
communicate with the outside world
are stored in the cloud.” It maintains
that “most of your personal data is
stored locally; account information,
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probably more than you’d be willing
to give up if you were hunting for
a truly cloud–free solution, however
private the Homey’s storage
procedure may be, but it does mean
more complex wireless devices can
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dig deep into your router’s inner
workings and block connections
to and from suspect servers while
watching which functionality
breaks; you might also want to set
something like PiHole running
between your home hardware and
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unwanted trackers.
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you can download from hass.io
and install onto a platform like
a Raspberry Pi. It’s a complete smart
home control platform, free to use,
and while it does demand some
technical tinkering, it’s the platform
that many swear by. One neat side–
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in and access things from afar
without any cloud connectivity
— you can go straight through your
router if you’re comfortable setting
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paid–for Indigo (indigodomo.com) or
perhaps Domoticz (domoticz.com),
which may suit you better — it pays
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mentioned. There’s no reason for
a smart thermostat to explicitly
require an internet connection, andthere are indeed a few (outside of
the major examples) that can run
local–only. Shop around and you
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thermostat from the Radio
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Plus model, which is just about ideal)
can be hard to come by.
When it comes to a video doorbell,
you’re pretty much out of luck — but
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smart cameras that can be pulled
back to local–only recording if you’re
happy to climb a ladder to remove
the internal SD card.Stay offline
maclife.com APR 2020 73Your data is one of the most
valuable assets any company
holds. The adage goes that
when a product is free, you are
the product: Facebook, Google,
et al make money from the
contents of their data centres.
While in theory nothing stored
should ever link your personal
info with your actions, you’re
forced to trust the collecting
company to look after data.
Smart home manufacturers
couldn’t produce the products
they do without using that data,
whether it’s metrics about
product use or voice recordings
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of smart assistants. Many of us
don’t care, and why should we?
Handling of that data, in theory
stored securely and used to
make our experience better, is
the price of a connected home.
So what’s the problem, beyond
the thought of it making us
uncomfortable? It’s the small
print. A dive into Amazon–
owned camera–maker Ring’s
terms of service, to give anexample, is sobering. “You give
Ring the right, without any
compensation or obligation to
you, to access and use your
content,” reads one passage.
That’s not just fuzzy data: in
Ring’s case, it's likely to be
video footage of your family.
Ring’s recent public security
issues seem to stem from
poorly secured user accounts.
We, at the end of the chain, are
equally responsible for locking
down our data as the companies
we put our trust in. That means
keeping up with security
patches, using strong unique
passwords, and taking
advantage of two–factor
authentication if at all possible.Ring's terms of service highlight the
problems surrounding data protection.Data gone wild
Athom’s Homey looks like it came from
another planet, but it’ll keep your smart
home interactions down to earth.