According to its current privacy policy, with an account, Hue gets access to the configuration of your system to provide the right software updates to the devices. It can only use your data for marketing or share it with third parties if you provide additional consent.
However, in a change to the current policy, Yianni says Hue will not collect usage information from users without additional optional consent. “So, we do not require users share anything about how they use our products,” he says.
“Previously creating an account was consent for usage data processing that we are in the process of decoupling and will be decoupled before accounts become essential — that makes sure it’s possible to create an account without sharing usage data,” says Yianni. However, if you choose to use the cloud services for things like out-of-home connectivity, you will need an account, and Hue will process your data, he says.
If this change to the privacy policy does happen, Home Assistant’s Schoutsen agrees that it would make the requirement for an account more palatable. “But it all depends on the exact changes,” he says.
Don’t buy shit that’s remote controlled by a corporation. If you can’t use it offline you haven’t bought it at all.
the issue is that Hue devices can actually be used offline without issues. They are changing that retroactively for users.
Better get them offline right away then, before they’re updated.
There is a lesson in this…
Buy more IoT stuff because nothing ever goes wrong?
You will still be able to use them completely offline after you complete the setup process, it’s in the article. Regardless, I only have a couple devices, so it’ll be pretty painless for me to rip em out.
requiring an account seems to be like a first step to remove this ability