People should care, but the first story is relatively harmless, it's just the flasher program getting the news from the website.
2nd story I am not sure, is it the device calling back home or the Arduino IDE? It doesn't look like the module itself calls back home.
That was the explanation received from the coder for the call in the first case.
For the new one it looks like somehow the ESP module itself it's doing some hasty things under some certain conditions like a web request trigger. I don't have access to the right tools this days to test, as I'm travelling, but if anybody can try to repeat the experiment presented on esp8266 forum subject from above, will be great to have more data.
PS: and for the ones that still don't know the LG story:
http://doctorbeet.blogspot.com/2013/11/lg-smart-tvs-logging-usb-filenames-and.htmlhttp://www.engadget.com/2013/11/21/lg-admits-smart-tv-data-collection/http://www.tomsguide.com/us/lg-tvs-spying-confirmation,news-17887.htmlI insist with this one, as it is a beauty of itself
"This transmission occurs even if users have turned off an option called "collection of watching info" in their TV settings. LG uses TV owners' viewing information to sell targeted advertisements that appear on the Smart TV's home screens.
LG's statement confirms that Huntley's findings were accurate.
"We have verified that even when this function is turned off by the viewers, it continues to transmit viewing information, although the data is not retained by the server," an LG representative said in an email. "
What I say, beauty, pure gems