this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2026
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[–] invalidusernamelol@hexbear.net 70 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (6 children)

Edit: it's been confirmed to be a software bug and not this nefarious alternative. See @KobaCumTribute@hexbear.net's reply for more info.

Botnet. They're using your home devices to do scraping for AI then uploading the data.

That's probably 10GB of data being uploaded to 100 different clients separately so they don't have to worry about storing it. Amazing.

[–] KobaCumTribute@hexbear.net 39 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

In this case it was defective software spamming telemetry at a router firewall that was blocking it. It was a terabyte of internal LAN traffic, all of which was blocked, and it was caused by a bug in the machine's software that shipped with it, which was fixed in a later update it never received due to being blocked from the internet.

Of course, this wouldn't be a problem at all if a machine that should just be a simple on/off switch and literally nothing else didn't have a computer crammed into it for literally no reason except to make it worse on purpose. Coffee machines shouldn't have "telemetry" or "remote updates". They shouldn't even have a fucking digital clock on them, just a switch to turn the internal heating element on and off.

[–] buckykat@hexbear.net 23 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Putting a clock in there so you can set it up the night before and have it ready when you wake up seems reasonable, but that doesn't require any kind of connectivity.

You could do that electromechanically, but a microcontroller and relay is cheaper nowadays.

[–] KobaCumTribute@hexbear.net 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

After my last coffee machine died after only a couple of months, I've decided they need the barest minimum of potential failure points possible. My current one just has a single analog switch and a heavily insulated carafe instead of a hotplate, and it's just been better in every way.

[–] cricbuzz@hexbear.net 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] KobaCumTribute@hexbear.net 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

It's some old coffee machine my grandparents got for free at some point but never used, and my grandmother sent it to me after hearing that mine had broken. It had a plain box and I don't remember what it said. Let me see if I can find model information on the machine itself... Ok, it's a Gevalia KA-865MW.

[–] peeonyou@hexbear.net 5 points 1 week ago (3 children)

yeah.. a clock is a requirement for me. i ain't waking up early to start the coffee machine.

[–] none@hexbear.net 7 points 1 week ago

Can always just get an outlet timer. There's all kinds.

It's Linux Philosophy for things.

[–] TraschcanOfIdeology@hexbear.net 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

How long does a coffee machine run? I literally wash my face and go to the bathroom right after I set up mine. And the coffee is ready by the time I come to the kitchen agaon6

[–] stink@hexbear.net 2 points 1 week ago

When I was in college I'd start the coffee machine, hop in the shower, and then I'd have a nice warm cup waiting for me when I got out every morning

[–] invalidusernamelol@hexbear.net 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)

We'll that's a relief, I'm still paranoid about IOT after the whole LG smart TV thing...

[–] RNAi@hexbear.net 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] barrbaric@hexbear.net 15 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Discovered to be sending multiple gigs of plaintext data per month back to LG's servers so they can better spy on and advertise to TV owners. The full video

[–] peeonyou@hexbear.net 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

pretty sure most 'smart tvs' now do screencaps like every few seconds so they can track whatever you're doing at any given time with the tv and sell that off to advertisers and data brokers

that's why no tv of mine will ever have access to the internet. but then the piece of shit roku i have hooked up is most likely doing the same damned thing

I really want an open source box that does what roku does along with a non IR remote. i fucking hate all the options that exist currently.

[–] invalidusernamelol@hexbear.net 7 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Weren't they also offering a proxy service for webscrapers or was that something else?

[–] buckykat@hexbear.net 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Iirc that part wasn't LG directly, but a lot of the apps available on their proprietary tv app store

Well, I'm still glad it made me hack mine lol

[–] barrbaric@hexbear.net 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I think that might have been something else.

[–] HexReplyBot@hexbear.net 2 points 1 week ago

I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:

[–] regul@hexbear.net 7 points 1 week ago

The poster didn't have to put their coffee machine on their wi-fi, either. I'm pretty sure Keurigs still work without a network connection.

[–] JoeByeThen@hexbear.net 37 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It's not all AI scraping, some of us are doing good old fashioned social media fraud! catgirl-cry

[–] Tabitha@hexbear.net 16 points 1 week ago

I assume general purpose residential VPN shared by many malicious actors, probably good people on both sides

[–] FnordPrefect@hexbear.net 32 points 1 week ago (1 children)

shinji-mug It almost has to be something like that.

Like, I have an audiobook file that is almost exactly 1 day long. It's 650MB. So even uploading a reasonable bitrate 24/7 stream of audio data would represent 0.6% of the data used shinji-losing-it

[–] invalidusernamelol@hexbear.net 23 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

They don't care about compression or bandwidth when it's you paying for it.

There's also probably next to no storage on device, so it's just constantly fetching and uploading, or just acting as a proxy.

[–] TraschcanOfIdeology@hexbear.net 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

They would still have to store it, wouldn't they?

Not if they just have the device open a socket to the client. At that point you're just being used as a proxy. Your device just acts as the middle man.

[–] Athena5898@hexbear.net 29 points 1 week ago

least it ain't China i-love-killing-people

[–] Lussy@hexbear.net 21 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

But, like, what data are they uploading?

What kind of data does superintelligence want from Keurig machine?

[–] invalidusernamelol@hexbear.net 23 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

It's going to a website, scraping the data, then uploading it to client endpoints. This is a whole market now since it's really difficult for AI companies to run their own scrapers.

Using IOT devices means YOU get to shoulder the power and bandwidth cost, and since you're coming from an actual IP address, you're less likely to get blocked.

It's not a Keurig at that point, it's just a low power computer with curl installed that can download data from the web.

Botnet. They're using your home devices to do scraping for AI then uploading the data.

That's probably 10GB of data being uploaded to 100 different clients separately so they don't have to worry about storing it. Amazing.

This was literally a plot point/deus ex machina in Silicon Valley lol. And I'm sure they lifted it from some real life example.