
Roku is cryptolocking TV’s until you give personal data - Thisisthefuture
https://medium.com/@DataRealLies/roku-is-locking-down-tvs-until-you-give-personal-data-397ceadfd458
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jandrese
> Disclaimer: by ‘’Lock’’ I mean soft-lock. They do technically allow you to
> continue without doing do on the payment, but the options are hidden and
> only available if you look for them. Dark-net patterns are absolutely at
> work here, and unless you factory reset your TV it’s a freaking brick for
> the majority of people. Your TV is what I will call ‘’BlueBricked’’

"Cryptolocking" is something I generally associate with malware that encrypts
your hard drive and won't give you the decryption key unless you pay a ransom.

This is "there are dark patterns that make it difficult to get past the
initial setup screen without signing up for an account", which is not the same
at all.

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big_chungus
What is a "Dark-net pattern"? And cryptolocking implies it somehow bricks your
TV with some sort of cryptographic security.

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lawnchair_larry
The term is dark pattern. Dark-net is something different, author doesn’t know
what they’re talking about.

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danpalmer
There's a lot wrong with this article, but:

> Lets get something straight here. Gender should ALWAYS be a optional choice.

This is a good take. Many more services should make gender more optional. It's
unnecessary for almost all services, it's something that is often used for
_poor_ targeting – targeting based on markers in platform activity is likely
to yield much better targeting, and unless you spend a lot of time thinking
about how to model the answers to that question it has the potential to
exclude and offend. Let's just stop asking for it!

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nkrisc
Is this a TV with some kind of Roku software built in? I thought Roku was a
physical device that you could just unplug.

This is why I will only buy "dumb" TVs that can only display input from
external sources.

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pwinnski
Just last week I bought a TCL Roku TV. The price was right!

During setup, I declined to connect to WiFi and then set the TV to
automatically switch to HDMI 1 when it turns on, and to honor CEC over HDMI so
that my external AppleTV box can power it on and off. Taught the AppleTV
remote how to handle the volume on the TV, and that's it. The Roku remote is
in a drawer, and the TV behaves as a dumb monitor.

I'm not even sure whether it's possible to buy a large TV without software
loaded on it, but you don't have to let that software run!

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MrMember
I wonder how long not connecting it to wifi will be a viable option. I
wouldn't be surprised if many devices today still attempt to connect to open
networks even if you decline to connect it to your home network. Once cell
modems are embedded in everything the only option to prevent it from phoning
home will be to physically disable the modem or put it in a Faraday cage.

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pwinnski
Fortunately, not connecting to wifi also means that my TV's software/firmware
won't be updated, so for this particular device, I think it will be a viable
option as long as it keeps operating.

Whether TCL will someday close that loophole for future models remains to be
seen.

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unwiredben
See tvupdate.roku.com; Roku posts USB-loadable firmware updates for all Roku
TVs, although it's sometimes not as current as the network-delivered version.

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excalibur
Does anybody here know a good alternative? A device you can connect to a dumb
TV to play streaming content that doesn't spy on you? All of the commercially
available options seem to be selecting a giant corporation to send all your
data to. As a "small" company that does this and nothing else, you would think
Roku would be a relatively privacy-focused option, but it appears to be the
opposite. I feel like we're being forced to go the Kodi route, which leads to
a disturbing correlation of privacy with piracy.

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fluxsauce
I use an NVIDIA Shield TV and a Pi-Hole, which gives me the advantage /
flexibility of the Android ecosystem and the ability to stop some tracking.
All subscription streaming providers phone home while you're watching.

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disposition2
I second this while also mentioning that I have not let my TV connect to the
internet. It came as a 'smart TV' but I just don't give it access to the
internet so it is therefore just a 'dumb' screen with inputs

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intothemild
This looks like an Oauth2-like pin code flow. My guess is it’s doing this
because Roku are requiring logged in users to access the software. This isn’t
unheard of. I’d argue that it’s highly beneficial.

But if this is the main OS of the TV, and this is a requirement to use
external inputs. Then fuck this.

I think my Sony Android TV allowed me to skip user login during setup. I might
be wrong because I logged in then subsequently put it on my “Internet of Shit”
VLAN, where all the other terrible crap goes.

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oceanghost
This article is poorly structured to be polite.

I recently set one of these up for my daughter, and there is indeed no way to
use the display without a Roku account, and that does require a credit card,
and sneakily tries to get you to sign up for trials, as the article mentions.
It took a lot of effort for me to make sure my (3 year old) couldn't order
HBO, etc.

Had I known that, I woudln't have bought it. It's easy to envision a future
where Roku is out of business and this tv can't be activated again if needs
be.

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unwiredben
During setup, you can choose to not connect to a network and you don't have to
link the TV. Also, once you get to this screen, hitting star will bring up a
help menu; asking for more help will let you factory reset the TV and start
setup again where you can skip a network connection.

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gambiting
The article doesn't explain one thing - what is Roku TV? I tried googling but
the first result is the Facebook Portal device, and then their own website
says it's a Hisense TV?

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sundayedition
These appear to be different than "smart TVs" which offer Roku built-in as an
optional app

Instead of spending all this time writing an article and on.the phone, they
should have returned it and got another brand of TV

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nesky
Wouldn't blocking the tv's MAC from the router solve this problem along with
blocking any data collection as well?

