RE: Hands off my IoT

I've had a Nest thermostat for years and it's generally okay. I bought that direct from Google. I have heard of power companies supplying them and retaining some control so they could reduce the load on their networks when they needed to. I am not so against that as long as it is made clear to users. Of course many people will not read the documentation. Of course some people will try to make it political, but isn't it capitalist companies just trying to make a profit?

I know a lot of people worry about the 'listening devices', but are the corporations really that interested in what we say? People can monitor the traffic and assess when they actually transmit stuff. I have had such devices from Amazon and Google, but not used them much. Of course our phones can also be listening to us, but people seem happy to carry those around.