Wyze is a Chinese Company ( Discussion Continued)

That in fact might be the OEM listed for many of the FCC filings. Supposedly they are distinct from Wyze.

To be fair, if he would have said Xiaomi, it would have been more plausible, since a greater part of Wyze’s products come from OEM’ing them from Xiaomi.

In fact, the joke on Reddit Wyzecam forum, is that Wyze takes a product brochure from Xiaomi, and throws darts at it, to determine their next product.

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I agree that it appears that many of Wyze products seem traceable back to an original Xiaomi product, but with advanced, value-added features in firmware and software, yet still at a bargain price. If so, Wyze may have created a new category of marketing electronics, similar to “customizing” in the automotive and RV fields.

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If that so,then my response is something on the order of this: "confucious says ; carrot and stick to attract
& then the frog and the scorpion, as needed

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no honey pot here either.

I know this was probably passed down from somewhere else on the internet, so please don’t think I am putting the blame for this on anyone in particular. A lot of it is likely misunderstandings passed down through something like that telephone game until people really believe the misunderstandings, but I do have to say that almost everything being passed on in this post is misrepresented.

Hualai is only ONE of Wyze’s suppliers. This would be similar to saying Walmart is owned by Frito-Lay because Walmart sells Dorritos. Or that the company who built your home is owned by Lowes or Home Depot because they got some lumber or sheetrock there, even though they got other supplies from other businesses too.

Hualai did not make the Headphones, or the scale, or the robot vacuum or the watch, or surge protector, or lock, or memory card, sprinkler, etc, Hualai is ONE of the major manufacturers they contract with to make hardware for them, but they do not own Wyze and they have nothing to do with several of Wyze’s other products.

As a business owner, I have done business with several other companies in various ways. None of them owned us, and we didn’t own them. Some we did A LOT with, and some we did a little bit with. We didn’t have a relationship of parent company, or subsidiary, or even partnership or anything like that. We weren’t related to each other in any way like that. We simply had a relationship of "I pay you to make or do this one thing or x things for me, and then I use that however I want for my other business relationships or consumer relationships. Nearly EVERY business works this way. If this is something anyone is opposed to, then you basically can’t ever interact with ANY business.

If you want to see who some of Wyze’s other suppliers are, you can look here:

As for TUTK, Customer provided the best information. Basically, TUTK does nothing but establish the initial P2P connection (then is no longer involved), it never gets a video feed or anything. They don’t get any data that matters…

However, if even that is too much, and a company can never contract anything out except their own in-house options, then such a person would need to get rid of EVERYTHING digital with internet connectivity. There are experiments with people creating VPNs to fully block out all direct and indirect connections to just the major tech companies everyone loves to hate: Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. and run their lives without them. Turns out they could hardly use any company or any internet because directly or indirectly nearly every company has some association with other companies who get “data” of some sort from those business relationships. They tried blocking those companies out of their life for a month individually, then all of them together. It was basically impossible unless they just wanted to go offgrid and offline for a month. It was pretty close to that.

My point is that we should not be surprised if Wyze or anyone else contracts out little things that don’t matter. TUTK and other things aren’t getting our private data or video feeds or profile information. You can’t go to any other competitor and not have the same problems. Every tech company has partnerships with other companies to do specialized things for them, that doesn’t mean anything important or secure or private is being exposed.

There is no need to try to stir people into a frenzy of fear and panic over things that being very much misrepresented for drama and excitement, or from simple misunderstanding. Wyze IS the parent company of themselves, they have business relationships with other companies just like nearly any successful company, they pay people to manufacture and supply them with hardware and they customize their own firmware and do a lot of other stuff with it. Wyze maintains control of their own firmware and connectivity, not Hualai, or China or anyone else. I am glad that not everyone likes Wyze because it keeps competition in the market. I very much support people choosing and supporting other competitors too for this reason…just don’t naively assume any other company is absolutely 100% in-house only with no other business relationships or any data ever involved with contractors or other businesses in some ways. Even mega-corps like Google and Apple and Amazon have had contractors they hire leak info about them, such as how their AI assistants spy on us, and record stuff and are accessed by people who are not even employees of their company (and could technically even be downloaded and sold by them to anyone). Seriously, Wyze is no less secure than basically any other company you could do business with. Even the most high security in the world like the NSA gets things leaked by contractors or employees.

Just take your own reasonable precautions and try to live life the best you can without panic and obsessiveness and life will be awesome.


EDIT: In a comment farther down the thread I post a response directly from a Wyze Employee on this subject. I am now going to copy it here into this post as well so people just starting to read this thread can read an official Wyze response right away without having to sort through all the extra unofficial opinions first:

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As many have pointed out, this is completely false. Hualai (along with other companies) are suppliers to Wyze and other companies. Wyze has been up front about this all along.

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Many suspected affiliations are not widely known… There’s a reason behind that logic.

Whoa… Hook up the caboose, the train’s pullin out !!!

Whether or not the Chinese are involved or own Wyze really makes no difference.

Integrated circuits I.C.'s in the past have been found to have added circuitry to spy with put in by the Chinese without the original designers knowledge the same could be true for say the WiFi chip in the cameras giving secret remote access abilities unbeknown to even Wyze.

Chinese IC’s with hidden backdoors

That is precisely why ALL my cameras are outdoors and none inside my home.
The Chinese can watch the outside all they want…LOL
Not much traffic except my vehicles, deers, squirrels, bears, mountain lions, and birds, etc…

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That company clearly made the cameras AND the app but who owns whom or resells whom is the question. I don’t care a whole lot myself but not sure what the point of any deception would be. People would still buy the cameras. Occam’s Razor says believe the official story.

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One must be aware of the possibility whether or not it’s actuality or not has yet to be determined but certainly this many devices spread over the entire population gives a great opportunity for spying let’s hope that they have more integrity than that however the $$$ speaks volumes Almost as loudly as it got lost for world domination and a powerful position

Keep in mind that Hualai offers products that Wyze doesn’t and Wyze offers products that Hualai doesn’t. They most definitely aren’t the same company.

We do know they have overlap, since Hualai definitely is the biggest supplier for Wyze. Wyze works with them to tell them what they want designed, and once that is all worked out, Hualai mass manufactures the products for Wyze.

I would not be shocked or angry or betrayed to learn that Wyze has a contract with Hualai to be able to sell Wyze products in China, with or without the Wyze name on them. Regardless, if you have ever studied patent and trademark law, it becomes very messy internationally. Companies routinely steal patents and trademarks and sell things in China or resell back to the US this way. China doesn’t respect USA patents or Trademarks and in fact will routinely rip them off, as do some other countries.

Apparently there are over 900 results searching for trademarks of “Wyze” in China.

My guess is that Wyze’s agreement or contract with Hualai is to allow them to resell the products in the China market and both companies prosper out of it. That same website also talks about other companies they do the same thing with, including Xiaomi and Shunwei products. Basically, they are just taking credit for the products they create/manufacture.

If Hualai was Wyze, then we would’ve had better AI detection long ago. Hualai has had developed cloud AI object recognition for THOUSANDS of objects since way back in April 2018, including for People, pets, cars, etc. and they’ve had facial recognition since June 2018. They’ve had crying detection since 2015…Wyze is just BARELY starting to develop these things themselves. If Hualai owned Wyze we’d already have had all that stuff YEARS ago. We’d have had Crying detection since before Wyze even launched…and we’re just barely starting to get testing on it just this mid-summer.
I mean, just go look at how advanced their AI detection has been for a long time now, compared to Wyze’s AI just starting:
https://www.hualaikeji.com/en/technical



Hualai has had many more YEARS of development on their AI recognition. It’s incredible. Look at all those objects it recognizes AND LABELS with confidence intervals on the fly (handbag, bench, backpack, boat, aeroplane, person, dog–not just pet/animal, truck vs car differentiation, faces with names and highlighted and labeled)! You know exactly what it is identifying as what. Wyze’s AI is still just a baby…I like the baby, but if Wyze was Hualai, we’d have some pretty advanced AI already. Wyze’s AI is great, but I look forward to it reaching this level of sophistication. Honestly, I hope Wyze does work with Hualai to get help with their AI to develop it faster to become this advanced. I would not be complaining.

I am totally open to evidence on any side…but so far it’s overwhelmingly seeming to me that Wyze has a very close business relationship with Hualai, but they are most definitely not the same company, nor have the same owners or employees, etc. I once worked for a company that made jacks for trailers and campers, etc. We worked with a manufacturer to provide us with certain parts customized the way we needed them, then we would manufacture and customize them ourselves the way our other customers needed, and they would then sell them consumers. We had close relationships with our suppliers and our different clients, and sometimes the client would ask us for custom jacks made just for them in special ways…then after we put that through the factory line for them, sometimes we’d sell the exact same thing to others ourselves even though they’re the ones who told us how they wanted it designed, we’re the ones who designed it, but nothing stopped us from using that same design to sell ourselves or to others. I suspect that’s basically what’s going on here with Hualai. Additionally, since Wyze is a big name now, if Wyze didn’t pay for the trademark in every country including China, nothing is stopping someone else from doing it…or 900+ someone elses for that matter, and eventually making Wyze pay them to buy the trademark back to do their own business in that country. People do that domain piracy all the time too. Honestly, it makes sense for Hualai to reserve it so someone else in China can’t try to pretend they’re the ones making a bunch of Wyze hardware. At least this way, they’re protecting themselves. If Wyze didn’t trademark “Wyze” in China, why shouldn’t they do it when they feel they’ve got a huge investment and relationship there?

Still, a little bit of research and logic shows a lot of flaws in believing Hualai completely owns Wyze. Too many other things don’t add up. But I am definitely open to considering any points.

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How can anyone profess to believe what is official what is official let see, [removed - political] Occams Razor does not apply today I’m sorry but it just doesn’t cut it…

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Wow!!!

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I know, right?!?! I mean, I half wish that Hualai owned Wyze, we’d have some AWESOME AI with thousands of objects already easily identified with our cam plus subscription.

I am actually very glad that Wyze has a close relationship with them and Wyze has said that they sometimes leverage some dev support from them. I hope they help direct Wyze how to advance their AI in similar ways so that we can get all those cool AI features in the future with thousands of objects recognized and identified by the AI, and hopefully able to be used as rule triggers. At this point I half wish someone COULD convince me that Wyze was really Hualai…but sadly that is pretty solidly not the case. I am certainly glad they have a close relationship with them though. It is actually a fairly advanced company.

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This is not the place for political issues , please refrain from these types of postings

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This whole thread is political. It didn’t turn political because someone mentioned “he who shall not be named”, :slight_smile:

Fear of China has replaced the '60s fear of Russia.

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