Chamberlain myQ Smart Garage
Chamberlain Group · Smart Lock
Staff Reviewed — a person at DeSpy reviewed this rating.
Index
myQ turns a garage door - a primary home entry point - into a cloud-logged event stream, recording every open and close with timestamps tied to a specific home. Combined with the app's optional phone geofencing, it reveals when the household leaves and returns. The system is entirely cloud-dependent and deliberately walled off: Chamberlain cut third-party access and steers all users into its own ad-carrying app.
Why this rating
Policy is penalized for collecting entry/exit and precise-home-location signals that reveal occupancy (sensitive-collection), no in-app way to opt out of the ad/data use surfaced after the walled-garden move (no-opt-out), vague retention, unilateral changes and arbitration. Evidence is dominated by the well-documented 2023-2024 controversy in which Chamberlain blocked Homebridge/Home Assistant/HomeKit integrations - claiming security while <0.2% of users were affected - and pushed users into an app that injects ads that cover the door-open button (dark-patterns); it is a consumer-hostile/interoperability harm rather than a data breach, so the evidence axis stays relatively high.
What it is
- Requires a cloud account
- Manufacturer
- Chamberlain Group
- Category
- Smart Lock
- Model years
- 2019-present
- Market status
- Current
- Companion app
- myQ
The evidence 2
Independent research, regulatory action, lawsuits and journalism about how this device handles personal data — the "what actually happens" axis. Each links to its source.
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Chamberlain cut off third-party API access under a 'security' rationale, forcing users into its own app whose ads reportedly push the garage-open button off screen.
Why it matters here: Directly documents the walled-garden lock-in and ad-injection dark pattern that defines myQ's privacy/consumer posture.
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Home Assistant removed its myQ integration after Chamberlain actively blocked access, stripping users of local/self-hosted control of their own garage.
Why it matters here: Confirms the anti-interoperability move from the receiving platform's side, forcing users back onto Chamberlain's cloud and app.
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Descriptive, cited, not legal advice; ratings are versioned and corrections create a new version. Data from the IoT Info Grabber DB research project, CC BY-SA 4.0.