Hi, I’m a journalist with Gizmodo who recently did a piece where I set up a smart home and then tracked the data leaving it: https://gizmodo.com/the-house-that-spied-on-me-1822429852
I’d like to do a follow-up piece on people who have set up smart homes that are actually private and don’t leak their data. Are you a person like that? Would you be willing to speak with me about why and how you did it? Please get in touch with me here or by email, [email protected].
Thank you!
Kashmir
This has always been my ultimate goal. Eventually, every parts of my smart home will be self hosted. However due to lack of comparable alternative, I’m still stuck with Echo for voice control and Telegram for text command and notification. Other services that I’m currently self hosting are…
I believe HA is the right platform to start with to achieve my goal.
There’s got to be a balance between security and convenience somewhere.
My smart stuff is currently only externally accessible through telegram, but it’s not quite reaching the WAF so I’m going to go back to some kind of external Web access (I haven’t quite decided on the implementation yet) soon. I’ve used SSL and router based vpn in the past, the latter being ‘more secure’, but less convenient for WAF, it’s a constant balancing act.
As for ‘leaking data’ from inside, like @masterkenobi I’m using Alexa for voice interaction, but everything else is local, and eventually I intend to self-host a snips implementation or similar (but it’s getting my head round the code and/or shamelessly stealing somebody else’s hard work, @tschmidty 's repo being my first stop)
I consider security when I select hardware, and like to think that I’m overly cautious in regards to potential risks there.
I’ve recently started self hosting tts, using pico.
Interestingly, for me, this extra ‘security’ from self hosting is actually me trying to not rely on external services in case they change something, or start charging, or even go offline. The added security is just a happy bonus consequence.