Today’s story is about Philips Hue by Signify. They will soon start forcing accounts on all users and upload user data to their cloud. For now, Signify says you’ll still be able to control your Hue lights locally as you’re currently used to, but we don’t know if this may change in the future. The privacy policy allows them to store the data and share it with partners.
This is probably less of a data privacy thing, you could probably just use a fake everything. This is probably a precursor to a subscription service. Subscribe to turn your lights on.
They already made it pretty complicated to use the Hue app without an account if you just want to control Bluetooth enabled lights without a bridge.
What have been your complications with the app? In my experience (no account or bridge) the only issue is that it takes a literally second or two for the app to be able to control the lights.
It works but they pressure you hard nowadays to create an account when you use the app the first time. An account that you don’t need if you have no Hue bridge. They once had a Bluetooth only app without all of these privacy invasion shenanigans.
This is never good, the same way with WiFi routers, if I need an app to use your physical product. That’s a fail
Now I need to find another provider who doesn’t want to create an llm or sell my data to a company building an llm
You don’t need Phillips app or hub to use their lights. They’re Zigbee, you need a Zigbee dongle and HomeAssistant. 100% cloud free.
That being said for some reason we let the American public continue to think that “SmartHome” means “Works with Alexa/Google Home”
Just wait until Amazon pulls the switch in their bait-n-switch.
I use the IKEA lights, they’re actually quite good.
