[Discuss] Off Topic and Proud of It: Untraceable Garage Door Openers: No Alexa, No Siri, no nothing

[kentborg at borg.org (Kent Borg)]

Whatever one thinks of the NSAs abilities or intentions, garage door 
openers being integrated with "smart" speakers is a bad idea. Insecure, 
fragile, buggy.

I'd start with being worried about not being able to open my garage in a 
power outage. Why add internet outage (or other computer mess up) to the 
list of failure modes?

As for what to buy? Get one with the features and price you like best, 
keep it incommunicado (don't connect it to your network, if it brings 
its own cellular data physically disable it), then craft your own 
out-board remote.

Ah: There is the question. What kind of remote do you want? How do you 
build it? Garage remotes are a big security and reliability liability. 
What compromises do you prefer?


-kb, the Kent who does operate a certain garage opener on a regular 
basis, by way of a physical key-switch, installed in such a way that if 
pulled out of the wall the wires will break at a point away from the 
switch and not get pulled out for easy shorting.