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For obvious reasons I do not want my home appliances to be on the Internet. It boggles the mind why manufactures think this is okay, and even more boggling that people seem to accept it.

Anyway...

The setup process for LG's ThinQ app demands that I register an account in order to proceed. Additionally, I'm afraid that even after I do this, the appliances will still require access to the public Internet in order to make any use of the "features".

I understand there are some open source libraries and bindings for ThinQ, but looks like in order to begin I must sacrifice my security and privacy.

Is there any way around this, or will these "smart" appliances be doomed to not live up to their full potential?

FreeMan
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Tuaris
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1 Answers1

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The easiest thing would be a setting that allows to deactivate the server connection. Most manufacturers don't offer that anymore. One reason is that there is actually regulation in many places (California, UK, EU) that requires them to perform security updates. The second best option is choosing appliances where the manufacturer is in a strong data privacy country. They usually have opt-outs of at least their data usage.

If you do want to use smart functionalities, i.e. even using the in-house Wi-Fi. It would be advisable to let the appliance at least once in a while connect to its backend to get security updates.

The technical solution is of course just disallowing the appliance to connect to the internet on a router level. With a bit of digging you might find out which servers the appliance connects to for which use cases and could block the ones you don't like in the router. Or just block all of them.

Of course any Internet dependent features require Internet access, e.g. a weather information on your fridge. I guess you're fine with them not working if you disallow the connection.

Helmar
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    This is the second easiest thing to do. The first easiest thing to do is not plug in an Ethernet cable to the TV. – FreeMan Jan 08 '24 at 18:59
  • @FreeMan If that doesn't kill functionalities you actually want it is :-) – Helmar Jan 30 '24 at 16:33
  • OP states: "For obvious reason's (sic) I do not want my home appliances to be on the Internet" ergo, he's not interested in the functions that require the installation of an Ethernet cable, ergo, that's an ideal #1 solution. ;) – FreeMan Jan 30 '24 at 16:50
  • If there's nothing that only activates after an initial connection ;-) – Helmar Feb 01 '24 at 13:10