Google’s discontinued Nest thermostats still secretly upload home data to company servers despite losing smart features, raising serious privacy concerns.
Google officially shut down remote control features for first and second generation Nest Learning Thermostats last month. Many owners assumed the devices would stop talking to Google once the company removed smart functions.
New research, however, shows that these early Nest devices continue uploading detailed logs to Google even though support has ended.
Security researcher Cody Kociemba uncovered this quiet data flow after digging into the backend as part of a repair bounty challenge run by FULU, a right-to-repair group cofounded by electronics repair expert and YouTuber Louis Rossmann. The challenge asked developers to restore lost smart features for unsupported Nest devices. Kociemba teamed up with the open-source community and created No Longer Evil, software that brings smart functionality back to these aging thermostats.
While cloning Google’s API to build the project, he suddenly received a flood of logs from customer devices. That surprise led to a deeper look at what Google still collects.
Even though remote control no longer works, Kociemba found that early Nest Learning Thermostats still upload a steady stream of sensor data to Google. This includes:
Kociemba says the volume of logs was extensive. He turned off the incoming data because he never expected the devices to remain connected to Google after the shutdown.
Google previously said unsupported models will