So, I’m tired of all these companies having access to my information and data. I’m also trying to limit security concerns from hackers and general lowlifes. Is this possible? Is there anyone who teaches or guides on this (preferably on YouTube as im a bit of a visual learner).
You can get a fairly complicated local setup with a bunch of DIY, but you should really ask yourself whether it’s worth it.
Nobody at those companies cares what your light schedule is or wants to watch your doorbell cam. You can usually set data retention so that they have very little data either way, or potentially store some data privately, such as video, even while using cloud services.
Meanwhile, the best way to make your smart devices easy to compromise is to be responsible for your own software updates and security. This stuff needs to be looked at daily, and these cloud providers have entire teams that focus only on this.