Basically any device that you can remotely access these days will "phone home". It is so customers don't have to deal with configuring firewalls, port forwarding and public ip addresses just to communicate with their device.
Whether it's a camera, thermostat, or door lock, they all phone home to let a central server know where they are located, so when you try to remotely access it, you just have to ask the central server where to find it, and it points you in the right direction.
Phoning home isn't inherently evil, but has become to be assumed it is evil. You have to trust the device phoning home isn't sending any sensitive information, and that the connection cannot be compromised. Generally that isn't trusted.
So no matter what device you install with an easy to use remote access platform, it will be phoning home, somewhere, and sending some information to someone. What that all specifically is we generally do not know.