Your doorbell recognises faces locally, which is great, except the app that manages whose face is whose runs on Chinese cloud servers. Like saying your diary is private because you write it at home — while your secretary in Shenzhen keeps the index.
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Aqara built a secret remote control into your hub that runs any command as root with no logs. When researchers found it, instead of removing it, they put a screen door on the backdoor. The hub your doorbell depends on has a skeleton key built in.
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The company that makes your doorbell is legally required to help Chinese intelligence if asked. And we already know they built in a secret remote shell. "Privacy protection" starts to sound like a punchline.
Aqara says your data stays in your home network, but the hub secretly sends unencrypted personal information to cloud servers without telling you. Anyone on your network — or between your home and their servers — can read this data.
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The hub has a hidden backdoor that lets anyone on your network run any command on the device with full administrator access. Aqara has not fixed this on the Hub M2 even after patching other models. This means someone could take complete control of the hub that manages all your smart home sensors.
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Aqara tells you the hub keeps everything local by default. The reality is the opposite: data goes to their cloud servers by default, and you need advanced networking skills to block it. Most people who buy this hub for privacy are unknowingly sending their home activity data to servers in China.