That’s a pretty silly headline for an article that quite clearly states that the issue was with the router’s data usage reporting capabilities.
They suspect, but it’s hardly clear cut
Should be something that you rule out long before blaming LG…
Do not buy BS internet connected devices period. There was a time when internet connected devices did exactly they were supposed to do and nothing more. There is literally no reason why most of these devices can’t act as their own server and keep your data local and private. Corporations have become far too greedy to trust their cloud won’t sell you out in every way it can. The ONLY two reasons a manufacturer adds internet connectivity are:
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To monitor and collect as much data as possible and/or:
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To implement a subscription service for something that normally wouldn’t require monthly payments.
Corporate closed clouds have proven time and time again that they can’t be trusted.
There is literally no reason why most of these devices can’t act as their own server
As much as I dislike cloud stuff. The cloud is by far the easiest solution for support and average users.
Your not dealing with end users calling in and having to diagnose why two devices on their network are not talking to each other.
As long as both your devices have Internet it will work.
I do home automation… And no, its not…
They do it because everyone wants to control these appliances when away from home. And port forwarding isn’t an awesome idea honestly.
A lot of the devices we used to port forward honestly, ended up getting hacked because of out of date firmware or whatever
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It only would be a big problem if household devices like washing machines are built in a way that makes a connection to the internet mandatory in order to function properly. Imagine you can’t do your laundry because of an internet outage.
Name any household device (washing machine, dishwasher, dryer, toaster, water kettle, iron, coffee maker, (microwave) oven, …) that has been improved in functionality by connecting it to the internet, making it a internet-of-things-device. I can’t think of any.
We have a washing machine that cannot be connected to the internet. After starting the program, we set up a timer on our smartphone, 15 minutes longer than the time the washing machine display is predicting. Works like a charm.
Not sure if this exists, but it would be really nice to remotely see if my stove/oven is on and also remotely turn it off
Name any household device (washing machine, dishwasher, dryer, toaster, water kettle, iron, coffee maker, (microwave) oven, …) that has been improved in functionality by connecting it to the internet
I once heard of a toaster that could download patterns (character faces and so forth) then burn them onto your toast. Totally novelty but kinda cool if you could have Batman toast with breakfast. I don’t know if it actually exists as a product or was just a proof of concept though.
Bloatware has spiraled out of control. It’s a consequence of coding becoming easy and accessible. Programming is no longer the domain of idealistic nerds. It is possible for anyone to make garbage tech wares.
Wait, wait, wait. Let’s not aim at the wrong thing. Programming becoming accessible is a great, and is not the cause of bloat. Bloat is not even something that can be easily pointed to a single cause, and a lot of things played a role, like poor tech education, companies not giving a fuck and relying on hardware replacement, lack of regulations, big tech corporations having practically monopolies and no incentive to create better products, the high demands of timing for projects, etc.
Not to mention plain old fashioned bad management.
It’s possible that it had some vulnerability which was automatically exploited by one of her majesty’s secret services (perhaps with help from their US counterparts) to make it a component of their covert infrastructure.
Jesus fucking Christ.
Or quite simply, hackers scanning for unsecured devices that access the internet and using them to do shit.
Listen to Darknet Diaries -> Start fearing everything
I happen to work in Home Automation… This is likely wrong, and I agree its probably dodgy router
Customers with a moderate amount of tech logging are sometimes our biggest bane. In this case, there’s no information of what the washing machine is connected to. And no packet dumps… Yes its asus too, so don’t trust their routers at all (they aren’t known for making good routers).
And then, we also constantly have customers picking out every single thing on their router too who think their information is being stolen or whatever because a service its connecting to sounds technical.
Then we also have the ones who get their info from places like Toms hardware, such as with CCTV, which “confirms” china is watching their lawn grow or whatever. Never any actual packet dumps, traces or anything else though.
Honestly, when you see an article like this, the first thing you need to ask is for packet dumps and such.
In practice, just don’t forward your devices online using port forwarding, and use a strong password, good devices, and you’re fine.
Why would you connect your washing machine to WiFi in the first place? Like legitimate question.
Not that this covers many cases, but a lot of appliances are running touch screens and a lack of non-visual indicators. Blind people could benefit from having an app with a screen reader to run the machine. Of course, this is just a patch for a problem which shouldn’t have existed in the first place.
Because water is held in cloud storage
So you can get a notification when it’s done, I imagine.
Joke Answer: Just ask Pied Piper about their fridges.
Non-Joke Answer:
Not personally owned washers of course:
I live in a set of apartments and we have a laundry room and the quarter slots have been removed entirely and now you have to pay for your laundry with an app and Bluetooth.
In other words, it could be fucking worse and you might not have a choice because your landlords don’t give a shit about poor people (who may not have a device capable of running the app).
Thats wild. We had laundry cards.
So I actually have one that does.
I get notifications when laundry is done.
I get a notification when I need to do routine maintenance like change filters, or refill the detergent. (It has a built-in jug and dispenser) I can send it settings via the app, which is easier than via the built in controls. (It has things like extra rinse, wash times for different rinses, and steaming and stuff). It’s not impossible to do via the interface, but it’s a bit easier via the phone.The one I had also sent me a notification if the clothes were too humid after the drying cycle, so I could add more minutes to it. That was a Samsung tho
Why didn’t it just add the minutes itself?
It was an ECO mode, most of the time it was enough, but sometimes you need the real power. I guess it didn’t do itself because it would consume more power
I liked the connected features but now that I use a “dumb” washer and a dryer I don’t really miss them
To get notifications when your laundry is done.
As someone with adhd, I could see it being super helpful for me.
FWIW I accomplish this with a zigbee outlet on the washer and dryer (dryer is gas, so it’s not a 50a circuit). It has stats on power consumption and I have a home assistant sensor set up so that when it drops below a threshold for a period of time, it counts the washer/dryer as off and notifies me.
Yep, this ☝️
Only works if you can start a cycle on power on. My machine will just sit there waiting for someone to press the go button.
I don’t actually use it to control anything, though I have in the past had an automation to turn off the dryer because GE is total crap and the sound on/off button busted, but the sound is super annoying. But anyway yeah, I’m actually only using these outlets for their sensors to decide if the machines are on or off.
Doesn’t have to be connected to the cloud for that, except if you do your laundry when you’re not home.
Ah ben tabarnak.
Fair point, I didn’t think of that. Any IoT device gets put in the “naughty” vlan and 99% of their outgoing requests goes straight to /Dev/null
I do the same thing. All they’re allowed to talk to is Home Assistant except for when I allow internet access to update firmware.
For many people, they can’t afford or effectively manage a corporate router that has support for VLANs.
I, myself have been looking all over and the consensus is: spend 800€-1200€ on a ubiquiti system and have vendor lock in or have a cross-vendor system (e.g. microtik router + Asus access points) where the house wifi mesh is middling at best because the devices themselves will have to manage roaming which is always a shitshow even with the newer phones.
My ISP router can do vlan mate.
Cool beans, yippie for you. Mine can’t and that is true for many if not most people. How does that have anything to do with finding a vlan capable router? please point me to a consumer router under 250€ that can do it?
Why are you so bitter? Chill out.
Ubiquiti ERX $59.
I need to set up my VLANs 🥺
Its saved my skin once when my retard cousin connected his malware infected laptop to my “I domt control this device” network. Only other thing on the network was my work laptop that has a ton of security on it. More than I even have on my stuff. So it lit up like a Christmas tree and commited suicide. Get a ping from my boss asking what the fuck I downloaded lmao.
I have an lg machine with notifications… it’s very helpful.
We have two young kids, laundry is constant.
Its a good reason to allow wifi but there is no reason for you to receive such a notification unless your home to act on it, otherwise your better of receiving the notification once your phone reconnect with your homes wifi.
Wifi isnt the same as internet.
There is sometimes but rarely a good reason for those same decides to connect to the public web. They are much more secure if everything stays local.
The prime reason companies claim they need internet so you can set up things like stop heat when i am not home…. But guess what, if my phone isnt activity at home connecting to wifi, my home server can figure it out on its own, no cloud required.
An alarm could likely help you accomplish the same thing without the wifi-connected washing machine.
Whatever works for you works for you, though.
An alarm could likely help you accomplish the same thing without the wifi-connected washing machine.
This is only true if every load takes exactly the same amount of time. Modern machines have more sensors to adjust things like water level and spin times. Very often now I start my washer and the time will drop from 1 hour depending on how much is in the machine.
Plus, the alarm is easy to dismiss and forget about. An actual notification on my phone isn’t.
Well, you don’t necessarily need to deal with the laundry the second the machine is ready - if you merely set the alarm to be the approximate maximum time, you’re probably going to be fine with the laundry spending half an hour or so sitting wet in the machine.
If the alarm is easy to dismiss, then perhaps a reminder app could be of use. I frequently use Google Tasks with a time for the tasks to cope with everyday life, which sends a notification at the specified time.
Likely an alarm needs to be set every time, a notification of finished load is likely automatic.
Yup, I have alarms in my phone for this. Adhd means I’ll forget to set that alarm most of the time.
So I never would have bothered. We built a new house and the set we got came with Wi-Fi (not a feature I cared about) and it was actually really helpful to have notifications. I have a family and kids and they don’t always watch when things are done. So now I can catch when cycles are done as sensor cycles can be highly variable.
I have an LG washer/dryer. With the app you can add downloaded cycle programs. And you can just have one at the time, and there are two cycles I sometimes swap between. It also gives me a notice when it needs to be cleaned and it has smart diagnostics when something goes wrong. And of course delayed start via app and notification when the wash is done. So there are some benefits, but I still hate it
Those do sound useful. Hook it up to home assistant and send all its external requests to the DNS void.
I have mine in hass… the integration is cloud dependant.
Edit: The stuff I can do in with it in HASS is great though. I can only hope that someone figures out how to skip the cloud requirement all together like they did with some other stuff that I use.
That’s data laundering
Damn you! Angry upvote.
Who would buy a washing machine with internet access? Why? Not feeling like you are giving enoigh of your privacy and personal data to Google or FB or Apple? They should just sign up to TikTok, much cheaper.
Smart devices are great, but if it’s not Zigbee or Zwave and Home Assistant, it can fuck off.
I like my devices to be dumb but be able to function without internet.
Zwave chips are all made by one company, and the old ones can’t be updated against a newer vulnerability.
But each to their own
It’s an older meme sir, but it checks out.
My heat pump can be controlled by an app but it all goes through an external web page for some reason so I noped out of it.
How to check this? I’ve got an LG heat pump…
It was in the manual. There’s an extra piece you connect inside and an app.
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The reason is so you can control it from anywhere without setting up port forwarding and a static IP. Most people don’t understand, or can be bothered, doing that. I get why you don’t like it, I wouldn’t like it either, but it’s not some conspiracy.
It would be far better if somebody sold a single VPN device for the mass public to be able to access home devices. Something wireguard based could be so simple for people to use. Even better if your ISP had this as a standard feature which they made easy to setup Then none of these devices would have an excuse to go out to the company’s servers. Any that did would be obviously spying and they could be shamed.
Doesn’t wireguard’s zero config work by relaying through an outside web service? Seems like the LG solution with extra steps.
That’s a clear indication of IoT control being taken over by malicious actor to make it a part of botnet.
Any IoT needs to be secured when connected to Internet (and, not intranet).
What exactly in this article indicates that? I feel you’re either mis-reading the article or baselessly fear-mongering here.
woohoo high tech everything is the best
If you bought a washing machine that needs Internet access you are a fucking idiot.
They don’t need wifi, so no, you’re not an idiot if you buy one and just leave it disconnected
Why pay for features you aren’t going to use?
Most of them don’t have non-wifi variants, at least not that I know of
I have a Speed Queen washer and dryer. Quality products don’t rely on gimmicks, they do their job.
