How to Use Phillips Hue Lights Privately/Securely?

DeletedUser84

No worries at all, glad it may have helped. Given what you recently said I'd suggest looking into threat modeling. It's specific per person and can help you decide what you want to keep private along with who you're wanting to avoid.

My take away from your post is its general privacy and maybe surveillance capitalism - big tech and all the unknown ad companies following us around the internet.

Anyway, once you decide your threat model, its easy to use isolated accounts or burner accounts (even if its google) for what you want to accomplish. You just have to taken some extra steps to keep private sometimes.

The worst you can do is think you have to avoid everything (like Google) because it's used by some agency to monitor you, or be concerned about being hit with Pegasus etc. Yes some people need that level of privacy, like whistleblowers, journalists or lawyers to name a few. But that's not what everyone needs. You don't want to get overwhelmed.

Cheers

I use phillips hue since years. I don't allow internet access to the bridge, so it's essentially offline. Never use the original app, as it forces an account now. I use the app "Hue Essentials" to control them at home if the normal smart switches aren't enough. Using a vpn, I can even control the lights when not at home. I also made a small go app to control the lights when I'm to lazy to get off my pc and don't have my phone at hand.

So yea, phillips should not know anything about my bridge and home now, except I missed something

DeletedUser84 Yes, just block the bridge from internet access via parental controls or firewall

Thanks 👍

DeletedUser84 i can see the IP address of the bridge in the Hue essentials app. That's the one I used. In the device list of the connected devices, you can see its unique identifier only, which makes it hard to find

spl4tt @DeletedUser84 to add to this: if your router is using DHCP, don't forget to assign it a static IP lease. That option is usually found in the "LAN" section of your router software.