Your smart air fryer could be listening to you

A report from UK consumer watchdog Which? has found that smart devices around your home could be collecting more data on you than you realise.

Which? assessed appliances and devices from four categories – smart air fryers, TVs, smart speakers and smart watches – and scored them on privacy.

Smart air fryers, which have an app connection to send cooking alerts to your phone, let you follow online recipes and set the air fryer from your phone, were among the worst offenders.

Which? looked at air fryers from Xiaomi (the Mi Smart), Aigostar (the Aigostar) and Cosori (the CAF-LI401S) and its most worrying finding was that all three brands requested permission to record audio from the user’s phone.  

This is likely to be for voice control purposes rather than anything more nefarious, and in fact, in a statement responding to the Which? study, Xiaomi said: “The permission to record audio on Xiaomi Home app is not applicable to Xiaomi Smart Air Fryer which does not operate directly through voice commands and video chat.”

Still, knowing that your air fryer could listen in on and record your conversations is an icky feeling and likely not something that you signed up for when buying a kitchen appliance.

What’s more, all three air fryers requested customers’ precise location, which again doesn’t seem entirely necessary.

The Xiaomi app also used trackers for Facebook, Pangle (the Tiktok for Business ad network) and, for customers in China, for Tencent.

In addition, according to Which?, Aigostar and Xiaomi both sent users’ personal data to servers in China. This is apparently mentioned in the privacy notice – but who actually reads those through?

Since we first published this article, Xiaomi contacted us with a statement taking issue with Which?’s assertion about personal data:

“We are aware of the recent press release by Which? and some information in it including ‘Xiaomi fryer sent people’s personal information to servers in China’ is inaccurate and misleading, which could be resulted from [sic] some misunderstandings. We are in the process of clarifying with Which?. Our privacy policy is developed to comply with applicable regulations such as the UK GDPR and the DPA 2018. By complying with local applicable laws and regulations in markets where Xiaomi operates, user data are stored in compliance with local laws.”

We have asked the brand if that means that data are stored locally, within the UK, and will report back when we hear more.

Here’s the full table of the Which? smart device privacy scoring.

How to prevent apps from gathering your data

You don’t have to put up with spying cooking equipment – or, in fact, any snooping smart devices in your home.

The ICO is due to publish new guidelines for smart product providers in 2025, but there’s no guarantee that they’ll be enforced. So, for the time being, at least, you’ll need to protect yourself. Here’s how:

1. Opt out

Opt out of any data collection you can during set-up. In some cases, this may limit the way the product works, in which case you might need to be prepared to return it.

2. Read up

Read the privacy notice to find out exactly what data will be collected on you.

3. Hit delete

If you use a smart speaker such as a Google Home or Amazon Alexa model, you can choose for your voice recordings to be deleted automatically, rather than stored.

4. Check and limit

Check your permissions on your phone and deny or limit access to data such as contacts or location settings. Bear in mind that you’ll need to allow some access for particular features to work. Here’s how to check permissions on your phone.

If you have an Android device, you can use the Permission manager to see an overview of what your apps can access. You can also delve into App info for each app and see exactly which permissions each app has, and switch them off there.

Which?’s tests were conducted on Android apps. iOS apps have slightly different privacy settings. For one thing, they’re required to ask permission for data gathering – if they want to track you or use location services, for example. But if you don’t look closely, you could still be granting apps more permissions than you mean to.

In iOS, you can go to Settings, then Privacy & Security, to see an overview of the apps with access to your data, location, camera and microphone. In Privacy & Security, you can also see an App Privacy Report to find out how apps are using the permissions you granted them.

You can also complete a Safety Check to see which people and apps have access to your data.

To turn permissions on and off for individual apps, click on your Apps list at the bottom of your Settings page.

Are smart air fryers worth it?

We’ve reviewed three smart air fryers, one of which is the Xiaomi Mi smart air fryer. The others are the Proscenic T21 and the Cosori Dual Basket. We don’t think that it’s ever worth buying an air fryer purely for its smart features, and that most smart features are of fairly limited appeal.

It’s never a good idea to cook food when you’re not near an appliance, as there’s always a danger of fire. Nor is it safe to leave food in a room-temperature appliance and set it to cook just in time for you to come home, so remote features are already fairly useless.

That means that the best air fryer smart features are the alerts you get to your phone to let you know your food is ready (pretty handy if you’re watching TV and can’t hear the beep from the kitchen) and the online library of recipes that come with most smart models. Use one of these recipes and you’ll get an in-app option to set the air fryer to the correct time and temperature for the recipe, with one press.

However, neither of these features is a must-have, so if you’re not comfortable with a smart air fryer, we don’t really think you’re missing out. And if you’ve already bought a smart air fryer and are worried, you can easily factory reset its smart features and use it as an ordinary dumb appliance.

We have plenty of non-smart air fryers in our round-ups of the best dual-drawer air fryers, the best air fryer ovens, the best Ninja air fryers and the best air fryers overall. Have a browse to find the best model for you.