Wyze is a Chinese Company ( Discussion Continued)

In fact, Wyze is a Chinese company disguised as an American company. Its owner is a Chinese company called Hualai.

In addition, Wyze uses a software solution called TUTK, so all Wyze’s data will pass through this company.

MOD EDIT: Please continue reading for additional information from the community about Wyze’s relationship with one of its ODMs, Hualai, and one of its software partners, ThroughTek.

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I don’t believe that’s strictly true. You may want to do some reading on that. The data is in multiple forms, with an analytics data stream, and a video stream being separate. I believe I read that Wyze actively blocks the video stream from going anywhere other than AWS.

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Yes and it’s not even that complicated. TUTK’s role is establishing the P2P connection, they get no video, and as far as I know aren’t responsible for analytics. A while back Wyze went to the security theater effort of blocking non-US Throughtek nodes although that’s not 100% effective.

There was a good description of the process a while back.

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That’s not really the case.

What are you basing this on?

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(Edit: speculation withdrawn)

That said, I sure wish much more stuff like this were built in the US.

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This seems to be a very reckless and careless allegation.
The link that you provided above contains product reviews of Wyze products, which contain both negative and positive comments about each product reviewed. They do not read like positive sales literature.
Since when do companies publish critical reviews of their own products?

Where is your proof that this company owns Wyze?

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Exactly!

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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