These categories have no genuinely privacy-respecting product. Every option we investigated has serious documented concerns. The honest advice isn't "choose wisely" — it's "know what you're accepting."
Smart TVs
Every smart TV we investigated sells your viewing data. Samsung screenshots your screen every 500ms. Texas AG sued Samsung, Sony, LG, Hisense, and TCL for ACR surveillance. Hisense received the first-ever restraining order against a TV maker. Hisense and TCL are subject to Chinese intelligence law.
Honest advice: Use a dumb monitor or projector with a separate streaming device. If you already own a smart TV, disconnect it from WiFi and use an external stick instead.
Best of the worst: Crystal UHD DU7200 (2024) (grade D) — settled with Texas AG, but ACR is industry-wide.
Vehicles
Every connected car we investigated collects location, driving behaviour, voice recordings, and passenger data. GM sold driving data to insurers behind drivers' backs. VW leaked 800,000 owners' GPS locations. Subaru's admin portal let researchers unlock any car and pull a year of location history. Honda generates 25GB of data per hour of driving.
Honest advice: Buy a pre-2015 vehicle with no cellular modem. If you must buy new, Mazda and Rivian collect less — but "less" is relative when the baseline is total surveillance.
Best of the worst: Rivian R1T / R1S (grade C) — fewest contradictions, but still a connected vehicle with always-on data collection.
Social Media
The business model is the problem. If the product is free and ad-supported, your behaviour is the product. Meta, TikTok, X, Snapchat — all optimise for engagement at the documented cost of mental health, especially for children.
Honest advice: Mastodon (grade B) and Bluesky (grade C) are less harmful but lack network effects. The real question is whether you need social media at all — the harm is the engagement model, not just the data collection.
Best of the worst: Mastodon (grade B) — ad-supported but less algorithmically toxic than feed-based platforms.
Android Phones
Every Android phone runs Google Play Services — a system-level process you can't uninstall that continuously sends data to Google. Samsung, Xiaomi, and Oppo add their own tracking layer on top. You're choosing between one surveillance layer or two.
Honest advice: A stock Pixel with hardened settings is the least bad Android option — one tracking layer instead of two. For actual privacy, you'd need GrapheneOS, which most people won't install.
Best of the worst: Pixel 8 (grade D) — no OEM bloatware, fastest security patches, but still Google at the core.
Robot Vacuums
Every robot vacuum we investigated maps your home and sends that map to the cloud. Ecovacs was hacked live on stage at DEF CON. Roborock sends room dimensions to Beijing. iRobot's Amazon acquisition was blocked over surveillance concerns — then Roomba data leaked anyway.
Honest advice: A non-smart vacuum cleaner works fine. If you insist on a robot, block its internet access at the router — most will still vacuum without cloud connectivity, they just lose app control.
Best of the worst: 360 Vis Nav (grade C) — processes more data on-device, but still cloud-connected by default.
Smart Speakers & Audio
Always-on microphones by design. Amazon hired thousands of contractors to listen to Alexa recordings. Google kept voice data it promised to delete. Apple's Siri recordings captured drug deals and medical appointments. Sonos removed a "never sell data" promise.
Honest advice: A Bluetooth speaker with no voice assistant does the same job without the microphone. If you want smart home control, a local-only setup like Home Assistant with a dumb speaker is possible but requires effort.
Best of the worst: AirPods Pro 2 (grade C) — headphones without always-on assistant, but still Apple ecosystem telemetry.
Education Tech
Proctorio punishes disability and skin colour. Gaggle outs LGBTQ+ students to hostile families. GoGuardian shares flags with police automatically. Turnitin's AI detector can't tell a second language from a chatbot. PowerSchool exposed 62 million children's records because it didn't have MFA. Canvas was breached twice in 8 months.
Honest advice: There is no safe option that schools actually use. Moodle (open-source, self-hosted) is genuinely private — but most schools can't afford the IT staff to run it. Ask your school which monitoring tools they use, what data they collect, and whether monitoring continues after school hours.
Best of the worst: Moodle LMS (grade B+) — open-source, self-hosted, school controls all data — but requires IT resources most schools don't have.
Government Apps
COVIDSafe cost $9.1 million and found 2 contacts. myGov had $557 million in identity fraud. Police accessed QR check-in data meant for contact tracing. Aadhaar exclusion killed an 11-year-old. ID.me's facial recognition had racial bias baked in. You cannot opt out of government services.
Honest advice: You have no alternative. These apps are mandatory for accessing government services. The privacy failures are structural: governments outsource to the lowest bidder, require biometrics without adequate protection, and face no consequences when things go wrong.
Best of the worst: myGov App (grade F) — the front door to every government service, with Google Analytics tracking every visit.