06/02/2026
Your smart thermostat knows when you wake up, when you leave, and when you go to sleep.
Your doorbell camera is building a facial recognition template of every person who visits. Your smart TV takes a screenshot of whatever's on screen every few seconds and sends it to manufacturer servers.
And most of that data? It doesn't stay with your device. A study analyzing 290 smart home apps found that 1 in 10 shares user data with third parties. The most data-intensive platforms collected up to 28 of 32 possible personal data points, including precise location, audio recordings, and health-related data, all tied to individual user profiles.
The part that surprises most homeowners: app privacy settings barely scratch the surface. The real question is whether your data leaves your property at all. That's an architecture decision, made before the first device gets installed.
Local-first systems store footage on hardware in your home. Automations run without a round-trip to a data center. When your internet goes out, your system keeps working. And when law enforcement serves a warrant to a cloud provider, there's nothing there to hand over.
We break down exactly what each device category collects, where it goes, and how system design changes the answer.
Which device in your home do you think collects the most data? Drop your guess below.
🔗 Link in first comment.