Would you allow a stranger to drive a camera-equipped computer around your living room? You might have already done so without even realizing it.

It all started innocently enough. I had recently bought an iLife A11 smart vacuum—a sleek, affordable, and technologically advanced robot promising effortless cleaning and intelligent navigation. As a curious engineer, I was fascinated by its workings. After leaving it to operate for the entire year, my curiosity got the better of me.

I’m a bit paranoid—the good kind of paranoid. So, I decided to monitor its network traffic, as I would with any so-called smart device.