Article suggestions

This page is dedicated towards providing a communal list for users to submit potential articles to feature on the wiki, and to give editors inspiration on what pages they might want to add to the wiki. If you create an article based on an entry from this list, or see that someone else has done so, please make sure to delete the row from this page in order to prevent confusion.

Sources should be inserted within the 'refs' section of the table. If using the visual editor, take advantage of 'insert reference' via 'ctrl + shift + k' so that the sources are quick to add to future articles. If you are using the source editor, feel free to copy and paste the formatting from other correctly formatted references on the page. The more sources you include with an article idea, the more likely it is that others will pick the article idea up and run with it, so please attempt to include a good variety of descriptive sources!

Please take note of the wiki's Inclusion criteria when submitting article suggestions. If you see article suggestions here which do not fit the Wiki, feel free to remove them, leaving your reasoning in an edit note.

If you are an editor looking for further inspiration to write an article, you can also check out the Louis Rossmann video directory for a good collection of potential articles.

Example

Below is an example of what an entry should appear as:

Company	Summary of Incident	Refs
Nintendo	In 2025, the company Nintendo stripped Switch 2 consoles that used the MIG switch cartridge of all online functionality

List of incidents not yet covered

Company	Summary of Incident	Refs
Audi	Subscription-based paywalling of basic features of the Audi A3 in the EU and the UK.
ABC Financial Services	Manages memberships and recurring service subscriptions for other companies. Prevents customers from being able to cancel a service by locking them into a never-ending cycle of auto renewals, and not allowing the customer to opt out of auto renewal.
LBRY Foundation, Odysee	Community first decentralization & Odysseys plan to enable censorship by switching away from the opensource LBRY network.
TikTok	Integrated AI tools to track user behaviors even more for the purposes of selling to advertisers
uk.chicntech	Selling fraudulent products on its platform
Facebook, Yandex	Automatic opt-in of user-generated content being used for the purposes of training AI.
itch.io, Night School Studios, Netflix	In September 2024, users who purchased Oxenfree on itch.io were warned that the game was going to be pulled from the platform on October 1st. Consumers would not be able to download the installers after this date, so they would lose access unless they had them backed up. Users speculated that Netflix, the parent company of the development studio, had ordered the move; however, no response from Netflix or the developers was ever published. This is particularly notable because it is against itch.io's terms of service: "Users shall retain a license to this content even after the content is removed from the Service."
Skystone Games	Boundary, a multiplayer online-only first-person shooter, got shut down just a year after its release by Skystone games, and its publishing rights relinquished, citing "ongoing delays and a lack of updates from the developer". Studio Surgical Scalpels (the developer) stated that the publisher decissions were "extremely sudden and unreasonable", and attempted to "regain the rights to boundary". The game has been offline for more than a year at the time of writing, and no refunds or communications to the userbase has been made by Skystone Games.
Microsoft	Microsoft uses software engineers based in China to work on US Defense Department systems with laughably ineffective precautions. I think this is relevant in the context of Microsoft's attitude towards cloud security. In the past, master keys have been stolen by Chinese hackers and from my understanding, it's not even clear to what extent those groups still have access to Microsoft's internal systems, and by extension, Microsoft customers'. This needs more research though.
Microsoft	Potentially related to: Microsoft's anticompetitive practices Mysteriously banned the developer of LibreOffice from his Hotmail Account; Automated systems handled the appeal process and refused to restore access to his account, potentially harming LibreOffice's development.
Embodied	This is case of "software tethering". Embodied's $799 companion robot Moxie permanently shut down once the company decided to shut down cloud services. According to Embodied's own website "Moxie relies on cloud connectivity for its core features, and it will not function once services end ... Our Terms of Service specify that services may be terminated at any time without prior notice."
UP3 By Jawbone	Approximately 2011, Pioneering startup company from San Francisco, had revolutionary fitness trackers. In 2017 with no notice to customers they stole personal data and shut down app which in turn, bricked devices. Highly likely went bankrupt and sold to sister company to manipulate customer services and rights. Now owned by Aliph brands.
GoPro Hero 12	GoPro Hero 12 requires the GoPro app to be installed before you can use the camera. Many currently used devices are not compatible with the app, therefore making use of the camera difficult to impossible for new owners or upon camera factory reset. There's also the question of what data the app collects and whether it requires login and or camera activation.
Internet radios	I'd like a page where I can share information about internet radios "openness." Few allow you to enter a radio station's URL (which I would consider the least intrusive option). Most depend on third-party websites or apps; some of which have already bricked devices.
Google TLS Changes	Google's new requirements to certificate authorities require separate authority/signing chains to be used to issue Server Authentication and Client Authentication certificates. Therefore, starting 11 February 2026, Let's Encrypt will no longer include the Client Authentication EKU on default certificates
Devolo	Devolo switches off servers and removes their app from stores for their "Home Control" system, thus severely reducing the functionality of their devices (apparently Z-Wave-based).
Foxit Reader	Updater uses dark pattern to trick unsuspecting users into installing a trial version of their paid product. The checkbox is enabled again by default with each update in the hope that the user misses it by accident at some point.
Lowes	Lowes uses flock cameras and other AI powered cameras to collect data and build a profile on "prospective, current, or former Lowe's customers". Their cameras point away from their stores.
H&R Block	Marketing paid products as free, deleting users' tax data upon downgrading to free versions, and forcing users to contact support to get access to the free version of the tax filing software. FTC alleges coercive and obstructive techniques are used to make users pay for services they don't need as well.
Elegoo	The Elegoo Centauri Carbon 3d printer has been proven to use open source Klipper software which requires them to publish their changes to the code.
iRobot	Creator of Roomba automatic floor vacuums, CEO made statement in 2017 about selling customer's floor plan data. This company and the data was almost bought by Amazon, but fell through in 2024 after threats by EU Regulators
Mitsubishi Motors	Mitsubishi Motors has a rich history of consumer protection, compliance issues and privacy breaches. These include concealing safety defects, falsifying fuel economy data, and being fined for false advertising. Following the trend of subscription services for the automotive industry, Mitsubishi paywalls built-in features including remote start, SOS, collision detection, and car tracking through its app Mitsubishi Connect subscription service.	[1] [2] [3] [4][5]
Hikvision	Chinese surveillance camera manufacturer complicit in Uighur genocide which used to advertise recognition of praying and ramadan fasting among its selling points. Similarly to Flock, they are in use world wide and likely feed directly into the Chinese government's surveillance infrastructure and could conceivably be used to find dissidents world-wide. Recently, the city of Hamburg has installed them (Google Translate Version in English).
Chromecast (Google)	Chromecast has transitioned from a standalone product to one that requires the Google Home app for setup and control. This change prevents customers who either don't own a smartphone or prefer not to use the app from accessing their Chromecast devices. As a result, certain televisions—such as the Caixon EC43S1UA, which relied on built-in Chromecast functionality—can no longer be used as intended. This effectively removes a key feature from a product that was already purchased, diminishing its value or rendering it unusable altogether.
Apple	$17 000 Apple Watch 18 karat gold edition out of support only 8 years after its introduction (not end of sale!). This means no software support, and, crucially, no repair or replacement parts. If the battery dies, the watch is but a paperweight.
Wireless Power Consortium	After monopolizing wireless charging market Qi turned from an open standard into a proprietary. Version 1.3 introduced "secure authentication between the transmitter and the receiver", i.e. in order to operate every charger must include an expensive proprietary chip licensed only to certified members. This results in increased development and manufacturing costs directly passed onto consumer. Version 2.2, unlike previous versions, "is available for WPC Members only".
Meta/WhatsApp	In a new lawsuit, an ex-engineer alleges that 1500 engineers had unrestricted access to WhatsApp user data and that the company "failed to remedy the hacking and takeover of more than 100,000 accounts each day, ignoring his pleas and proposed fixes and choosing instead to prioritize user growth". (ongoing)	[6]
EcoVac	Vacuum cleaner robots produced by company 'EcoVac' were found vulnerable to hacking over bluetooth allowing for remote control and access to camera feed. Security researcher Dennis Giese notified the company in December of 2023. In August of 2024, the issue was described by the company as "extremely rare in typical user environments and require specialized hacking tools and physical access to the device."
Axon	Tazers sold with lease agreement that makes purchase effectively a subscription.	[69]
Atlassian	Users forced from on-premise to cloud only subscriptions
Google	Google apparently plans to reduce the interval of publishing source code of security patches they consider non-critical. This is another blow to the custom ROM community. Right now we don't have these incidents organised chronologically, maybe we should have a table with a timeline of measures Google takes to enshittify and close down Android (more APIs moved to Play Services, Developer verification, withholding AOSP device trees for Pixel devices to mess with Graphene OS, now delayed source code disclosure). What's worst, they always cite safety as a reason.
Google, Mozilla, Apple, Microsoft, but largely Google-led	Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Safari are removing XSLT 1.0 support, which could break critical parts of government's websites worldwide. There are valid security reasons for them to want to stop supporting this 1999-era standard, however they have had 26+ years to update to a newer standard (such as the 2017-era 3.1 standard, which is backwards compatible and would allow these sites to continue to work). The single unpaid developer maintaining these libraries has more or less retired after getting flooded with impossible to satisfy security requests from these companies. There is an existing project called XRUST to implement the 3.1 standard, which is 2/3rds of the way through supporting all the features of 1.0 - the XSLT part fully supports all the 1.0 features at this point. XSLT is part of the W3C Consortium's open web standards for formatting and presenting XML, and is also how RSS works, so RSS feeds would stop working as well, disrupting the livelihoods of podcasters. This has led to questions of who owns the web - the public (including the government) who paid for and laid down the highways / web infrastructure - or a handful of large corporations?
McDonald's/Taylor	McDonald's US mandates which ice cream machine has to be used by franchise licensees. The company that makes these machines uses deliberately obfuscated error codes to force restaurant owners to use their expensive tech service to fix them and reset the machines. The company makes more money from these "repairs" support than with actual sales. Not strictly end consumer, but the pattern warrants documenting imo. A similar problem exists with Doremi (Dolby) cinema projectors where their DRM leads to a ridiculous number of actions breaking the so-called "marriage" (projector-media block unity), requiring a costly technician to reset it. This one needs sources researched, though, as I don't have one on hand.
Apple App Store	Removal of likely legal apps designed to evade law enforcement agencies accused of illegal conduct and human rights violations upon request by authorities without court order, instead citing violations of store terms. This happened in Hong Kong in 2019 with Hong Kong Police during demonstrations and in the USA in 2025 with the ICE Block app.
Slack	Slack threatened to deactivate the Slack workspace and delete all message history of a nonprofit unless they agreed to a price hike of $200k yearly and also pay an extra $50k within a week. There were no prior warnings from Slack. A few years prior to this incident, they had agreed to migrate from the free nonprofit plan to a $5k per year plan.
Cloudary Holdings Limited / Webnovel	Terms of service with binding Arbitration.
Neato (Vorwerk)	Two years after taking over competitor Neato, Vorwerk closed down the Neato cloud services. Vacuum robots lose all app functionality and can only be started manually, which will cause them to do a full clean. No off-limits zones, no rooms, no barriers, only everything or nothing. Neato robots are not supported by Valetudo.
Wolfgang Puck, Bread maker	Some of the bread makers have anti repair screws in them to prevent people from repairing them themselves. Needs more citations.
The Japan Times	The Japan Times uses DMCA to take down an open source study resource for Genki and Quartet workbooks.
E621	Terms of service that require agreement to forced arbitration to use the website.
Apple, Beats	No support for Powerbeats (4th generation) despite the headphones being under 5 years from when Apple last distributed the product for sale. The product is not listed as discontinued or vintage, and by Apple's own guidelines, should be eligible for replacement parts and repair. OEM replacement eartips cannot be purchased for any Beats earphones.
Sony	The PSVita required a proprietary memory system and came with no usable memory natively; as a result, to effectively use the console, one had to purchase official, expensive memory cards from Sony. The PCH-1000 also had a proprietary charging port, making it nearly impossible to replace the cable should it break once Sony's support for the console dwindled. The charging port issue was later addressed via an updated console which changed the port to a microUSB connection. However, the expensive proprietary memory card issue remained and was exacerbated by Sony's blockage of using the PCH-2000's 1GB of storage while a memory card was inserted. Sony's continued efforts to block homebrew via firmware updates limited the owner's ability to continue using the device years after support was dropped for the console.

List of themes not yet covered

Theme	Summary of Theme	Refs
Ad block	User customization of information presentation. For instance, to selectively not display information of little interest to the user, or content the user deems harmful or offensive, or to conserve resources by not processing some information. Why include: Advertising is pervasive online, and increasingly showing up in devices. Many sources, including US government agencies, suggest ad block as a way of enhancing security. Ad block can help consumers own their own devices by controlling what they do. There are efforts to use copyright law (e.g., DMCA/spotify/revanced, and German court case) to force you to run programs on your device. See also, Advertising overload	[7]
Cloud	Somebody else's computer. See also: Self-hosting, Software as a service Examples: OneDrive, ICloud, Ring Issues: Legal protections your vs. somebody else's computer. Recovery when lose credentials. etc.

List of companies doing the right thing

It would be helpful to include examples of companies doing the right thing, even if they aren't, strictly speaking, consumer products.

Company	Good deed	Refs
Tektronix	Provided extensive product data on unsupported products to a museum, vintageTEK, and thus to tekwiki and the rest of the community.

See Also

• Louis Rossmann - Video Directory
• Other Channels - VIdeo Directory