Any helpful resources for determining nefarious smart device behavior?

Hi there everyone,

I’m hoping to replace all my blink and ring devices and I’m wanting to start with the video doorbell. I’ve done a bit of searching and reading and the Reolink seems well-thought of with the community so I’m thinking of going that route.

I wonder, though, what I need to do to ensure I’m not just buying another device that sends everything to the manufacturer or affiliate.

Do you folks have a go-to method of vetting something before plugging it into the network? I’ve tried to search for some data on this specific device but I keep finding links to manufacturer’s data, which doesn’t seem wise to trust.

Any thoughts or suggestions on checking out what a device might do, whether it be a community-maintained wiki of devices or even a source for traffic monitoring of these devices would be most welcome.

To provide some context, I am not hyper-focused on privacy and by that, I mean that I use some software and services that definitely use my data against me. I have a grey area and am not trying to go full unabomber cabin. I would just like to have a way to find out, for example: “this device will try to reach out to these 5 domains or ips, which can be blocked at the network level.”.

Thanks for your time!

It is.
I generally block IOT devices from the internet(WAN/WWW)

Pretty sure the POE Reolink works locally.
Not sure WiFi version does however.

Pihole, wireshark and some other tools let you look at a devices dns queries. Prosumer router like Unifi may also.