China server

I know you have inside Wyze info, does this mean Wyze is coming out with a smart vacuum? :grin:

I don’t have inside info, but I doubt it. I’m just testing @viscara’s theory re: spying.

I’ve hear that claim over and over.
I have Numerous Alexa devises, cameras, and other smart devices like TV’s. Over the last couple years, I’ve tried that same experiment talking up a storm about needing ordinary items, but items I would never buy like your v-c–m, or h-ir dr–r when I keep my head buzzed. Never once have I gotten an add for those things no matter how many times I tried. I have gotten adds because of things like Facebook mentions, or googling for repair parts, etc, but never from being lisened to.

That’s my point exactly. I’m not expecting a positive result in this test, but I’m keeping my eyes peeled. I’m giving it every opportunity to work. Still nothing yet.

I had a discussion about this in another thread a couple days ago…

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Carl Sagan quote:

The absence of evidence …

Sure, but if you’re arguing for presence, the onus is on you to show that there’s a presence of evidence. Sagan would agree with that, too. That’s his whole view of God, right?

…still no v-c–m ads. I’ve been complaining loudly multiple times about my horrible, horrible v-c–m cleaner and how I wish I had a new R–mba or K–by.

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I’ve been keeping tabs. So far, I’ve seen ads for New York Times, Squarespace, Volkswagen, August Smart Lock, Gate Smart Lock, US Army, Xfinity, State Farm, Wyze (woohoo!), 1000Bulbs, CBS All Access, Bank Of America, Digiorno, Amazon Prime, Adobe Creative Cloud, Century Link, MailChimp, Microsoft Azure, NerdWallet, BoostMobile. Perigold Furniture, ADT Blue, Cisco, Visible, Adobe Stock, Best Buy, Sprint, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, GEICO, GoDaddy, E-Trade, Fidelity, Disney+, Bed Bath & Beyond, Home Depot, Joybird, Eufy, Hulu, Charles Schwab…

Plenty of targeted ads based on search and browsing history, and some that don’t seem particularly targeted. But no v-c–ms yet. What’s a guy gotta do to get some stinkin v-c–m ads, without actually searching or browsing for v-c–ms? I’ve been yelling into the wind about them nonstop.

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Just saying Wyze is an American company founded and based out of Seattle.

MOD NOTE: Post edited to conform to the Community Guidelines

As someone who works in Cybersecurity and also a lot of SaaS based apps, it is very common to have applications and “smart” devices to connect all over the world, including China. Usually hardware that is made in China, as most tech devices nowadays, will have update servers for firmware and such.

Does this mean everything is always safe? Absolutely not. Does this mean it is bad? Most of the tie it is actually innocuous. My company has to test these types of devices to see what is sent where and what is un-secure. Most of the time it is perfectly fine. While I cannot mention companies that were not safe, because of lawsuits, I can say that they are less than most tinfoil hats would lead you to believe.

At the same time, when it comes to cameras that can see and listen to what you are doing, I tend to play it safe. Not so much because of the manufacturers, but because the tech is still all fairly new and there are too many exploits for hackers. So I never have a cloud based camera on in a house, when we are home. To a point they are unplugged. Outside, no problem.

So, as far as the “China” IP, that is not what is the main concern. For those that are talking about ads, no offense that is not something that they would use it for. One it would not do them much good in a way that would make them money. Facebook is not the same at a camera know where you are. Second, Chinese would not be interested in that stuff as much as general information. If you worried about information mining, Facebook is well known for doing this themselves by tracking locations.

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If you’re saying that the Wyze cameras are connecting to the Chinese factory at bootup, for firmware check, I find that a little worrisome.

It means Wyze has no control over the firmware, and as someone here has noted, it contains decryption keys in plaintext.

I yelled into the abyss about v-c–ms several more times today. Nothing yet.

I did see more ads from the same companies as earlier, plus ads for Disney Cruise Line, DC Universe, Alienware, Nextiva, Forward, HBO, Spotify Premium, Quaker Oats, American Express, Comcast Business, Amazon Alexa, H&R Block, Afrin, Discover, Amazon Music, McDonald’s, Target, Netgear, Ragu, ESPN+, Dickies, Universal Orlando Resort, Progressive, TaxAct, Enbrel, Vimeo, TransUnion, and Red Lobster

…but no v-c–ms.

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Maybe it’s your pronunciation.

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Haha. That must be it. It’s pronounced “vuh-COOM,” right?

I wonder what will happen if I start yelling that I need to find a Nigerian Prince to help with their money?

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I noticed the ad thing a long time ago. I had been talking about a weighted blanket, which I didn’t even know that was sold. The very next day I have bunches of ads. That was at least a year ago. Now, everything we talk about comes up much faster. It’s ALL smart products. Even your robot vacuum is a snitch.

That’s likely not a Wyze issue. Do you have a Facebook account?

Trying to start some trouble? Like living in fear?

This crazy talk.

(The Chinese are coming to take your books! Oh - wait … never mind.)

No, I don’t use FB. I wasn’t actually pointing to Wyze, (should have been more clear) I believe it’s Alexa, which is always listening. I only meant to relate to the ads the person posting the comments was referring to.

Here is the response from the Wyze Representative in the referenced thread:

Hi, I totally understand the concerns but there were some misunderstanding there. I hope to clarify a little bit here.

  1. Data to Russia - a long time ago we mistakenly picked a Russian server for NTP (internet time check). We have changed to US servers once we noticed that. This is fixed already.
  2. Data to China (or other oversea countries) - This has been discussed many times in the past. I will repeat our words here. Our P2P solution provider is ThroughTek which is a world wide solution provider. They have servers all over the world (e.g. cm.iotcplatform.com and gm.iotcplatform.com) to provide service worldwide. We have worked with them to limit the data traffic to US. Given their current infrastructure we had to use some tweaks to limit Wyze data traffic within US. Changes include: a) We managed to filter out known ThroughTek oversea server IPs during device boot up. b) For device heartbeat and video streams ThroughTek will limit the traffic within North America. It was done by server+client configuration. Note: we recently found out there are at most 1% of our devices which could be using worldwide server. We are actively working with ThroughTek on fixing it.
  3. Camera recording when it is off - I assume you got this info from Amazon review. This was a bug we had last summer time when we first introduced the on/off feature. It was fixed last summer too but the review still stays. It gives the impression that we still have the problem. If it does happen, we will take it high priority to fix it.
  4. Protecting privacy & data access from ThroughTek - ThroughTek doesn’t know anything about Wyze user. We don’t release any info (e.g. Wyze user name, device MAC) to ThroughTek. All they know is a ThroughTek device ID from Wyze. When streaming happens, ThroughTek will help establish the data channel but Wyze will handle the authentication process 100%. That prevents ThroughTek from accessing Wyze camera stream.
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If you really think Wyze specifically is feeding info to Chinese, you could have focused on that. Your allegations about Chinese buying up real estate makes your rant seem more generally anti-China and detracts from credibility of anything you might claim about Wyze.

Specifically to your point about listening and ads, I’ve heard the same said about every smart home device - Google Home, Echo, smart vacuums, etc. - but I have seen the evidence debunking many of these claims. Yes, if you activate Google or Alexa and say something, it may well affect your advertising content, but there does not seem to be some wholesale conspiracy to suck up every word everybody says from any device.

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