Otherwise most consumer products (devices or software) phone home for one reason or another, whether it's telemetry and data collection, basic functionality that's implemented exclusively via cloud, or more advanced cloud features. It's down to deciding whether you trust western legal system and increased transparency to deal with the nefarious aspect of data collection, rather than the Russian, Chinese, etc. legal systems and transparency.
Almost every device or software with network connectivity I played with phoned home: the Philips Hue gateway (Netherlands), Tado (Germany), Apple Homepod (US), Amazon Alexa/Fire* stuff (US), Synology (Taiwan), Unifi Controller (US), LG/Samsung smart TVs (South Korea), Google Chromecast (US), random assortment of network connected cameras (China, Taiwan), and a big etc. here. Some do a better job than others and just connect for basic stuff as far as I can tell, some enabled telemetry without asking and after the backlash ask again after every update, some have no option to disable this connectivity, etc.
One thing that trips most people looking at this for the first time is when they start off with blocking internet connectivity for the least trustworthy devices (Chinese brands) and immediately see a zillion attempts being blocked, even if the device keeps working. They conclude the devices are trying to exfiltrate that much data. They're most likely constantly reattempting until they get a response. Some of my network cameras would try every second but after a successful connection the flood stopped and they barely sent anything.
I chose to "complicate" my life a bit and buy hardware that I can flash with some open source firmware cutting out the cloud features completely, or connecting via "home made" solutions everywhere I can then using my home VPN to control them if needed. Whether China or the US have that data is of little real consequence to me right now but it's a matter of principle and I'd rather not shift my principles based on geography.
