I’ve been looking at devices (smart locks, doorbells, cameras,…), but I’m not sure on how they deal with privacy. Is there any brand in particular that deals with this the best (allows for local storage, can connect to WiFi but only over the local network,…)?
Thanks for the info!
Cheers,
Jelle
There are multiple brands that don’t phone home. Some devices already provide local control and for other devices you need to flash a custom firmware on the device or just block their access to the internet.
E.g. my iRobot Vacuum remote normally communicates to servers of the manufacturer to exchange whatever data. I integrated it through home assistant and blocked the internet access for the device. The only downside to this is, that I can’t use the app of the manufacturer anymore, but I don’t care as Home Assistant provides all the features I need.
I kinda agree with burning, I’m not keen on devices talking about me behind my back but it’s more about autonomy than privacy for me.
Who cares if the manufacturer knows when the vac is activated or how many square meters it covers ?
I just want it to work when the Internet goes down (dystopian terminator style future approaches or more likely I forgot to pay the bill) or the manufacturer goes bust.
More of a concern is remote access.
It’s convenient, so I use it, so you need my remote address, the port that is open, a known user on the system, the password and (for me at least) 2nd level authentication (a 6 digit code that changes every 30 seconds)
Good luck with that.
But if you do get in, you can’t open any locks (I’m way too paranoid for that) but you can see where I am on the map and how far away I am so you could brute force an attack (smash a window) but that’s not really any different from 10 years ago. And maybe the random lights that come on when I’m out ‘may’ give them some pause.
If they have gone to all that trouble just to turn my lights on and off etc. then I’ll know I need to pull my finger out and change some stuff around 
Wifi products that require app for setup will.force you expose private data for initial setup
In this case it may still be possible to delete app and place device in vlan blocking WAN access to prevent relay data outside your network.
If not using API, direct communication, and require use of manufacturer server to integrate to HA privacy will be lost since vlan not possible and device always sending data outside