Back in 2009, a High School Vice Principle watched via a student's webcam on their school supplied laptop at night as the kid snacked on Mike & Ike candies IN HIS BEDROOM. She summoned him to her office to accuse him of taking drugs. This got her sued along with the school district who configured the school's laptops to allow for the spying. Sadly, the FBI said there wasn't enough to prove criminal intent.
I won't let that stuff on my system for any reason. I took a qualification test as part of job interview with the camera covered. Guess dodged a bullett and didn't get the job?
I have the same concern about Apple and Google. I've diversified my usage of their services to have alternatives and regular backups that don't use either so I can recover.
How come these "quiet academics" don't have fatal booby traps that kills the SWAT team and blow up the house when invading the home when they've bugged out?
You'd think with so many movies having this scenario that it would be more common.
The old AT&T router I had came with a pretty obscure SSID password on a label printed on the side of it. The admin password was also a mix of punctuation and mixed case alphanumerics. I saw a neighbor's router and it's SSID password was different. So if these were being machine generated and set, that means there's some sort of service access and port into the router from AT&T's side.
Comcast Business Router, however came with a fixed username and password which I had to change when I set it up. I can't imagine a non-techie person going through this step.
If I worked for Starlink in Brazil, I'd be on a plane visiting friends outside the country right now. I'm sure an order to arrest EVERYONE who works for Starlink is being drafted right now.
If Starlink is connected to any infrastructure inside Brazil, I suspect that's about to go dark. What the Brazilian authorities need is access to Starlink's internal admin network that controls EVERYTHING. Because Melon Husk is to stupid to pipeline infrastructure for each country. I'll bet it's all shared at some level. I doubt local IT person would risk jail for them and their families or "extended renditioning" to extract access to those networks to shut them down.
It's better than leaving them in some men's room baby changing station with the sign "Place sacrifice here" sign taped to it.