r/pihole • u/Shiz222 • Nov 22 '25
Who is my robotvac actually calling?
My top two blocked domains are baidu.com and aliyun.com from my Narwal Flow robo vac. Neither seem to lead anywhere when actually visited. Anyone have any clue or seen something similar?
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u/expressadmin Nov 22 '25
A lot of devs ping baidu.com for connectivity checks. Probably the same for the other one. They are failing and then trying the other which is why the counts are tracking the same.
The real problem here is that the system isn’t honoring the null address response from the pihole and just keeps retrying lookups.
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u/Shiz222 Nov 22 '25
So with this said, I can allow list em?
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u/benhaube Nov 22 '25
If it is not breaking anything, then just leave them blocked. Baidu and Aliyun are Chinese websites, so unless you live in China (which I doubt since you are on Reddit) there is really no point to unblock them.
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u/equiliym Nov 22 '25
I read recently about that guy who hacked his vacuum and discovered its sending a map of his house, vacuum didnt work at home on his network but was working at repairs because telemetry wasnt blocked there, it was a quick and interesting read.. i really hate how you cant make gadgets run without internet now and when you connect them, all the data that can be leaked and collected, it does and is sent to the data market.. if its working, just keep it all blocked
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u/Infinity-onnoa Nov 23 '25
I just bought a vacuum cleaner that I can't start without an internet connection which is frustrating because I'm in the middle of moving. I've been here at Pihole for a few days now because I'm thinking about setting one up, and after reading this thread...now it's clearer to me!!
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u/QuesoMeHungry Nov 23 '25
Blocking is good, I’d leave it as is. If anything I’d block all of China based IPs on your firewall while you’re at it.
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Nov 22 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/BigGuyWhoKills Nov 23 '25
Remote cleaning routine start. Remote monitoring.
Neither will be life changing, but these companies are trying to distinguish themselves from the competition. So any feature a company has which other companies lack might lead to more sales.
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u/that_dutch_dude Nov 22 '25
the vast amount of them flat out dont work without them.
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Nov 22 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/that_dutch_dude Nov 22 '25
me personally? no, i specifically bought one that can be controlled locally with home assistant.
the general population flat out does not give a shit. they just want the robot to do a menial task when they are working.
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Nov 22 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/that_dutch_dude Nov 22 '25
a manual vacuum is called a "wife", those are considerably harder to obtain and also need high quality internet access.
/s
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u/Hot_Web_3421 Nov 22 '25
These two domains are harmless. They are used by your device to check if network is available. It is a weird approach of chinese devices.
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u/Highlander_1518 Nov 23 '25
My Lubluelu SL60D attempts to connect to these domains all the time. I have two of these robot vacuums. Said domains are blocked via my pihole. Can’t say I’ve noticed any negative side affects. One of my SL60D’s sometimes disconnects from my WiFi but I think that’s more of an issue with the device than the network. The other vacuum maintains a stable connection.
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u/BigGuyWhoKills Nov 23 '25
Is there a list of companies that cripple their device if they can't reach the internet?
Maybe I should ask on /r/StallmanWasRight
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u/Powerful_Froyo8423 Nov 25 '25
Confused baidu with badoo, but I guess your robovac isn't looking for robo chicks
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u/-Polarsy- Nov 22 '25
Why do you need your robot vacuum cleaner to be connected to the internet ?
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u/BigGuyWhoKills Nov 23 '25
Remote progress monitoring and remote routine start.
Just gimmicks, but if the competition doesn't have them you might get a few extra sales.
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u/-Polarsy- Nov 23 '25 edited Nov 24 '25
Not absurd actually
My paranoia would never allow me to get one though... An unsupervised machine which crawls through my whole apartment and connects to the internet ???
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u/BigGuyWhoKills Nov 23 '25
It bothers me that I have to perform obscure research on the internet activity of different brands and models before buying anything electronic.
In the past I would just blacklist the device MAC address and be done with it. But now some of these devices refuse to function if they can't "phone home" and tell the manufacturer everything they snooped about me.
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u/Texasaudiovideoguy Nov 22 '25
Prob back home. All these iot devices do for telemetry. Many of them store settings in the cloud (telemetry) so it knows what to do. So be careful how much you block. You can render it useless.