Presumably you're buying more than one remotely-switched outlet, and their software will fail at the same time. So the actual risk there is much higher than $5.

The way I see it is buy devices that can be controlled with Free software, don't give them Internet connectivity, and plan on never "upgrading" the firmware. The TP-LINK Kasa line works well for me (their protocol is trivially obfuscated), as well as anything that can be flashed with Tasmota.

Also in general you don't want to go too cheap on anything that switches line current. I have to wonder how many of those fly by night "Amazon brands" are getting creepage right.

Just in case you're not aware, there is a new and much improved free Kasa library in the works: https://github.com/python-kasa/python-kasa

It's already been working perfectly with my HS103 and HS110 plugs for months. The only thing still missing for me is the per-plug energy meter of my HS300 strip, which I hope will be coming very soon.

Nice. I've been driving mine directly with Home Assistant, but it has some warts. So I do have the itch to write my own daemon that controls them, and publishes a better interface via MQTT.

At $5 per outlet I'd be worried about one of them burning my house down.

I don't buy smart stuff because the intersection between "expensive enough to not be a fire hazard" and "not 5x overpriced for the value-add" is an empty set.

Not sure why you were downvoted, so I gave you an upvote. You have a valid opinion, expressed with a bit of amusing hyperbole. I agree with the gist of it, I don't trust any cloud connected smart devices, because I know how the sausage is made, from the device firmware, to the cloud software, to the all-consuming pressure to make a profit regardless of privacy or ethical issues.

Sounds like you need a smart toilet lid.

With DRM! And hope the Internet won't be down in an urgency moment.

Flushing gets temporarily disabled if toilet lid fails to phone home, backs up on you if it detects "unauthorized" aftermarket parts.