From: ldo@nz.invalid   
      
   A hardware geek bought a robot vacuum cleaner, checked on his network   
   traffic out of curiosity, and discovered that the device was sending   
   personal details about the layout of his home back to a central server   
   -- which he hadn’t agreed to. So he set his home firewall to block   
   access to the vendor’s telemetry servers ... only for the vacuum   
   cleaner to stop working altogether a short while later.   
      
   He sent it in to be fixed, after which it would work again for a few   
   days, and then stop again. After a few rounds of this, the repairers   
   refused to look at it again, claiming it was “out of warranty”.   
      
   So he opened it up to take a closer look, including adding connectors   
   and writing some custom scripts to test out the various parts. He   
   verified that they all worked ... and that the whole OS setup was a   
   security nightmare. He also discovered, from a log file, that a   
   particular command had been sent from the vendor’s server at the   
   moment the device stopped working. When he undid the effect of that   
   “kill” command, his vacuum cleaner worked again.   
      
   So he’s using it again, on his own terms ... and presumably with all   
   Internet access completely blocked.   
      
      
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)