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Comment by jsmith99 | Hacker News Reader

Technically, Ubiquiti does have a local option. You can run the controller locally and disable cloud login.

That's how I run it, but it seems they are now pushing ads to local controllers and between this and deprecating recently released devices, I just completely lost trust in them.

Small correction - if you don't have a product that would display stats in a portion of the "single pane of glass" control panel, it displays an ad instead of a "you don't have this product, no data to see here".

Scummy? Sure ... especially if you don't have a Ubiquiti gateway but only AP's so the top part of the page is blocked out, but it's not exactly "pushing ads at me!" in the traditional sense - e.g. they're not targetting ads, they're not collecting data.

> it seems they are now pushing ads to local controllers

The pervasiveness of adtech doesn't cease to impress me.

I really hope that one day it will be remembered the same way we remember ritual sacrafice .

It isn’t adtech, per se.

Protect still needs cloud to be activated for authentication it seems.

I used to have remote access turned off and accessed the video streams via the iOS app when my phone was on VPN to the local network. That no longer works. Remote access (cloud) needs to be activated in order for the iOS app to work, no matter if you are on the local network or not.

i've run my own controller locally for years without forced cloud login.. i've never used the ios app, what can you do from it that you can't do from the web interface?

He said Protect, which is only part of the newer Gen2 cloudkeys (controller + video surveillance). The app just lets you manage the basic config of your devices and see network stats. There is a separate app for viewing your security cameras via Unifi cloud.

When did that start?

My controller is only on 6.0.43 but i can access it via iOS app on VPN.

My contoller only does Wireless/AP management though. nothing more.

He said Protect, which only comes on the new cloud key gen2 devices and requires a Unifi cloud account. The old stand-alone controller (key or installer) does not unless you tie it to your Unifi cloud account.

People have reported cloud login can't be disabled now.

It can still be disabled from the controller:

New UI: Settings > System Settings > Administration > Enable Remote Access

"Classic" UI: Settings > Remote Access > Enable Remote Access

It sounds like it can be disabled on your own hardware but not Ubiquiti devices.

I have a Unifi Dream Machine Pro with cloud access turned off-- the setting for it (since the UDM Pro makes all applications accessible via the cloud, not just Unifi Network) is in the device settings rather than the Unifi Network controller settings.

I set it up a few months ago with no cloud login, though it was a pain.

I have been suspicious of their cloud config and run a docker image of the controller locally.

I'm still on version 5.14 and all of the cloud features are optional. I just ignore them. I guess now I know not to upgrade!

When they introduced callhomes/telemetry sometime in the 5.x code i blocked their known DNS entries and then setup firewall rules to block all internet access outside of the Ubuntu Repos..

It still checks for firmware updates, right?

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