Many IoT devices refuse to work if they're not allowed to "phone home". Someone recently gifted me an RGB lightbulb which demanded to be added to my WiFi netwo

Many IoT devices refuse to work if they're not allowed to "phone home". Someone recently gifted me an RGB lightbulb which demanded to be added to my WiFi network to set it up. None of the functions would work without the lightbulb being connected to the internet, even after setup (except on/off). The bulb would only take commands from the remote server! Infuriating. They also used some TLS so it wasn't straight-forward to spoof the packet. It's been collecting dust not being plugged in since then. I feel bad not using it, and didn't tell my friend who gifted it to me. But I'm not going to let that thing run in my network sending usage statistics to the company. Or worse, get exploited. The lightbulb runs a web server, for fucks sake. What a dilemma.