"I Don't Have Anything to Hide," Said the Dude Photographed on the Toilet
Postcapitalist Robots
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"I Don't Have Anything to Hide," Said the Dude Photographed on the Toilet<br>I Hacked My Vacuum Robot Cleaner To Gain Sovereignty
Postcapitalist Robots<br>Aug 10, 2026
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A vacuum cleaner robot. Feeling cooler after being hacked, and feeling part of the reliable community of the house, where we don’t share data overseas. Image generated locally in my RTX 3090 with Ideogram 4.0. Design by @gazebyputu.<br>Every time I tell someone about how much data is increasingly being stolen in home spaces —Smart TVs, Vacuum Robot Cleaners, Cooking Robots, Smart Home Assistants, etc.— I always get the same answer:<br>So what? I don’t have anything to hide!
I understand, I don’t have anything to hide either. However, if I’m getting out of the shower with the towel on, and the window is open, I automatically close it before taking the towel off , and starting to get dressed.<br>Why not leave the window open, then?<br>We don’t have anything to hide. But we like our privacy. We like our intimacy. It’s our right. As humans.<br>You have the right to be caught up in your thoughts, without anybody reading or judging what you're thinking. You have the right to have a vulnerable conversation one on one, and to trust that nobody else is listening. You have the right to feel safe in “safe spaces” and to know who is observing or listening to you.<br>Why wouldn't you let me put a mic in your house to listen to your conversations — yet you don't care if a private company does exactly that?<br>It’s madness.<br>We, as society, are accepting behaviours from private companies, that are unthinkable among friends and peers. And I think I know why.<br>We feel internally helpless.<br>What we don’t see, doesn’t exist.
I believe the first reason we don’t care about being spied on at home is that we feel internally helpless. Most people believe these companies are “too big to be controlled”, or “politicians won’t do anything”. And, it’s completely fair to feel like that.<br>The reality is increasingly showing us that we don’t have control over that.<br>And that’s why I write this article —and many others here in Postcapitalist Robots, consider subscribing to support this community—, because I truly believe there are other ways , and they are just at our fingertips .<br>We do have control. Limited. True. But we need to be aware of what’s happening, in order to have a strong public opinion to be able to push against the status quo.<br>And of course, we can always hack our robots 😈<br>Here I can show you how to hack your vacuum cleaner robot, own your data, and have it working exactly as it was before —jump to the end of the article if you want practical info directly.<br>But before, I want to point out the second reason I believe we don’t act: data stealing at home is invisible .<br>If somebody sneaks into your home and listens to your conversations, eventually, if you find out, you would see a whole body, flesh and bones, with a face looking at you. If a vacuum cleaner robot or smart TV has a mic enclosed in a black box that just looks like those microchips I see sometimes when people want to show off 'technology,' then it's just like nothing is happening.<br>And I understand. But it’s happening.<br>At the very least, we need to switch the mindset. In this new era of robotics and smart devices, we need to re-learn what it means to be “listened, or seen”. And we need to know what we can do to fight it back.<br>I know, it’s a privilege to be fully aware of everything if you are hardly reaching the end of the month healthy and with money —also given that these companies do it very well when it comes to hiding information. That’s why this article is free, and available to everyone. I believe small steps by many small people, can change big things over time.
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Don’t panic.<br>There are many cases of data being stolen at home.
I’ll give you some real information, on what’s been happening.<br>In 2022, MIT Technology Review revealed that iRobot’s Roomba J7 —the most popular robot vacuum in the world— had been capturing images inside people’s homes and sending them to Scale AI, a company that hires gig workers globally to label training data. Among the leaked photos: a woman sitting on the toilet. The gig workers broke an NDA, sure. But the vacuum was taking the photos. The vacuum was sending them across the world. The testers came forward saying they felt misled. The images were already out there.<br>In 2024, researchers showed at DEF CON that Ecovacs robots —also vacuum cleaners— could be hacked via Bluetooth to access their cameras and microphones. Not hypothetically. A lawyer in Minnesota saw a stranger controlling his Deebot X2 through the app —live camera feed, remote control. In Australia, a journalist hacked one from a park across the street. A cheap smartphone was enough. Ecovacs had been warned months earlier. They downplayed it .<br>Smart TVs are no better. In 2017, the FTC fined Vizio...