It is so difficult to find modern electronics without telemetry and ads. Smartphones, laptops, TVs, home routers, security cameras, cars, game consoles, e-readers, projectors, 3D printers, fitness trackers, speakers, and even some printers. Why can’t customers be free from this data collection and advertising? It’s not that we don’t care about it. There simply aren’t many alternatives, and the few that do exist are either more expensive or offer fewer features. Seriously, we need a list of products we can buy and use directly without worrying about telemetry or advertising.
The following list is updated at https://lemmy.ml/post/52706206. Please note that this list may contain errors.
- Laptop: Framework Laptop, System76, MNT
- Anything else that doesn’t come with ads or telemetry built in?
This post is off-topic for the community.
That said, its a topic people here are quite passionate about, which is why it gathered quite a bit of comments already.
I’m going to leave it up, but locked.
Purism for phone and laptops, Starlabs for laptops and tablets. Router: Openwrt. SmartHome: Homeassistant + zigbee devices (no wifi). Everything Else: A raspi with a soldering iron.
Thanks the post is updated
I would remove Brax Phone altogether, that guy is fearmongering people into buying old insecure phones. There were times I was watching his videos until I saw the pattern…
I have included the criticism, but there is no evidence that it collects telemetry or displays ads.
Mozilla has their Nothing Personal online magazine with product reviews. It’s only a small handful of product at this point. This started out as “Privacy Not Included”, which is now defunct.
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Brax Phone, LOL! yeah, I’ll surely trust this list…
I have included the criticism, but there is no evidence that it collects telemetry or displays ads.
The Brax phone raised some extremely serious red flags when I saw they put on their banner it was promoted by Joe Rogan and use Brave as their primary browser.
Having two scammers featured makes it feel like a scam.
I have included the criticism, but there is no evidence that it collects telemetry or displays ads.
If you want to go the DIY option for a 3D printer, there is Voron. It’s open source hardware and it runs the Klipper firmware which is open source.
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The Bangle.js 2 for the smartwatch category. Open source OS, no server to phone home to, the data stays on device unless you copy it to your phone or PC. The heart rate monitor and sleep detection are jank af, but it does everything else well.
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The Jolla phone.
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Cars: Anything released without wifi/calling. I dont think any modern electric predates this, but you can convert diesels to friendlier oils or most engines to a run off wood. As a bonus higher trim older cars used a lot less plastic
Smartwatch: Pinetime
3D printers: id like to add Sovol, not sure about their more recent ones but their older ones either didnt have wifi or run regular klipper. The SV06/SV06 ACE are also entirelly open source except for the GUI, but you can install other klipper GUIs (theres also a repo with steps to build a minimal Debian install instead of relying on sovols firmware updates)
Routers: GL.iNET Use a modified OpenWRT install out of the box but can be flashed to vanilla OpenWRT through the GUI
Smart watch:
ZsWatch. They are developing the PPG sensor and I have used their PPG sensor hub driver for my own smart watch project. The guy heading it up is super knowledgable.
Healthy Pi Move this one seems interesting but maybe less open.
Also with GadgerBridge, you can have complete local control of many smart watches like Amazfit (Helio strap is my choice there for accuracy and whoop alternative. Bip3 is also very accurate) and a lot of Garmins and xiaomi.
Thanks the post is updated
Thanks The post is updated
Game console: Mister FPGA (and other compatibles). Up to N64 hardware emulation without big tech behind. Internet connection not requited.
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Would steam frame fall into a vr headset category that doesn’t spy on you?
Yes an account is required for most straightforward functionality and it is made to primarily work with steam but from what I know it can be bypassed and isolated to a specific dongle network channel and will only sends stuff like eye tracking or camera data if you submit troubleshooting logs, everything else is either on device or not stored at all
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