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For more than a decade Netatmo produces weather stations, smart home cameras, smart locks, door bells, etc.

Couple of weeks ago they blocked all Russian accounts and deleted all user data.

New registrations are deleted and blocked within hours/days rendering devices worth hundreds/thousands of dollars useless.

(unless one would setup a VPN or at least custom DNS for the devices on router level).

> We apologize to our valued Netatmo customers for any inconvenience this cause and appreciate your understanding.

That is bad news for humanity.
I don’t get why you are downvoted. Like, sure, Netatmo probably had to do it for multiple reasons.

But still it shows how stupid and fragile our always connected future is. Like, yes, for sure Netatmo is in the good guys team and cut the thermostats of the bad guys team.

That’s nice and all, I’m also in the good guys team.

Until someday, your stupid government happens to make a stupid decision and suddenly, without knowing it, all of your appliances are either not working anymore or working against you because now you happen to be in the bad guys team.

Yeah, we really don’t want to piss off China.

How? Pressuring a people to make their government stop a war seems like a good thing for humanity.
It only plays into the hands of the regime, since their rhetoric is that west wants to eradicate them. You are making ordinary people suffer. Also, it is very difficult to get rid of a regime.
Why was it working for that long in the first place? Is it unrelated to sanctions? This seems like it should have happened nearly two years ago.
I bet someone wanted to virtue-signal. The war is indeed not a new thing and if this needed to be done then it would've been done a long time ago.
How should it be related to sanctions, ie what specific sanctions?

If Apple keeps working and taking payments on App Store (even Apple TV+), HomeKit is working, etc. there’s no reason that Netatmo should not.

This was out of the blue. No warning, or statement. They even kept selling the devices for some time on official Russian website.