It is so difficult to find modern electronics without telemetry and ads. Smartphones, laptops, TVs, home routers, security cameras, cars, game consoles, e-readers, projectors, 3D printers, fitness trackers, speakers, and even some printers. Why can’t customers be free from this data collection and advertising? It’s not that we don’t care about it. There simply aren’t many alternatives, and the few that do exist are either more expensive or offer fewer features. Seriously, we need a list of products we can buy and use directly without worrying about telemetry or advertising.

The following list is updated at https://lemmy.ml/post/52706206. Please note that this list may contain errors.

Other suggestions:

  • Ananace@lemmy.ananace.dev
    1·
    6 days ago

    Router-wise, I can throw in a recommendation for the Turris devices by CZ.NIC. (MOX, Omnia, Omni-NG)

    They’re using their own Turris OS, which is built on a clean OpenWrt base, they don’t upload telemetry or display ads of any kind - but they do have a multi-step opt-in if you wish to run honeypots and/or push data to the Sentinel distributed firewall research project.

  • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
    251·
    13 days ago

    It’s not that we don’t care about it

    That’s not true. People who give the slightest shit about it are in the minority. My supposedly tech savvy relative told me I am “overthinking” smart TVs by never wanting one connected to the internet. The next day after that conversation, the most recent LG scandal came to light. I sent them a link to the video. I saw that they were supposedly typing for a few seconds and then they never responded. I suspect they considered arguing with me about it being a problem and then realized it was going to be a tough argument to have. I doubt that made them think twice about getting more Internet connected devices though. They’ve personally overseen installing Alexas in multiple homes and they think I’m absurd for seeing those as bad for privacy.

    • wizblizz@lemmy.worldEnglish
      15·
      12 days ago

      This is why regulations exist. Expecting the average corpo to not do evil shit, or the average consumer to understand why this is important is never going to happen.

    • Bane_Killgrind@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      3·
      12 days ago

      Once I get more politically active it will be an absolute nightmare to scrub my house.

      Tasks to do.
      -check my RCA tv, disable all RF connectivity.
      -audit Nvidia Shield and decide if the frequency of telemetry is palatable, likely replace with a Pi5 streamer box. Not sure if that has eARC so maybe adjust my whole stereo setup.
      -move Phillips hue bulbs off the first party hub to a ZigBee hub.
      -remove Google home devices, set up echo dots or whatever they are named and finish setting up the home assistant stack for voice assistant, find cheap tablet for HA dashboard.
      -audit Honeywell home, set temp via home assistant integration only.
      -same with Emporia power devices, local integration only.
      -degoogle phone.
      -replace ubiquity WiFi AP with something else probably
      -replace Synology NAS maybe.
      -shut down Milestone VMS and windows server in favor of an open source VMS, audit POE CCTV cameras for telemetry.
      -audit BAS-IP video doorbell. That should work SIP only, I could probably snag access to their internal code base through work connections, the founder is a really nice lady and the rest of her team is cool too.
      -Remove Windows from gaming PC, Linux steam or wine compatible games only.

      I’m sure there’s more. I probably shouldn’t list all the stuff I use like this but whatever, if I’m tipped over right now there’s not going to be any compromat/ opsec implications.

    • Reannlegge@lemmy.ca
      2·
      7 days ago

      When I got a new TV (late 2010’s 2017 or 19 pretty sure it was 19) the friend hekping me move it in and set it up got me to hook it up to the wifi, I said I did not need it because I have an AppleTV but she insisted. 2020 came around and I got back into pihole, what the hell was I supposed to do in that year? And I saw how much data it was blocking, so I went looking for “smartTV” lists and saw how much more it was blocking. I read stuff and decided to turn off all the “smart” features and just to take it off the network all together.

      I wish it happened sooner but a few years later I fell down the rabbit hole of FOSS and ended up getting a bunch of raspberry pi’s, I dug out an old Mac mini and installed Debian on it to act as a media server because one of my pi 5’s was not doing enough for me. That pi is soon going to replace my AppleTV and just stream the transcoded stuff from my mini and arr stack to my TV that I made dumb.

    • ShortN0te@lemmy.ml
      23·
      12 days ago

      Just because your “tech savvy relativ” says you should not overthink does not mean the relativ does not care about it.

      It just means your relativ does not assume that its privacy gets invaded by every device.

      This are 2 different things.

      • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
        121·
        12 days ago

        With all due respect I know how they think and I’m not sure why you think you do? This is a “I’ve got nothing to hide” person

        • ShortN0te@lemmy.ml
          23·
          12 days ago

          I am mostly referring to the first 2 sentences since the other text does not comment on anything that he actually said or did.

          Just because someone is naive enough to think that a smart device does not spy on you or downplays what they know does not mean they do not care about privacy.

          In order to say that the relative does not care about privacy, the relative would have to know the exact extent on what they collect and what they can do with it. You cannot assume that a normal person or even “tech savvy person” understands what is possible.

          It is possible that what you said is applicable for your relative but in general this does not apply.

          • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
            21·
            12 days ago

            It’s interesting that instead of assuming I have any basis for saying what I did, you’re trying to educate me on how to interpret someone’s actions I have known my entire life. I can assure you I’ve tried to have this discussion with them several times. They dismiss every privacy concern brought up if it relates to tech companies. They care about privacy insofar as they think it’s wrong when the government violates it, but if they get a free service out of a deal, they dismiss the idea that the trade off could potentially not be worth it.

            Tldr; your drive by guess at what may have been said does not override information you do not have.

            • ShortN0te@lemmy.ml
              22·
              12 days ago

              I never said that you are wrong. You have misinterpreted that. I simply say that in general, that what you said about your relative is not enough to assume that the relative does not care about privacy.

              I never have said anything else. More information was not given.

              • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
                21·
                12 days ago

                We are talking about a specific person that you quoted how I described them as if I might be making shit up. The fact that I said “my relative” is enough information for any reasonable person to know I probably have a long history with them. I never once said this applies to every person. I only mentioned they are tech saavy because they absolutely have the capability of understanding and being shocked by privacy invasions, they just decided long ago it wasn’t worth caring about. And I know this due to the dozens of interactions with them on the topic. Including essentially telling me I’m wasting my time caring of my TV spies on me. More history there is that I’ve told them about real cases of this happening years ago also and they dismissed that as not mattering then as well

                Weird interaction.

                • ShortN0te@lemmy.ml
                  22·
                  12 days ago

                  We are talking about a specific person that you quoted how I described them as if I might be making shit up.

                  No, thats just you beeing offended. Never once did that.

                  I never once said this applies to every person.

                  But with the quote at the start you implied that there a lots of ppl. It should be common sense that there is almost never a 100% complete agreement within such a broad undefined group.

  • geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml
    6·
    12 days ago

    Sadly most chips contain backdoors especially Intel and AMD. Unless a performant open source RiscV chip comes along everything has spyware

  • late_pessimistic@slrpnk.netEnglish
    5·
    10 days ago

    Robert Braxman is a fraud and so is his Brax Phone.

    https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/20165-response-to-dishonest-attacks-on-the-grapheneos-project-by-robert-braxman

    Anyway stop buying or caring about brand new “products”, creating e-waste, and feeding this stupid exponential growth economy and extractive capitalism. You don’t need everything to be the latest version. Engage in the local circular economy, buy used on local marketplaces, reuse and repair old devices. Give second life to old things we already produced.

    You don’t even need to try hard to be private with old, used stuff. Bought an old laptop? Good, it only runs Linux. Bought an old MP3 player? Good, it doesn’t even have Spotify or internet. Bought an old gaming console? Good, you can find any torrent you could ever want, any genre, completely for free, offline.

    • late_pessimistic@slrpnk.netEnglish
      2·
      10 days ago

      Brax phone and their company is really scammy-looking, I wouldn’t recommend it.

      Graphene OS is the only private mobile OS worth the hassle, all other “private” phones usually introduce more untrustworthy 3rd parties than they get rid off, and overall are a downgrade in privacy compared to an average phone.

      If can’t use GOS for any reason, then the only alternative is to use the normal phone you already have as little as possible, and just treat everything on it as not private, and use airplane mode more often.

      • PennyRoyal@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        9 days ago

        That’s a shame, as there aren’t any other real options at that price point. My major negative with most privacy-focused phones is their size, they’re all massive. I’m really looking forward to seeing what Motorola do with the flip phone note that they’re partnered with Graphene, though I feel like a hardware kill switch and an sd card slot might be too much to hope for

      • PennyRoyal@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        9 days ago

        Ah ffs, why is there privacy space filled with people like this? I knew that Graphene has being targeted with a lot of nonsense like the Wired article, but I didn’t know all that. Hopefully there Motorola partnership gives rise to some more interesting Graphene phones

  • ScoffingLizard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    4·
    12 days ago

    Raspberry Pi? Fairphone 6? I love my ancient iPod Classic. Also, OpenWRT One router? Wired headphones? Get monitor instead of TV?

    We really do need a list.

    • gif8287@lemmy.mlOP
      2·
      8 days ago

      Which elegoo 3d printer are you using?

      Elegoo says they may automatically collect:

      IP address

Device model and OS version

Device serial number and other unique identifiers

Device activation information

Sensor information

Usage data, including feature usage frequency, duration, clicks, searches, settings and update habits

Software/connection performance

Print success rate

Alarm information

Crash logs

Location information, including potentially latitude and longitude

Hardware information from the slicing software, such as CPU/GPU and memory

Software crash and diagnostic information
      • Bev's Dad@lemmy.ca
        1·
        7 days ago

        Just an ender clone that I shove an SD card into after slicing. I guess the newer ones do all that so I’ll avoid them.

        Maybe a slicing software without tracking would be nice actually.

  • Reannlegge@lemmy.ca
    2·
    7 days ago

    PC

    I currently still use my iPad as my daily driver, do not have the money to replace it yet. I do have a handful of pi’s, and a old (2014) Mac mini with Debian installed, doing things on my LAN that my iPad cannot. Snapdragon and other ARM or RISC-V CPU’s are not Intel/AMD or x86.

    Smart phone

    I am waiting a little while until I can get a Motorola phone that I can install Graphen OS on.

    Wireless Speakers

    Just don’t. Get wired ones.

    TV’s

    Turn off all the “smart” features you may have to search around to find instructions to turn off the negging for an internet connection but get something like a pi 5 or a media centre PC (with Linux) to replace the smart features. Than you decide how your media is stored and hosted on your LAN.

    Printers

    Do not connect them to the internet, full stop. I find it iffy to even let them host their own wifi as well, mine is attached to a pi running CUPS.

    Anything else?

    I swear by pihole, while others in the ad-blocker/tracker community swear by adguard I tried it but came back to pihole. You will find debates for or against either one, probably the first one you choose will be the one you like because you will mod it and add the ad lists/blacklists that work best for you. I have 2 piholes on two pi 5s (they run on other pis as well, I have had pihole running on a pi 0 2 before), one as the primary DNS and one as the secondary DNS. I think only the primary is also running unbound along side of it but I don’t remember if the second one is.

    Self host as much as you can when I started down the journey of self hosting I thought it would last 3 months at most; I had been watching youtube videos for a few years so I thought I knew everything I wanted to do, I had been running pihole and homebridge for years already so I thought I would be ready for this journey oh how wrong was I, I thought nextcloud would be fine for everything I needed turns out no I think I found pictures was the first issue I had with it so I found immich, than calendars so I found an app for that than contacts, and so on and so forth nextcloud tries to do to many things so it does nothing well, I am still looking for something that does files better than samba as I would like either a gui or webui. I have a VPN from my GL.iNET firewall (running vanilla-ish OpenWRT, it is a clean install but I have installed things and modded it to my needs and likings) so I can access all my stuff from outside of my LAN. I wanna say my firewall forces all DNS stuff through port 53 even if it is hard coded to go elsewhere on my IoT vLAN (10.66.6.x), which than goes to my pihole set up.

    I have my own domain that has a wildcard email setup so everything gets it’s own email; when I mapped out my 3 month self hosting journey I had email setup set for a week long project for after I got my 2 static IP’s, I found out that was not a realistic plan. My old host, who I would not suggest (hosthero), did not offer a wild card option fot email so I had to go create a new address each time I wanted to signup for a free trial, as many times as I wanted to, but now with my new host, who I would suggest (easydns), offers a wild card option so I can come up with one on the spot. I was furniture shopping recently and I was asked for an email, I quickly had a thought and gave them their store name my domain.

  • kazerniel@piefed.worldEnglish
    1·
    10 days ago

    If you use a robot vacuum, it might help to get one without a camera, only Lidar.

    (I also made a point of buying a smart tv without a microphone, but it was already hard to find one in 2023, I imagine it’s even worse now.)

    E-ink devices: I think you can put all of them in flight mode, at least that’s what I do, and upload books via USB cable. No need for network features.

    Speakers: Just buy a cheap and basic wired one?

    Smartwatch: How would one work without telemetry? It’s kinda the whole point 🤔 I guess you can try to replace the software with Gadgetbridge.

      • kazerniel@piefed.worldEnglish
        1·
        8 days ago

        nice! wow, at 27 USD it really is cheap :o

        sadly for now I find my Garmin’s features useful, but I hope more open products like this will appear over time

    • gif8287@lemmy.mlOP
      2·
      10 days ago

      Thank you for providing these suggestions. However, for this post, we’re specifically looking for devices that come with no telemetry or ads by default. The goal is to identify products that respect users’ privacy out of the box, so customers don’t have to disable features, replace software, or put in extra effort to make the device private.