An engineer got curious about how his iLife A11 smart vacuum worked and monitored the network traffic coming from the device. That’s when he noticed it was constantly sending logs and telemetry data to the manufacturer — something he hadn’t consented to. The user, Harishankar, decided to block the telemetry servers’ IP addresses on his network, while keeping the firmware and OTA servers open. While his smart gadget worked for a while, it just refused to turn on soon after. After a lengthy investigation, he discovered that a remote kill command had been issued to his device.
A detailed room-mapping scan is basically a wealth report disguised as vacuum telemetry: square footage, room count, layout complexity, “bonus” spaces like offices or nurserie; all of it feeds straight into socioeconomic profiling. And once companies have that floor plan, they’re not just storing it; they’re monetizing it, feeding it into ad networks, data brokers, and pricing algorithms that adjust what you see (=and what you pay) based on the shape of your living space.
And a mapped floor plan also quietly exposes who lives in the home, how they move, and what can be inferred from that.