Any connected robot knows your floor plan, your Wi-Fi network and your cleaning schedule, and most send some of that to the manufacturer’s servers. Camera models can in principle capture images inside your home, and there have been real incidents.

What’s actually being collected

The floor map is the big one, and it’s more revealing than people assume — it’s a measured layout of your home including room sizes and furniture placement. Alongside that: your Wi-Fi network details, when you’re home based on when you schedule cleans, error and usage logs, and on camera models, images captured for obstacle recognition.

Most brands process obstacle images on the device and don’t upload them by default. Some ask you to opt in to sending photos to improve their AI models, and a few enable that by default and expect you to find the setting and turn it off. That’s the one worth checking on day one.

There have been genuine incidents in this category, including images from inside homes ending up outside the company that collected them, and security researchers demonstrating remote access flaws in shipped products. This isn’t hypothetical worry.

Four things to do about it

Turn off any image upload or “help improve our product” setting in the app. Look for it under privacy or data sharing.

Use a strong unique password on the account and turn on two-factor authentication if the brand offers it. A robot account is an account like any other.

Keep the firmware updated. Most of the vulnerabilities that have been disclosed in this category were patched — for people who installed the patch.

If it genuinely worries you, buy a LiDAR-only robot with no camera. You give up pet waste detection and some obstacle avoidance, but there’s far less to leak. That’s a real trade-off and a legitimate choice.

Dad’s Take

You don’t have to be paranoid, but you should spend two minutes in the privacy settings on day one. Most people never open that screen.