Google Still Collects Data From Discontinued Nest Thermostats

Google acknowledges this data transmission in its support documentation, stating that unsupported devices "will continue to report logs for issue diagnostics."

Google disabled remote control functionality for first and second-generation Nest Learning Thermostats last month, but the company has continued to transmit device data to its servers. After cloning Google's API to restore smart features to old, unsupported devices, security researcher Cody Kociemba found that Google was still collecting data from those devices.

Kociemba participated in a bounty program created by FULU, a right-to-repair advocacy organization cofounded by YouTuber Louis Rossmann. The $14,772 challenge asked developers to bring smart functionality back to unsupported Nest devices. His project, "No Longer Evil," successfully restored thermostat control but revealed an unexpected discovery in the process.

When his custom software launched, logs from customer devices began streaming in automatically.

"While they turned off access to remotely control them, they did leave the ...