homeassistant

The thing about Tuya devices is they are a white label provider which allows manufacturers to brand the Tuya Device as their own. This is causing a massive saturation in markets such as Amazon where the lower price is king. I had some Costco 'Feit" branded bulbs which turned out to set up on Tuya so it's not just Amazon or Costco, other companies do it as well. I have a WiFi dehumidifier I bought before I got into the home automation scene which is Tuya based. They often masquerade behind apps such as SmartLife, Uhome or Feit and others with their GUI using nothing more than API Calls to the Tuya servers in China.

You can still obtain the local product keys on Tuya Developer portal which allows you to locally control your devices without the cloud, but they are making that harder to find. i was able to track some down about a month ago on a device I was evaluating. You can use other plugins too which decouple it from the cloud with your local key such as Xtended-Tuya, Tuya-Local and the like in Home Assistant so you can technically ignore the comms to China and I've found that some of those in tandem with each other have unlocked some extra features that the Tuya app never reveals for the device.

Ultimately, they are a very cost effective device to install in your home and often times you don't know it's Tuya Based until you poke around. I'm not defending them in any way, rather I am stating my observations and thoughts as to why it's so pervasive. I wouldn't be surprised if some Ovens or refrigerators were linked in some way to them as well.