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Spent $150 on a VPN router, now my whole neighborhood knows my business anyway | Data Privacy Confessions - Talk Freely

Spent $150 on a VPN router, now my whole neighborhood knows my business anyway

Tbh I thought buying a VPN router for $150 would finally lock down my privacy after my neighbor's kid got into my unsecured wifi and changed my Netflix password. But then I found out my smart TV, doorbell cam, and even my thermostat are still phoning home with my data regardless of the VPN, because they don't route through it. So now I'm sitting here wondering if I wasted the money or if I just need to build a whole separate network for those devices. The router itself works fine for my laptop and phone, but the surveillance on my own house feels like it's coming from inside the house. Has anyone else dealt with this split between protecting your actual browsing versus all the IoT junk that spies on you anyway? How do you handle the gap without going full offline hermit?

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1 Comment

jessicac281mo ago

...and honestly that's the part that gets me too, the whole "inside the house" thing. Like you think you've got the front door locked but the windows are wide open and the dog's letting people in through the flap. I feel for you on that $150 too, it's not nothing. The thing is, those smart devices are basically mini computers that don't care about your router settings, they just want to talk to their own cloud servers and they'll find a way to do it no matter what you do. I've been in the same boat and the only real fix I found was putting all the dumb IoT stuff on a separate guest network with no access to my main stuff, and even then I know they're still chirping away out there. It's exhausting and honestly kind of defeats the whole "smart home" dream when you have to treat your own appliances like they're sketchy roommates, but at least you're not alone in this mess.