That's my policy, but there's a sucker born every minute and they are buying these products so anytime you are in or near their homes or anywhere a microphone or camera can see you (even one mounted on some idiot's head) you're at risk. Even worse, both people and corporations typically don't disclose their use of those devices when you enter their homes/businesses either.
Sure you can just not buy the thing.
But can’t stop the fact that your wall down the street is documented by Amazon and Google front door bells
There is no opt out of this surveillance if you live in modern society
Yes, there are ToS, but it's fine for us as a society to say that consumers deserve more protection against big tech so we aren't a TOS update away from having everything shared or be used for something that wasn't promoted.
> You have free will. If you do not like a commercially available product, don't buy it, don't use it.
Caveat emptor. But lemon laws exist, too.
And, a commercially available product now might not be the same a year from now.
1. It'd be great to ease the method for updating, it'd be nice to be able to easily monitor the device especially if it could become active in some manner while you're absent (I don't want the stove turning on to broil right after I leave on a three month vacation)
Worse it's allowed for them to remote into your device and disable features that you bought the device to use, by paywalling them off behind a subscription service that didn't exist when you brought the product home or just them entirely. To me that's no different than theft. It doesn't matter if it's amazon logging into you kindle overnight and removing books you already paid for from your virtual bookshelf, or Sony pushing an update to remove the option to use linux on your PS3, or BMW deciding that you should have to pay them every month just to use the heated seats option you already paid for when you bought your car.
If I, as an individual, sold you something than broke into your house to steal it or break it or demand ransom to get parts back that would be a crime, but companies get away with it somehow. What Google, Facebook, and Amazon do are basically just stalking.
Stop feeding the parasites.