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Comment by iforgotpassword | Hacker News Reader

Ok, this seems really disgusting.

The post was lacking some context at first but from how I understand this, you can render your sonos device unusable voluntarily and in turn get a new sonos device for a little cheaper. This happens by marking the serial number of your device on the sonos servers as "recycled" making reactivation impossible.

And they're somehow marketing this "feature" as environmentally friendly because it somehow in some twisted sense means you recycle your old device for a new one.

I'm speechless.

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Seems ripe for a hacking attempt. Being able to kill hardware with software always seems dangerous.

According to the twitter thread their ``recycle mode'' works by blacklisting the device's serial number in the mfg's database to prevent it from working, so depending on what you want to do with them they might be perfectly functional.

I’d guess it also deactivates the speaker and you need to add it to a Sonos account to activate it and add it to a group. This would prevent that.

That sounds like Sonos can easily reactivate them, right? That's not a bricking, is it?

They've refused to remove people from the blacklist who have accidentally put the devices into recycle mode

That really says a lot. I've seen plenty of companies who would have to tell you tough luck, no exceptions if you have a device which is "accidentally" on like a stolen blacklist (take iCloud activation lock for example), since if they have the ability to ever bend the rules, it'll be exploited by thieves -- but the funny part here is that 100% of the devices in "recycled" status are just there because Sonos gave someone a coupon, so the only "reason" for a zero-tolerance policy against reactivation in any circumstances is revenue protection.

Disgusting.

Do you think it’s really permanent though? I would assume Sonos maintains a list of the blacklisted devices and they could restore a device if they really needed or wanted to.

Your comment also made me wonder whether there’s such a thing as green hat? It doesn’t seem like there’s much of an economic incentive for a hacking attempt but I’d imagine Sonos would take a very different approach to recycling if every active device was suddenly put into “recycle” mode and this program was in the headlines.

I think "green hat" would be the hacker who figures out how to reverse the bricking.

I will never buy a Sonos product, and no one else should either.

Truly disgusting.

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