Eufy RoboVacs

Robot vacuums from Eufy come with features like laser navigation, AI mapping technology, and sensors to help avoid obstacles. Fortunately, none of Eufy’s robot vacuums seem to come with built-in cameras (yet, at least), which is good. Sensors are generally a safer bet than cameras in your home. Most of Eufy’s robot vacuums do connect to WiFi and share some data back to Eufy through the Eufy Clean app. Consumer Reports found that Eufy lacked good publicly available information about what data their robot vacuums collects. It would be good to know exactly what data their robot vacuums collect.

According to Eufy’s privacy policy, they do say they can collect a good deal of personal information on you -- things like name, email, gender, birth date, location, device information, and more. And while Eufy says they don’t sell your personal information -- which is good -- they say they can use that information to show you ads from them and third party advertisers, which isn’t so good (but also pretty standard on the internet these days). They also say they can collect personal information on you from third parties who provide it to them, such as law enforcement authorities. This worries us a bit because the way that line in their privacy policy is written is rather vague and seems like it could leave open the possibility they could collect information on users from a variety of third parties, for example, data brokers.

It’s great we found no known security breaches of Eufy’s robot vacuums. Unfortunately, Eufy has had some significant security vulnerabilities with their security cameras. In June 2022, security experts found three security vulnerabilities in Eufy's Homebase 2 video storage and management device that could have allowed hackers to take control of the hub, control it remotely, or steal video footage. Eufy/Anker developed fixes for these security vulnerabilities and released them to users in a timely manner. And in May 2021, Eufy was forced to apologize for a bug that exposed the camera feeds of 712 users to strangers. Eufy said the glitch happened during a software update and “users were able to access video feeds from other users’ cameras.” Eufy said in a statement the glitch was fixed an hour after it was discovered.

So, the bad news is, Eufy’s security cameras have had some serious security issues. The good news is, Eufy as a company seems to have stepped up and immediately fixed these bugs and to get the updates out to their users quickly. While these security oopsies happened to their video cameras, not their robot vacuums, it’s a good reminder that bugs happen and software updates can go wrong, which wouldn’t be good for your robot vacuum (although, you’re probably less vulnerable to a bug in your robot vacuum than your security camera or smart lock).

What’s the worst that could happen? Well, it’s always possible someone could hack your WiFi and control your robot vacuum, sending it around your home mapping things and learning all about where your tables and chairs are. One way around this, you could always buy Eufy’s “dumb” robot vacuum, the RoboVac 11S, that doesn’t connect to WiFi at all. Sometimes dumb is good.