An engineer got curious about how his iLife A11 smart vacuum worked and monitored the network traffic coming from the device. That’s when he noticed it was constantly sending logs and telemetry data to the manufacturer — something he hadn’t consented to. The user, Harishankar, decided to block the telemetry servers’ IP addresses on his network, while keeping the firmware and OTA servers open. While his smart gadget worked for a while, it just refused to turn on soon after. After a lengthy investigation, he discovered that a remote kill command had been issued to his device.
Stalkerware is criminal digital slavery. It is sale and ownership of a part of a person to manipulate and exploit them.
I think your comparison to slavery is a bit overblown and minimizes the tragedy of actual slavery. But I agree with the sentiment.
There are other types of slavery besides American chattel slavery.
But someone making money off of me without my consent is literally slavery. No one is saying that this form of slavery is equivalent to chattel slavery, so I don’t understand how this minimizes that? Do you also think that wage slavery or forced prison labor are not slavery?
No. This robot vacuum situation is basically the Holocaust, and if you can’t see that then you are complicit. /s