My Lightbulb Is Spying On Me

Or at least its app is.

Just bought two different color-changing lightbulbs, one from Philips and one from LIFX. Both have appalling privacy policies. The LIFX policy says:
“For example, we may collect: Hardware model, IMEI number and other unique device identifiers, MAC address, IP address, operating system version, and settings of the device you use to access the Services.” – https://www.lifx.com/pages/privacy-policy
The Philips policy, though less explicit in its language, is similar in meaning, and their Android app will not operate unless granted permission to track the smartphone's location.

Apparently the new design process for consumer electronic hardware is:
  1. Figure out what data you want to gather on the user and how much money you will make from gathering it.
  2. Provide some functionality that requires one to install a data mining app.
Boize moi!

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