This is a pretty open secret within the industry. Geographic data can be provided via setup (a lot of TV's ask for a zip code on setup) or usually simply via GeoIP lookup.
Dig a bit deeper and you get into service provided by Samba TV and or Inscape and you can find that they're sending back frames of video in a lot of cases to track what you're watching.
This data is becoming a huge mechanism for subsidizing TV sales and the interactivity is being looked at as a huge opportunity to recoup some of the ad spend being lost via streaming and fewer 30 second spots.
With new TV's its time to view them as private as a browser (With less controls).
Not even a secret. A TV manufacturer publicly said a while ago that a TV without "smart" features is more expensive for the company (even if sold at the same retail price) because they cannot make any money from selling usage data.
As long as I can keep the TV offline to operate it I'm fine with it. The day it needs to be online to work is where I'll be seriously pissed enough that I'll return it without hesitation.
How? By putting in cellular or sat connections in secret? Because the FCC would be very interested in someone selling unlabeled and unlicensed radio containing equipment.
Don't worry, in a few years they will have their own sim card and network.
This behavior is despicable and we must not accept it just because "I wouldn't connect the network cable/wifi anyway". Because one day that isn't an option and by then it is already too late.
Aren’t Xfinity APs only for Xfinity subscribers? I doubt they’re just wide open. Now if a TV manufacturer struck a deal with an ISP and gave it its own access point to join...
Sonos needs to be called out for the dramatic disparity between how they present their products and what those products actually do.
Their userbase is almost universally clueless as to what it is these devices are doing and what the goals of Sonos, as a company, must be.
They should have been one of the good ones - and I had such enthusiasm for their products - but they have proven to be very, very antagonistic towards their users.
How much do they make per user? I would have have thought it was in the $10-$20 range and not enough to trigger any price sensitivity. I'm a tightass with an aldi TV but wouldn't have cared if it cost $10 more.
Not entirely related, but I remember thinking when Hulu was talking about an ad-free version of their streaming library that “this will clearly cost a lot more per month because my eyeballs are worth A LOT!!”
Imagine my surprise when it turned out only being $4 a month to remove commercials. It almost hurts my feelings knowing how little I’m worth to advertisers...
Paying to have commercials removed may not imply that your activity is not spied on, then the corresponding data not sold to third parties. You "locally" (on the site you paid) escape from advertising, indeed, but for the rest...
It's not only about allowing customers to pay for their share of ad revenue in order to remove it the ads. But to also enter new markets of customers.
For example I would never subscribe to a service with ads, regardless of price. The Hulu tier that includes ads would have to pay me about $30/mo before I would consider switching from the ad free tier.
The number might be unrelated to ad revenue at all and they figured that was the perfect threshold between capturing the highest number of "cheaper" subscribers while also maximizing new ad-free subscribers.
How is this even a question? One persons data is useless. They don’t care what you’re watching specifically, they care what everybody in a region is watching. They have to track individuals to get the profile data to categorize them in the first place.
Services revenue in general is where all devices are going. If you subscribe to Netflix on your smart TV, the TV maker gets comms. Again, this referral/conversion model is pretty dated. Otherwise TV maker has no incentive to pre-bundle your app (same as Windows, some Android phones, Lenovo laptops, etc).
Roku enabled TVs very clearly send back frames of what you are watching. I've been watching YouTube casted via chromecast plugged into HDMI (NOT the built in chromecast, I have verified multiple times) and the Roku will give me a full width toast saying to press `*` to watch the full movie or some similar contextual option
I was pretty put off the first time this happened. That said, I don't even know if I looked through the settings to see if I could turn it off..
It sends audio and/or video fingerprints (not frames, for privacy and bandwidth reasons), which are matched against a fingerprint database. Whatever people see on TV is usually 10 to 60 seconds behind the real live stream at the broadcaster (which is where the reference fingerprinting happens). GeoIP data can be used to roughly deduce where the TV is located, in order to better filter out false positives out of multiple matches (e.g. in the US where lots of programming on east/west side is just shifted by ~3 hours due to time difference).
are you saying that hypothetically, if the MPAA comes knocking on Roku's door with enough money and a fingerprint database of torrented movies/songs, Roku could then tell them they have people matching those fingerprints? After which I'm assuming they'd have enough justification to get a court order to get the contact info from Roku for matching users?
Possession, use, and downloading of copyrighted content is legal,* or no legal streaming services could exist. Copyright law is only concerned with licensing the transfer.
* in theory, as a civil matter, they could make you destroy any unlicensed copies, but they would have a hard time getting criminal charges pressed, as well as proving damages from watching a TV show from an unlicensed provider vs a licensed one
Not for attribution. It’s for exposure. If Pepsi buys $1M in ads on NBC, it only knows the DMA and time slot/programs it bought the ads on. It doesn’t know the households it bought the ads on. With ACR data, it will know that you were exposed. From there, they can do a few different things. Audience studies (like they reached 2000 households with a certain income etc). Or they can run attribution studies. A company called Data+Math looks at exposure of these kinds of ads, understands which households weren’t exposed (as a control) and gives statistically significance calculations on linear TV ads to understand lift of sales (one example).
Inscape, an ACR company, have this revealing paragraph on their blog. Note the "following your IP from the exposure to the ad, to the sales funnel" part:
"Advertisers like ACR data because it provides second-by-second feedback on how their ads are performing. Nielsen provides its data in 15-minute blocks, so if viewers tuned out after the first ad in a pod, the advertiser has no way of knowing. And since IP addresses are included, companies like iSpot.tv and Data + Math are able to use that information to create multi-touch attribution ratings that help advertisers understand how certain ads and placements helped move viewers through the sales funnel, from seeing the ad, to googling the product to actually buying it. It’s a lengthy process that requires a lot of data and a lot of rigor, but it’s an excellent way to prove to marketers that TV advertising actually works."
"""
What's funny about this is that I think this is a legitimate and relatively non-evil use case.
"""
- parent is saying that fingerprinting so the advertisers know who saw the ads is legitimate and relatively non-evil.
It all comes down to lack of transparency/oversight and the option to exercise control as an individual.
"""
- parent acknowledges that not telling the user and not making it configurable can be problematic.
If you consider tracking an anonymous identifier for the purposes of better marketing "spying" then I think that's a stretch. Calling out TV in particular for it is a bit silly - it's simply everywhere.
"...without their consent and without telling them about it."
Yes they are. You opt in or out when you buy the TV. They tell you about it then. You can be like most people and not read the fine print, but then don't be all surprised when someone's pulling the wool over your eyes.
I can't fathom the math and scale involved here making sense in the long term.
Eventually the marginal increase in profit is less than the marginal increase in adtech cost. I wouldn't be surprised if many industries passed that point years ago. There's probably a lot of hype and hubris disguising that fact, but someone's going to make a successful business case out of cheap, low-creepiness spray-and-pray advertising.
Depends on the manufacturer. Some use it to get you to use their other services. Some use it for second screen apps. Others for various on-screen info. Not sure of all use cases. I don't think the data was ever used for targeted tracking.
What is the video fingerprinting method used? Is it a publicly known algo? I was using a combination of "dhash" for individual frames and "simhash" to generate shingles for a bunch of videos and it worked "ok" but not as efficient as I wanted.
Smart TV interfaces are almost uniformly worse than set top boxes (one or more of: bad UI, slow CPU, weird quirks, few updates) so you should avoid it anyway.
The current Apple TV (which I cite only because of familiarity) has a great UI, every major app, and robust HDMI-CEC support so you might never have to touch your TV’s remote again.
I was actually really pissed a while back because my in-laws were over and when I came home they told me "For some reason you hadn't connected your TV to the internet. We gave it your wifi password, and now it works!" Thanks. Now I have to change wifi passwords, and the power light on the TV constantly blinks because it thinks it should be connected to the internet, but isn't.
Pretty much, yes. Because respecting my privacy fits their business model.
Consider that even the most trivial thing that makes Apple look bad gets leaked. If Apple was selling your private information, it would have leaked long before now. Also their financial reports show no indication of revenues that could be associated with private information marketing.
Nobody sells data, like pay and get hdd with data. They "analyze" it and sell results, or "allow access" for "optimization" of whatever. Or they have "partnership" and "exchange". Or they slightly obscure data (of course insufficiently) and then sell whatever resulted claiming that they don't sell "data". And so on, whole departments work full time on the ways to bullshit regulatory authorities into thinking that they don't sell personal data. (And they here I mean corporations in general).
And regarding Apple - I hear this "not their business model" argument often but I see zero real life reasons why it couldn't be but we wouldn't know it. It is like saying that "John only trades tomatoes, it is impossible to him to sell cucumbers, it is not his business model". How is even related, monster corporations have multiple divisions with multiple business models, one doesn't exclude another.
PS: this is for the sake of discussion. Personally I also tend to think that Apple collects much less data than FAGM, and there were experiments that indirectly support this theory. I'm thinking about moving to Apple ecosystem but it is rather costly and will cause vendorlock. Not an easy choice.
Some smart TVs will join open networks if you don't give them one. And I expect that if 5G works as advertised you'll see surveillance capitalism adding 5G connectivity so you no longer have control over connectivity.
A website that catalogued the misbehaviours of the various smart TV operating systems (and the easiest methods of defeat) would be handy here.
E.g. Some TVs will honor wifi off setting. Or alternatively setting the TV to use the Ethernet port.
Or if it needs something on the other end, set up old underclocked Raspberry Pi as a basic router/DHCP server that connects to nothing; power it with TV's USB port.
If you've got a fancy router, connect it to your network with a fixed IP and firewall deny all packets from/to its IP.
If you've got a fancy AP, set up an alternative SSID that connects to an unused VLAN or otherwise routes to nowhere.
You can combine approaches of course. My main in-home DNS, per the DHCP settings on the wi-fi, is a Pi-Hole. Secondary DNS is the pfSense firewall, so nothing's dead in the water if the Raspberry Pi falls over for some reason.
The firewall has the same DNS block-lists as the Pi-Hole, but also has subscription lists of IPs to avoid. Most of those are spammers or malware, but can include whatever other category of malfeasance you desire.
This will depend on the jurisdiction. In GDPR land neither of this will fly as you obviously don't have consent. I own an Aldi TV which hasn't set up for internet connection. When I first started it I was greeted with a consent form which I declined. I am pretty sure that the setting I did (no internet) is honored both for PR and GDPR reasons.
With 5G, you will have the same problem. And I'd be very reluctant to buy anything stationary which has 5G connectivity.
If there is an unwanted and wide-open AP within range of an antenna-less smart TV, you have an unusual problem with countless fun and creative solutions.
Who knows? This could make a nice little experiment.
1. Leave the antenna connected
2. Unplug the antenna, leave the connector unterminated.
3. Terminate the connector with ball of tinfoil.
4. Use a proper impedance matched termination.
5. Terminate with a proper impedance as close to the wifi chip as possible
5./b Also cut the antenna trace on the PCB as close to the chip as possible
Measure signal strength in all scenarios.
In the past I would have agreed with you on the poor quality of smart TVs. My Roku TV shatters all those expectations however, its fantastic. Great UI, plenty fast, no quirks I have found, and updates regularly.
I specifically bought a smart TV with Roku instead of whatever software Samsung/Sony is doing for these reasons.
We just provided the technology for major TV manufacturers. Most TVs allow you to disable it, although the feature may be called something unintuitive such as "Live Plus".
Create a fake username, setup a proxy with logger and connect your TV to internet via proxy. After couple of days/weeks just analyze all traffic and block strange hosts via /etc/hosts or Pi-hole.
AFAICT Roku sends logs to two separate endpoints, so blocking those visa pihole can give you some protection, however, it's hard to tell if any data is being sent to raw IP addresses.
It is not enabled by default. For the first time when you use a TV input, it asks you whether you want to enable it.
If you have enabled it, you can opt out from settings later on.
This is a good reason for a pi-hole type of ad blocker on your network.
When I noticed my Roku TV was sending something to some remote analytics or tracking server every 30 seconds whenever it was turned on, I just blocked everything coming from it.
Eventually though I factory-reset it and didn't bother connecting it to the network at all. All the on-TV apps are junk and I'd rather just use an Apple TV (which sends it's own analytics, I know).
It is off by default and is enabled only if you opt in. They call it "More ways to watch".
If you have enabled it, you can disable it later on from the settings.
The setting is controlled by "Settings/Privacy/Smart TV Experience". The first time you go into an input a dialog shows up asking the user to opt-in or out of this.
Are you sure about this? If the TV really is phoning home with whatever is on the screen, including anything personal the owner might happen to be displaying, that's a vast set of lawsuits waiting to happen. The GDPR fines alone could be staggering. I could easily imagine spyware logging whatever TV shows you're streaming and the like, but it's hard to imagine any business in this industry having lawyers dumb enough to allow sending actual screen images like that.
Sorry, I was being a bit lazy in my comment. I didn't specify, but I don't really suspect they are sending full frames back if for no other reason than bandwidth. But, honestly fingerprinting is so similar it might as well be the same thing. Though thankfully, yes, the fingerprint calculated for something personal probably is meaningless to them, but possibly could be replaced with a reversible option
One danger is that videos can now "phone home" with the TV they're viewed on. You could torrent through Tor and take all sorts of precautions, then watch on your TV at home and leak your viewing habits. Or worse, get someone else targeted for copyright enforcement if you watch pirated content on their TV.
I guess it would be a watermark style change through all the video frames which affects the hashes - e.g. brightness or contrast or sharpness or some combination of that kind of thing - then seed that on torrent sites, and advertisers get to see which TVs watched the torrented film vs the official film.
I don't think fingerprints are the same at all. While still having privacy implications, fingerprints to match against broadcast content aren't uploading your family photo or caps from your home movie if that's what you're showing on screen.
It’s called ACR data and it’s very common. And yes, TVs are phoning home with it.
And GDPR only requires that you opt in. So when you sign into the TV for the first time, it gives you an opt in choice and many do it. The States is less regulated but will be soon.
These are of course just guidelines, but if you don't explicitly inform your users that you will be sending images of what's on the screen over the Internet, you are likely to get in trouble. (And no, a giant EULA-type wall of text probably wouldn't be sufficient)
It isn't nearly as easy as you're suggesting to escape the scope of GDPR protections. There could be sensitive personal data or data about children involved. Even if it's just some identifiable individual in the screenshot, you still can't just rely on some sneaky "consent" as a blank cheque - that is merely a possible lawful basis for processing, and all the other provisions of the GDPR still apply.
Edit: Also, on your first point, ACR is generally a variation of fingerprinting technology. It wouldn't be sending entire screenshots of whatever is being displayed even if it's not broadcast content, at least not in any variation I've heard of. It was the idea of uploading the entire image that I was questioning before.
Fair point on the screenshot. Yea I dont think any TV is phoning home with screenshots. Rather it's phoning home with a processed signal of the A/V in order to ID that A/V. If there is A/V that cannot be recognized, it may phone home a screenshot of that.
And I also don't think it's easy to escape the scope of GDPR. I'm just saying companies come up with ways of being "GDPR compliant" and they've done so.
I remember reading a comment some time ago which stated that they were concerned about the trustworthiness of HDMI, Thunderbolt, and the like as they can contain hidden features that could compromise the user. Fascinating. We need a firewall on our gateways, and on our peripheral ports.
How do Doctor's that use TVs like this in meeting rooms get around HIPAA? or other places with PII, etc? With so much stuff being thrown to TVs now, a lot of times they are inheriently monitors, and there are very few people who think taking a screenshot of a monitor is not invasive.
I'm fairly sure there's a line of TVs for "industrial" purposes (e.g. the ones you see in airports) that are both hardened and lack any privacy invasive features - however, they come at a premium.
Which is always the issue - people want a 65" TV, but they don't want to spend $6000 on it. But if they can have it for $2000 (for example) they're all over it, glossing over the mostly unobtrusive privacy invasion that goes with it.
And if there's a vendor that can sell that same TV without the privacy invasion for $4000, it can't even compete. This way, honest players are priced out of the market. This pattern is so predictable that I maintain advertising needs to be aggressively curtailed.
After spending a significant amount of time in the hospital I found a portable router, Android TV/Chromecast and a universal tv remote to be really useful
They are in my go bag now for when I have to go last minute and get checked in
Not sure if you're being serious, but being in extreme pain and/or drugged out of your mind on painkillers, TV is often the only good thing to do in that situation. Podcasts work too, but something stupid please.
No, the above comment (not article) mentions screenshots. If I have an x-ray of someone on my screen along with patient name then how is that not personal information that could be screen shotted and sent to some endpoint?
Even if the contents of the radiology scan are not included, the mere fact that someone _had_ a radiology scan or any other medical procedure or exam might be important.
Insurance might be interested, for one party. Or parents. Or pimps.
> The researchers also found that other smart devices including speakers and cameras were sending user data to dozens of third parties including Spotify and Microsoft.
Maybe someone can find the referenced studies to see what data is actually sent...
> other smart devices including speakers and cameras
In my perspective, these are other devices entirely, like smart speakers and those video hubs the FAANG companies produce, or maybe entrance cameras.. Some reasoning: what kind of television doesn't have speakers.
We buy super cheap TVs for our meeting rooms, and then just never connect them to the internet. They have Netflix etc on them, but none of it works. We then just use HDMI or Chromecasts that are provisioned on the company GSuite account.
>This data is becoming a huge mechanism for subsidizing TV sales and the interactivity is being looked at as a huge opportunity to recoup some of the ad spend being lost via streaming and fewer 30 second spots
So what are the options for a consumer willing to pay for privacy? Will console manufacturers be more respectful for example? (I've considered a console to serve as a bluray player / host OS for streaming apps that also plays games).
Or are we stuck using dumb tvs and connecting out laptops to them via HDMI? (And thus no 4K iirc)
I was watching a ripped Spiderman years ago on my PS3 and the PlayStation refused to play it after 10 mins with an antipiracy message. This was via a network video server. Don't see why Sony would have rolled back that feature since.
This is Cinavia audio watermarking. It's designed to survive lossy compression by staying within the human audible range.
> If a "theatrical release" watermark is detected in a consumer Blu-ray Disc audio track, the accompanying video is deemed to have been sourced from a "cam" recording. If the "AACS watermark" is present in the audio tracks, but no accompanying and matching AACS key is found on the disc, then it is deemed to have been a "rip" made by copying to a second blank Blu-ray Disc.
Edit: that same page says its now a requirement for all consumer bluray players to use this tech. But I don't remember seeing those messages for years. The pirates must be winning with their methods of changing the signatures.
The 4K comment was likely in refrence to streaming providers like Netflix, etc. which don't offer 4K content playback on devives which are not deemed to be adequately locked down, which is a typically a stipulation of their content licensing agreements.
This headline seems a bit sensational in trying to blame favorite privacy scapegoat, Facebook. I would first blame the device maker for selling such data, but I bet half the reason this occurs is due to figuring out which CDN to use given Akamai is one of the companies receiving the most data?
An acquaintance attempted that with Kindle, by keeping it in flight mode. After some days it popped up a message kindly asking to give it some network access. After a few more days it simply ignored the flight mode and connected to get fresh ads.
Edit: I've checked with my wife who has an ad supported Kindle for over a year and keeps it in flight mode for months at a time. It never did that to her. So either Amazon changed that a long time ago, or I've believed a lie.
I had the same thing happen. I rooted my Kindle and kept it in flight mode to avoid tracking and updates. After not using it for months I recharged it and when I turned it on it had auto updated to the latest version, killing root.
So not only did mine exit flight mode it somehow re-enabled updates and updated itself.
Not sure about Kindles, but with the super cheap Fire Tablets, Amazon basically tells you "this device is subsidized by ads". You can pay a small fee ($15 IIRC) to remove them permanently.
That's honestly outrageous to the point of scandal. Aside from the point that these are expensive devices, these are devices that you own. You, the owner, should be able to control them to a complete degree.
While I agree with you it's my understanding that this was an ad-supported Kindle. Amazon offers them with a discount, which means the buyer explicitely accepted ads for a slightly lower purchase price.
I'm not saying it's ok to ignore flight mode options, but neither is the expectation to completely avoid ads when buying this very version of the Kindle.
My ad supported Kindle Paperwhite has never turned off airplane mode either. I only turn off airplane mode when I have a new book to download to it and turn it back on afterward.
Flight mode exists because the FAA applies unsafe-until-proven-safe methodology to everything flight related (as they should). If flight mode mattered at all planes would be falling out of the sky on the regular, many people just leave their phones on the whole trip. The only reason I turn my phone off is because it wastes a lot of battery as it tries to manage tower hopping the whole time. Planes are getting blasted by RF in the cellular bands continuously from the ground, too, so this is taken into consideration in the design process.
Don't get me wrong the Kindle shouldn't do what it's doing but it's by no means a safety issue.
IIRC there isn't a problem for most of the flight; but right as you're ascending/descending your phone can end up getting a very weak line-of-sight connection to a whole bunch of cell towers at once, which causes a few different problems, but all of which come down to "it makes both your phone, and all the towers, shout really loudly at one-another to try to achieve a circuit." Which, sure, means that there might be EM interference (on bands ATC doesn't even use, but which the pilots might like to switch to in event of emergency.)
But, more importantly, it puts your phone's radio through an unusual high-power-draw situation that the phone's manufacturer may not have bothered testing for, which can make phone batteries explode that might not have otherwise ever exploded.
Oh, and also, a plane-load of people whose phones are all ranging hogs circuits on a bunch of towers at once (for no productive purpose, since the phones don't have high-enough SNR to actually communicate anything useful with any of the towers they can "see"), so the cellular service providers have politely asked the FAA to get people to not do that.
Uh, wouldn't the same thing happen as you enter a dead zone, or go underground? I'd sure hope that my phone isn't at risk of exploding in those circumstances...
Meh, I don't buy it. A colleague had his phone put in the plane's hold by airport security without being allowed to turn it off. Landed with a whole bunch of "Welcome to <country>!" texts. So not only can you get non-zero reception in flight (maybe only on lower flight levels?), but also it clearly doesn't bother the plane or cause phones to explode (else airport security wouldn't do it).
I've heard this claim before but the justification was because the network wasn't designed to cope with someone hopping from tower to tower every few seconds. No citation here either. The handoff must be a total mess.
The closest I can find the the 2013 FAA press release about allowing devices to be used during all phases of flight.
> The FAA did not consider changing the regulations regarding the use of cell phones for voice communications during flight because the issue is under the jurisdiction of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The ARC did recommend that the FAA consult with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to review its current rules.
So it seems to be the FCC that has made this decision (in consultation with the FAA it sounds like).
Indeed, the reality is that people will leave their phones on intentionally or unintentionally so engineering within aerospace has to, and does, take this into consideration. There's reasons the rule exists, but it doesn't put you at increased risk.
> Planes are getting blasted by RF in the cellular bands continuously from the ground, too, so this is taken into consideration in the design process.
It's a totally different affair if you are receiving a signal by a 100 Watt transmitter at 10 Km or a signal from a 1 Watt transmitter at 5 meters distance. The 1 Watt transmitter will overpower anything in its band with great ease and any dirt on the spectral output will have the same effect in other bands. Note that most cellphones will crank up their output if they can't connect to a base station that they can receive.
Of course plane designers will still do what they can to reduce this nuisance but leaving our phone on makes it harder than it should be. Please turn your phone off or to airplane mode and consider it a very small price to pay for flying an airplane.
Yes, flight mode does matter, no it probably won't crash a plane but does it have to before you would consider following a very simple rule?
The reasons being (1) you are moving faster than the network hand over protocol is designed for and (2) even if it worked you could be impinging on the juicy margings of in-flight service offers.
If airplanes could be brought down by turning on a cellphone you would never have been allowed to travel with one in the first place.
>> After some days it popped up a message kindly asking to give it some network access. After a few more days it simply ignored the flight mode and connected to get fresh ads.
Yeah that's gross. Btw, Amazon does sell some cheaper ebook readers on the understanding that they will show ads. Was that the case here?
Honestly, I wish I could switch my non-ad-supported Kindle Oasis to a mode where the lock screen would cycle book recommendations. The normal cover is a bit boring.
My Kindle's never been connected to the network (always in flight mode) since I got it and I haven't had issues. I use Calibri and a USB cable to load ebooks. Not sure, would it be possible for it to call home through the USB cable?
If you want to get rid of the ads without hacks, just contact amazon with the web chat and ask if they can remove them.
They did it for me for free. (I’m serious)
It makes sense. Not enough people care about it enough to go through the ordeal. By offering an option for concerned people, they can avoid bad publicity about what they do.
Well that is pretty much what you paid for - a low cost device with the caveat being that it's ad supported. You get what you (don't) pay for. Of course, it used to be that Kindles were relatively low cost because you could easily buy books from Amazon directly from it. I guess they didn't earn enough money from that - piracy maybe?
I'm guessing it's an ad supported kindle. The user paid less on the agreement that they would see ads. My non-ad supported kindle has never done anything like this.
That’s fine, but until the FAA changes their policy, devices need to actually turn off their radios while in airplane mode. It’s not okay to lie to the user about things like that.
Even if I went through the trouble of finding where he described it, you would get a pseudonymous guy on the Internet saying a thing, instead of a pseudonymous guy on the Internet mentioning an anonymous guy told him something. So, well, apply your pinch of salt. But I remember it pretty cleanly, as it did shock me a bit.
As others suggested: it was an app-supported Kindle indeed. So it's not like Amazon went crazy unprovoked evil or something.
Edit: I've checked with my wife who has an ad supported Kindle for over a year and keeps it in flight mode for months at a time. It never did that to her. So either Amazon changed that a long time ago, or I've believed a lie.
It’s not the evil of displaying ads, but the evil of connecting while in airplane mode that bothers me. I don’t personally believe that it’s actually going to crash a plane, but until the FAA agrees with me devices shouldn’t be connecting while claiming to be in airplane mode. I’ll have to dig into it a bit, but I expect that doing so is a violation of FAA or more likely FCC regulations.
Same. My ~2017 Kindle stays on airplane mode for weeks/months at a time. It's the only device I read on, so I leave it in airplane mode to save battery. I've never had it re-enable wifi.
just do factory reset and immediately put it into flight mode. It can't update if it has no wifi password. If you want to update, just do it via cable.
I have couple kindle paperwhites of different generations, and none of them did any unexpected update for years.
I can't watch more than 5 minutes of any YouTube video on my Samsung smart TV before an advertisement interrupts the video. Often several times for short videos. The ads are the same ones over and over too at the moment it's the J-Lo Hustler movie. If not that it's an ad from my local tourist board advertising my own home town.
It's getting to the point where it's not even watchable. I click back to exit and maybe go back later but I have hundreds of partially watched videos I've forgotten about.
Pro tip for other people with 2019 and 2018 Samsung Smart TVs, if you back out of the network config and never set it up during the initial config or after a factory reset the TV will never show any ads and will never have the annoying icons for its own apps in the menus. If you attempt to use these features the TV will kindly remind you that you are not connected to the internet/have no accepted the user agreement. I have done this on all of my Samsung TVs and the result is a much cleaner UI.
Normally I’d agree with you, however when laying out things like picture quality between brand and cost, many times Samsung comes out on top and that’s why I end up going with them.
i have read repeatedly on this site that it is effectively impossible to buy a new dumb tv unless you get the kind of commercial ones meant for installation on walls in commercial buildings etc
I have a pretty dumb TV with no apps or internet features, but I'll admit that the one "smart-ish" feature I do kind of appreciate is support for CEC controls over HDMI.
It makes it a bit more convenient to switch between my Roku/Switch/PC when I can push a button on the remote to have the devices ping the TV themselves.
I do prefer a dumb TV, but it doesn't have to be completely brainless.
"... effectively impossible to buy a new dumb tv unless you get the kind of commercial ones meant for installation on walls in commercial buildings ..."
Which is great news - they are fantastic displays, they last forever, and they behave just like a very big computer monitor.
NEC commercial displays (P461, for instance) are not expensive. I highly recommend you look into it.
any idea if simply using HDMI only on a 2016 model stops "phone home" behaviors? The wifi is setup on the device, almost certainly, but never on the TV mode
My Samsung SmartTV randomly turns on itself. Sometimes, we can't turn it on and I have to remove the batteris from the remote, plug them back then it works. The UI is sooo sluggish. I just wish they make a dump TV with superior image quality and let the other streaming devices handling the "smart" features. I will not buy another Samsung electronic product.
I have the exact same problems with my Samsung Smart TV. I joke that I am "rebooting the remote" when I pop out the remote batteries about once a week.
The UI seems to gotten much more sluggish over the last year or two. I have a 500 Mbps internet connection, but speed tests in the TV's browser measure only 40 Mbps (on Wi-Fi or Ethernet). The TV's apps load images and data as if I'm on a 2G connection.
The Amazon and YouTube apps hang if I turn the TV off and try to resume playback later. I have to switch to two other apps and then back to Amazon to force the app to crash. Then I can launch it again. And sometimes the only way to exit the Netflix app is to power cycle the TV.
Things like this are why I never will buy a so-called smart tv, the only exception being is that it is better/cheaper than alternative and in that case will keep connectivity disabled like you did.
Good luck in 5 years, there will likely only be an option or two left and they will be as shitty as today's flip-phones. A few years ago I was in the market for a TV and was flabbergasted as to why I couldn't get a nice, big, 'dumb' TV.
Yeah I intentionally bought a dumb TV instead of a smart TV five years ago... recently started thinking about whether it might be interesting to upgrade to a 4k and/or OLED model before discovering that they’re ALL smart.
I've looked in the past and could never seem to find one. Do you happen to have a link on hand? I'd be very interested, especially if it also supports HDR.
I ditched Samsung years ago after they stopped releasing updates and bug fixes for my TV, a year after it was purchased. There are a bunch of TVs out there running Java without updates.
In general, my last like, 5 Samsung products have been disappointing, mostly due to software, or lack there of.
I hear all these complaints about ads and it is very strange to me. I have a 2018 Samsung Smart TV (with buyilt in Netflix, Apple TV etc. apps), connected to the internet (no VPN, pihole etc.). I live in The Netherlands. On setup I agreed to all kinds of stuff, except the voice stuff (so I cannot speak to my TV).
I have never seen a single ad or anything remotely like it. The only thing is the remote has dedicated buttons for Amazon something and Rakuten (both not available in my country) and Netflix.
Five years from now, 5G will be widely deployed, with a connection density of 1M/sqkm, 1000 times larger than 4G. The TV will connect directly to the 5G network without asking for permission. For your convenience [TM].
At which point I hope there will be websites describing how to take the TV apart and disable the 5G modem.
Or somebody will invent a small short-range backhaul-less 5G spoof microcell you can put next to the TV that will confuse the TV's modem into connecting to nothing.
Or just wrap the TV in a Faraday cage. But keeping the screen visible might make that tricky.
We will just wait for the next Zuckerberg interview to see how he dealt with his smart TV at home. Better to learn from people who really care about their own privacy.
1% of us will take the troubles to protect themselves. We'll even marginally succeed, as long as we don't go out in public or visit a friend's house. Too expensive to circumvent protections if the other 99% have no [time to develop an] understanding of what they are exposed to.
We'll install 5G connected, AI powered cameras and far-field microphones in your TV, to measure the emotional impact of our ads. To offer you a better service [TM].
I can imagine myself 10 years from now standing over a $500 chip with a power drill, nervously following a tutorial telling me what exact spot I have to drive the drill head through to disable the antenna without destroying any of the surrounding circuitry...
I tried to never connect my Smart TV to anything, but I realized one day (when someone's stuff was playing on it without me accepting any request...) it connected an open network in my residence.
The only trick that worked to prevent it from connecting was putting the wrong password, and let it loop forever, trying to connect. Ugly.
Lots of consumer routers these days let you set parental controls. Disable access entirely, or put time limits on it, then remove all the allowed times.
It is not clear why we should necessarily be suspicious of smart TVs based on the findings here.
The lines seem to be blurred between what data is being sent by the TV OS itself versus a third party app that someone may have decided to use during the period that the researchers watched outbound network connections.
If someone is using the Netflix app, this necessitates that the TV must communicate with Netflix. How else would it work? Similarly, if you use the YouTube app, you would definitely get some requests to Google. Surely some developers of smart TV apps have decided to use Mixpanel or Adobe for analytics.
The "sensitive user data" alluded to in the headline is later admitted to be, at a minimum, "information about the device people are using, their locations, and possibly even when they are interacting with it".
Let's unpack that. It's pretty common for every web browser to send a user agent. Why shouldn't apps for a TV send device info to the app maker? Location can be inferred via IP, like any network request (nothing special here). And with any request, you of course know the time it was made (and could infer the interaction that produced it, like opening the app).
So they've told us nothing to support the headline. Indeed, the original paper from Northeastern notes that they did not try to inspect the data or MITM encrypted connections, so all we know is that requests are being made to these services during the course of operating the device and its apps. Not that the device manufacturer itself is sending your data, unprompted, to these third parties. So, the headline does not match the story.
Seems like university PR office must have gone a little crazy with this one. Why is nobody on HN questioning such a sensationalist, substanceless article?
Because it interferes with the idea of a TV being a display. A TV should not have apps. If it does have apps, these apps should not communicate data to the manufacturer. It shouldn't send back data about the operating system because a TV shouldn't have an operating system.
Of course a TV should have an operating system. It needs menu's and options, video and audio codecs, up and downscaling algorithms and many many other things, just to be a dumb TV.
I agree having an OS on a TV is gratuitous. But that doesn't change that the claims the headline made are not actually proven by the evidence presented.
I would love to update my 10 year old 1080p Philips non-smart TV to a 55" or so 4K HDR screen but I don't want any of the smart features. Does anyone know of any manufacturers selling high end "dumb" TVs?
For now I'm comfortable using my appleTV but I like the fact that I can disconnect it at any time. I want a TV that will simply display whatever signal it receives without any connectivity required.
I'm using an LG OLED TV (2018 model I think) with an Apple TV, and it's working pretty much exactly like a dumb screen. I haven't connected the TV to the network, and I control everything with the Apple TV remote - it turns on the TV via HDMI CEC as needed, and when I turn off the Apple TV the TV turns off too. I've also connected my home theater system via HDMI ARC to get better sound, and CEC turns on and off the speakers too.
All I see of the LG interface during normal use is a small box in the top right corner that says "Apple TV" on boot and "Denon available" or something like that when the speaker systems has booted.
Also, the screen turns on quickly so there's practically no waiting for anything.
I was thinking of getting one of those in-store displays instead of a TV, but they don't usually have HDR.
I'm using a Raspi4 with Libreelec (this is kodi) and I have had pretty much a similar experience (but with a bunch of OSS quirks of course). A nice surprise is that I can actually control the kodi interface with my TV remote
Do you mean from LG specifically? Just had a quick google search for "meeting room display 4k hdr" and Sony Bravia professional displays including playing "online content with no need for external devices"
Meeting room displays you can buy from anyone, they're just basically really big monitors without any smart features. The only downside is that, they're a good 100-200% more expensive than the exact same panel with smart features =/
When my old 720p 42" Sony Bravia conks out, I'm just going to end up buying a second hand NEC Commercial display. I made the mistake of buying a Sony 4K Android TV for my bedroom and the performance is just dreadful with repeated crashes.
I've already got many NEC panels around the office and they're fantastic.
As long as you don’t connect it to the internet, can’t do much harm.
Though HDMI has evolved into a supper chatty protocol with information going both ways. HDMI doesn’t allow a TV to access the internet connection of a laptop or ps4 connected to it, right?
(UK) my new Virgin media cable box came with a hdmi cable that said "hdmi with ethernet" on the side. It's plugged into my TV (which has WiFi disabled) and as far as I can tell it's not leaking a gateway or anything but it could well be. Regardless: security nightmare.
The HDMI with ethernet thing is probably a lot more benign than you would think. Ethernet is simply one of the many protocols that HDMI can use for its communication across that wire, in addition to the video feed; as a result that ends up on the package. Very few television sets even support the feature in any capacity; it's generally more practical to just use wifi.
Besides that, a cable company's set top box doesn't need to use any fancy HDMI tricks to snoop on what you're watching at any given moment: the cable box does that for them. This doesn't give them any information other than the channel you have selected at any given moment (and whether the TV's actually on), but that's enough for ad tracking and viewership ratings, and that's usually all the network cares about.
(Note that I still find that whole feedback loop a bit uncomfortable; I won't ever have a cable subscription myself. But I have a hard time believing those cheap set top boxes are sophisticated enough to extract frame data from arbitrarily televisions over HEC; the compatibility issues alone would be a nightmare to code around.)
>Besides that, a cable company's set top box doesn't need to use any fancy HDMI tricks to snoop on what you're watching at any given moment: the cable box does that for them.
I believe they were worried about the reverse - the (isolated, wifi-disabled) Smart TV using ethernet-over-HDMI to phone home.
About a year ago I looked into getting a monitor to replace a living room TV for use with an Apple TV and a game console, as I have no interest in built-in speakers and smart features. But I couldn’t find anything that had the specs of good modern TVs: decent screen size, minimal frame, HDR, wide viewing angles, reasonable price. Nothing even came close.
Roku TVs can operate in a dumb mode -- during guided setup, you can opt to not connect to the network, and they won't try to connect from that point on. There are still some ads that show up occasionally on the home screen, but they're built into the OS ROM and are to encourage connecting.
I've got a old-ish smart Samsung and I've never configured the Internet, but can still plug USB keys to it and play movies, etc. Newer TVs might insist on an Internet connection, though, to use any "smart" features.
One of the first images to appear on my Samsung TV, after purchasing and plugging it in to the power outlet, was a prompt asking to connect to my WiFi.
They almost got me, but thankfully there was an option to skip that step. But I'm sure they'd hook my parents and friends for sure.
Next time, make a VLAN with its own Wifi, then connect the TV to that VLAN and then what you want to do is block any incoming or outgoing network traffic to the smart TV. If you do this then no one else can attempt to hijack or connect to your TV and the TV wont ask you to connect it to a network, because its already connected to a network. This worked great on my LG smart TV.
What is the point of doing this as opposed to just skipping that step? Does it keep nagging you? Or are certain features disabled if you don't connect?
I don't own a Smart TV, but without this step I'd be very suspicious that the TV would silently try to connect to open wifi networks, or perhaps some kind of hotspot like xfinity or AT&T that the manufacturer made an agreement with.
I would skip the VLAN step and just block communication from the TV to the internet. That way you could still access media on other devices on your lan via DLNA or something
That's cool. I also saw someone mention PI-hole. I'd pick whichever method is easiest to setup for my parents, and lowest-maintenance so they don't have to call me. ;)
My network is setup like this. It is really easy to do if you have a good router/AP, but most consumer routers, especially the ones provided by ISPs, are not vlan aware.
My friends think I'm nuts for not having my tv connected to the network (I use my PS4 for all the offerings). It's just a default that people nowadays because it's convenient.
I don't understand your criticism. If the TV were given close to free and then subsidized by ads, sure. But I'm paying >$500 for the TV, why should I get ads too?
> Smart TVs sending sensitive user data to Netflix and Facebook
No way! Has that ever been news? It is the first thing that comes to mind when some product 'needs' to be connected to the internet. Sending private data is most likely the only reason a internet connection can be made with the device. All the 'great' software around it is only fluff supporting to lure people sending their private data unknowingly. Do they send microphone and camera data home? Of course, that's the cream. Oh, and do they protect your sensitive data well? Nah, that's not a priority, who cares..
In the past you bought a new tv, and the manufacturer was happy and treated you with respect. Today you think you buy a tv, but tv is actually the secondary feature, you just bought an intrusion device that collects your private life in order to send it to the manufacturer for selling it.
I have a new x-large smart tv which I would never connect to the internet for these reasons. I use a dedicated pc with a good graphics card that connects through HDMI. On my couch I have a wireless mouse and keyboard. With this dead simple setup I cannot only watch regular tv, I can of course do anything you can think of doing on a pc. It also has become my favorite gaming setup.
I think governments should be more active to protect citizens of course. Non-technical people are prey nowadays. I despise this new economy and I'll never ever want to make any money of of it, I'd rather live and die poor.
The problem is that I want to just use the netflix built-into the TV. Firing up a separate device just to watch something seems like a waste of energy to me, and then I probably need a separate controller for it(like, I can control the PS4 with my TV remote, but I cannot switch it on remotely without using the DS4).
>>I have a new x-large smart tv which I would never connect to the internet for these reasons. I use a dedicated pc with a good graphics card that connects through HDMI.
Assuming you use windows on it, haven't you just traded one type of telemetry for the other?
No. It's a linux, and there is no mic or cam connected. I use Netflix too, works like a charm. And I can understand your temptation of using the Netflix button on the remote control, it's one of the lures.
When can I buy a TV without smart features? I don't doubt that my smart TV is reporting some data about my usage, but I barely have a choice in the matter.
There is a limited selection of 'dumb' TVs in the world. The 50-inch Sceptre E505BV-FMQK has no "smart" capabilities and lacks WiFi or Ethernet.
The usual advice is to simply not connect the internal "smart" capabilities to anything; disable WiFi and don't connect a Ethernet cable. The built-in host and all the nefarious crap it wants to run can't reach anything unless you somehow connect it. Just use the TV tuner and HDMI inputs. If you need a network connection for streaming from some local source then block the TV at your Internet router.
Like the adware you get with many laptops and other mobile devices there are 'financial incentives' to manufacturers to build this stuff in, so don't expect the practice to abate anytime soon.
Nice to see. Though it's hard to tell if these feature HDR support, despite the 'Ultra HD' nomenclature. On one sister site it mentions 'HDR support*' with a footnote that a 'HDR signal display is possible' which makes me dubious.
As one of the draws of Ultra HD displays for consumers is HDR content which has become more common with online films/tv, UHD Blu-Rays and games.
Hey, you're not wrong. "Privacy screen" displays that have been available on PC laptops for years are nothing but obsolete panels with terrible viewing angles. You can definitely charge more for something less good.
I bought an LG OLED commercial signage display. It's just a 55" panel, 1/4" thick, with a ribbon cable to a power-and-control box with one HDMI port. No internet or wifi connection; the software just lets you use the remote to configure the display.
Into it I plugged a Denon HEOS receiver, which is WiFi-connected for the purposes of serving as a Spotify and AirPlay output device, and which drives wired and wireless speakers. Into the HEOS runs an Apple TV for video streaming, a DVD player for old times' sake, and my wife's phonograph.
How do you navigate the purchase of commercial signage display? I tried to do some research a few months ago, and manufacturers' and retailers' sites were all punishingly awful in being clear about specs, geographic (in Canada) availability, which models were discontinued and unavailable, actual pricing, etc.
It wasn't easy! I found the model I was interested in listed online by Newegg, Walmart, and CDW – but it took about 5 months to get!
Newegg and Walmart had the lowest prices but turned out to fronting for the same seller, who was running a bait-and-switch. I ordered through Newegg first – and received a different product! A big heavy LCD display. I shipped it back to them for a refund.
Then I ordered through Walmart – and again received that other product! After the seller refused to exchange or refund and stopped answering e-mails, Walmart refunded me the price – and told me to keep the LCD display, which I donated.
Finally I ordered from CDW, who shipped me the right product – but under all the cardboard and styrofoam it was packed in, the corner of the display was bent up 90 degrees! And the display wouldn't light up.
To their credit, CDW shipped a replacement unit right away. It was in perfect condition – you can watch me unbox it at https://youtu.be/o9Mu4K-ApkU – and I'm watching it right now.
I got a Samsung "SmartTV", turned it on and the first thing I saw was advertisement and an insane amount of calls to Samsung servers on my Pi-hole. On the TV I just paid for.
Opened it up, disconnected the WiFi module, connected my Apple TV to it and am pretty happy.
You have to find your way to the "commercial" section of LG's website and even then find the ones that are dumb.
I'm very happy with it. 55" 4k, a bit cheaper than its comparable consumer line. Simple remote, doesn't hassle me, quick to start and stop.
I was able to purchase it from "Canada Computers" but YMMV in your region etc. Not always easy to get the "business" line of products as a consumer but very often (TVs, laptops) it is preferable to the junk they'll sell to consumers from the big box stores even at the same price-point.
One problem I have with that approach is I'm very confused about how sound works.
Consider three ways to play a movie:
1. From a source device (AppleTV, Blu-ray player, etc) connected to an A/V receiver.
2. From an app on your Smart TV, with the TV passing sound over ARC or optical to the A/V receiver.
3. From a source device, as in #1, but with the device connected to one of the TV's HDMI inputs instead of to the receiver. Sound going from the TV to the A/V receiver via ARC or optical.
Everything I've found seems to agree that #1 can handle anything, with the only limit being formats that are newer than your A/V receiver understands. Mine doesn't know about Dolby Atmos, for example, so wouldn't be able to do that.
For #2, the limit seems to be the bandwidth of ARC or optical. Optical can't do 5.1 or higher PCM, Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, or a view others. It can only do stereo PCM, or matrix surround formats.
ARC, if your TV and A/V receiver implement a new enough version of the HDMI spec, has the bandwidth for all those formats.
For #3, some sources say that there are licensing limits, enforced by HDCP, that disallow the TV from passing a high bandwidth audio signal directly from an HDMI input to an HDMI output. Instead, the TV has to do the Dolby or DTS decoding itself, and then re-encode to a lower bandwidth Dolby or DTS format, and send that on.
I think that the very latest version of HDCP will remove that restriction, if both the TV and the the A/V receiver support it (not sure if it also needs to be on the source). But I don't think that is expected to start showing up on consumer equipment until next year.
Unfortunately, my receiver is not 4K, and I really don't want to get a new receiver until that latest HDCP is out, to maximize future proofing. So for now I have to choose between #2 and #3 when I want to watch something in 4K. I think the ARC supported by my TV and/or my receiver probably only has enough bandwidth to support matrix formats for surround sound, but with #2 I think it will be using a matrix encoded bitstream from the source, just passing it through. With #3, it's going to be going through decoding and re-encoding on the TV, to then be decoded again on the receiver. #2 seems better, then.
Can you be sure it is not connected to the Internet? I thought previously someone gave example of a Chinese TV connecting to open hotspots, or perhaps that was just a thought experiment.
> Can you be sure it is not connected to the Internet?
Yes, you can be sure. The network capabilities aren't hidden spy equipment. You can disable WiFi and simply not connect Ethernet. The market for your data is relying on the indifference of 99% of TV buyers to data collection. Manufacturers and advertisers -- at least those not too far down the grey market rabbit hole -- don't care enough about the tiny fraction of people that actively thwart this collection activity to employ some sort of legally dubious super sekrit network capability to capture your precious data.
Network connection can also be shared by devices over HDMI. It was introduced with v1.4 spec in 2009 and runs at 100 Mbps. Pin 13 of HDMI connector has to be broken or covered with tape to ensure no connectivity.
The other end of HDMI would need to offer a network connection for that to be real. Also its so poorly supported it might as well not be a thing. Noone implements it and it isn't just a "there's Ethernet wires in the HDMI cable", it uses some multi-purpose pins that both ends have to agree to use.
If anyone ever actually builds a TV that supports it* then the list of things one must actively disable will have grown all the way to two. Again, not hidden spy equipment; no reason to wonder whether your TV is secretly communicating with someone.
I would imagine that a large percentage (especially older people) won't configure wifi either, so the motivation to use open hotspot (especially that it doesn't take that much effort to implement it) is actually higher.
At some point we should stop making compromises like this and demand offer of dumb TVs that won't spy on every single thing you do in the privacy of your home.
How would encryption help in this case? If the TV connects to open wifi opportunistically it will still be sending data to the internet you don't want it to, encrypted or not.
Savvy users can probably open up the back of the TV and unplug the antenna cables, though that will tend to make manufacturers disagreeable should you ever seek warranty service.
Encrypted ones do, at least every commercial version these TV’s would be able to use. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_Protected_Setup Is the closest thing to an exception that I know of but still required user action to connect, and it’s been deprecated for a long time.
Some enterprise systems don’t require users to enter passwords, but the software still uses them internally when talking to the network.
It's surprising to me that you can't find a single medium or high-ish end TV without smart features, but at the same time chromecast/firetv/apple tv units and sticks also seem to be selling very well.
Is everyone just putting up with the shitty built-in smart interface, but then switching inputs to their separate unit of choice?
I really wish the whole home theater system was way more modular. I want:
1. A TV that just displays video from an HDMI input.
2. An A/V amplifier that just receives an HDMI A/V signal from a single input, passes the video from that to to the TV, and does Dolby/DTS/whatever decoding of the audio, amplifies the result, and sends it to my speakers.
3. An HDMI switch that I can plug assorted A/V source into (FireTV, Roku, OTA TV tuner, Blu-ray player, Cable box, etc) into, which I'll connect to the A/V receiver.
(Actually, what I really want is for the switch to split the A/V signal into separate audio and video on two different HDMI ports. Video goes to the TV, audio the A/V amplifier--except now it is just an A amplifier. But I think there may be licensing restrictions on that kind of splitting that make it so you can only split at the step that converts to analog for the speakers).
All of the HDMI connections should support Ethernet over HDMI.
None of these should have WiFi built-in. They networking should be via Ethernet. If I want WiFi, I'll add a WiFi access point to the home theater LAN.
I'm not sure how Ethernet over HDMI interacts with HDMI switches. If you have, say, a 4 input, 1 output HDMI switch, does that switch all signals, so that you only have Ethernet between the one selected input and the output, or are the Ethernet lines treated specially and connected like a hub, so that all devices on both sides of the switch can communicated over Ethernet, regardless of which input is currently selected for A/V?
If the later, then the home theater LAN can use the HDMI ports. If the former, then all the devices need an Ethernet port.
Most projectors are like this. Mine is a JVC, plugged via HDMI into an AVR that does the input handling. I feed that with a DirecTV Genie, AppleTV, Bluray player etc.
About a third of the population, myself included, can't really watch 3d movies on flat screens (hardwired focus to crossing in the brain). Having all the marketing try very hard to shove into my face a feature that literally gives me a headache was a nuisance.
Not saying your experience isn't valid, but it's actually the too-tight glasses for my big head that give me headaches for 3D movies, not the actual 3D feature.
Don't care enough about 3D to buy my own 3D glasses though, so solution (don't watch 3D movies) is the same.
Business-wise, they need to have the "smarts" built-in to subsidies the price so they can compete. Even if you don't use the built-in apps, it's still collecting interesting enough data to sell. Most people don't know how to block specific devices from accessing the internet, and worse, some of those devices won't work at all if they can't.
> Is everyone just putting up with the shitty built-in smart interface, but then switching inputs to their separate unit of choice?
I frequently use hdmi but I still use the my tvs smart functions as it has dedicated amazon and netflix buttons and other buttons to control those apps. Works 99% of the time perfectly and than I'm not at risk of hdmi cable connections to my laptop so i use it all the time. Oh, and mine was a pretty good deal at the time (65 inch with 4k and smart functions for $1,000 3.5 years ago). What is so shitty about the smart tv functions you use?
You can, they're just not marketed to consumers. Search electronics retailers like B&H, Newegg, etc for "commercial displays" or "digital signage" and you'll see a lot of familiar looking units that don't have all the consumer garbage built in. They tend to be more expensive but not prohibitively so.
TVs are sold at or below cost and they make money from selling ads and get a cut of subscription revenue if you subscribe from the device.
This is no different than PC makers who make money from bundled crapware and stickers plastered on the computer.
People use to complain about the “Windows Tax” and thought the computer would be cheaper without it being bundled, but the PC manufacturers actually loss money when Windows wasn’t bundled because they also couldn’t bundle third party crap.
I've been using mythtv server plus raspberry pi running LibreELEC ("just enough OS for Kodi") for each CRT in my house...making them "smart" but without the surveillance.
If you have a reasonable amount of space be sure to take a look at the projector market. My current-model Epson is dumb as a rock, and as far as I can tell the majority of projectors are. The picture is better than most TVs to boot.
The thing is, in my opinion that you shouldn't have to set-up PiHole in the first place.
If we do that and don't vote with the feet and wallets we won't see a single DumbTv in a few years.
It is still possible to find a non-Smart device. Don't pay for someone's ad-space!
A monitor wouldn't have a built-in ISDB-Tb receiver. To me, that's the defining feature which distinguishes between a "TV" and a "monitor": a TV has a built-in receiver for over-the-air TV broadcasts, while a monitor doesn't.
Kind of off topic, but I have an older Samsung smart tv. It has an ethernet connection, but it didn't have any option for WiFi. For a few years I had it wired up to ethernet, and after rearranging where my router lived in the house I didn't have a long enough ethernet cable, so I hooked up a USB WiFi dongle. It worked great for a few months until I needed that dongle to connect a Raspberry Pi to WiFi, so I stole it from the TV...and lo and behold the TV still had internet access via WiFi! The only thing that I think could have happened is that the TV had WiFi hardware but was disabled in software, because at the time a WiFi TV was selling at a premium and this was a cheapo one I bought from Wal-Mart. So I guess hooking up the USB dongle somehow unlocked it. It kinda freaked me out that there was hidden WiFi hardware in there.
edit
The tv definitely phones home too, my Pi Hole blocks a few hundred attempts to lookup log-ingestion.samsungacr.com, xpu.samsungelectronics.com and upu.samsungelectronics.com per day.
This is why I (currently) trust Apple, because they appear to care about privacy. I am not blinding myself to the possibility that this may change, but right now this is their selling poin tto me.
Apple cares about privacy enough to make Google their default search provider for many billions each year. Apple pays lip service to your privacy and obviously cares more about money just like any other corporation.
Still doesn't change the fact that if Apple was principled on privacy, they would refuse google's billions in spy money and wouldn't, by default, send their customers to Google search engine to be harvested
Apple takes more proactive steps to ensuring user privacy than anyone else in the industry at their scale. They put out products that are by far the privacy conscious of the bunch.
Statements like yours seem to exist in some weird ideological vacuum. Reality is far messier and much more nuanced.
So unless you're willing to let your ideology clash with reality to produce something of value in the real world, it's essentially grandstanding.
I hear ya but if DDG doubled googles offer Apple would change the default. They are for profit and don’t hide it. Google and Facebook on the other hand hide or at least try to hide their illegal business models
That's pretty much what it's for! If you don't use the modem, you need to export usage data onto an SD card and mail it in.
Conceptually, I understand that they don't want to continue paying for a therapy if you're not actually using the equipment. But having a wireless modem built-in is a bridge too far.
Various system-on-a-chip devices with built-in TLS/CDMA support have been available for years. The only reason TVs/etc still ask for local WiFi access is using the cellular networks requires negotiating some sort of contract. Left unregulated, they will eventually move to cellular. we already see this happening with cars; cheaper devices are only a matter of time.
My TV (Vizio P55-C1) doesn't have a "disconnect" option. I either need to do a factory reset, or change passwords three times (WiFi AP to temporary, TV to temporary, WiFi AP back to normal.)
I suppose I could just never connect it to WiFi, but then it wouldn't get firmware updates.
>Do they pay for targeting in order to pay for fewer ads?
Yes. There can be more and smaller advertisers when you can tailor ads to the market. Nontargeted advertising is economic only for biggest brands.
Data that is collected sparsely can help to identify interests and match ads to users. Geographic location helps to match adds from your local market to the blog the user is currently reading, for example.
Continuously collected information can be used to direct and predict behavior. The user matches profile of stressed person. People under stress have low impulse control, show them ads for products that are typical impulse purchases. S
>Where is the market for "user data"? How do you sell your blog visitor's data?
You don't. You add common trackers to your site and receive income from ads trough them.
> Could you monetize your blog not by showing ads but by selling user information?
No. This does not work in small scale. Single blogger can't create much value by selling data directly. Google or Facebook do that.
I couldn't find info in the article about the whether LG (WebOS) Smart TV's still do this even if you opt-out of all the "Channel Plus" and other sketchy advertising/user-tracking features in the menu.
I guess it's time to fire up Wireshark. I love these TV's because they can be integrated with home automation like Home Assistant. But maybe it's time to put it on a VLAN with no access to the WAN.
PSA: If you mostly like to watch movies and/or cinematic TV (with the lights off, or in a dimly lit room), consider a home theater projector instead of a TV. In a dark room (even with white walls) the image is fanatic in cinema mode, and nearly as good (and quite a bit brighter) in "living room" mode. Best of all, they have absolutely zero "smart" features.
I bought an Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 8345 Projector refurbished for around $470 a couple years ago to replace my 720p Panasonic AX200U. The Epsons have a solid warranty and will easily project a 100"+ image in a dark room on a basic (<$200) screen. The bulbs work out to about 10 cents/hour of usage.
Did anybody really believe that data wasn't being sent to ad companies like Facebook? Our default position should be to assume it is so until it is proven otherwise.
I wouldn't be that hard to make a small firewall to put in between the TV and the Internet, with rules that block unwanted traffic - or better, block it and inject fake data - while allowing normal use of the TV.
It would be nice having say a version for traveling with laptops etc if we don't trust the hotel connection and one to protect from being spied by the SmartTVs, where changing from one to the other requires nothing more than swapping an SD and reboot.
How will it detect unwanted (spying) traffic from legitimate operations (software update...)? Moreover it is a moving target, as the firmware can, at some point in time, use another endpoint (especially after an update).
"How will it detect unwanted (spying) traffic from legitimate operations (software update...)?"
That would be harder, especially true in case of encrypted traffic.
"Moreover it is a moving target, as the firmware can, at some point in time, use another endpoint (especially after an update)."
This one might be easier to fight than the former. Upgradabe black lists might be a solution, not unlike some antispam software work: the firewall software downloads weekly/daily from a central server (1) a list of all legit/evil addresses and checks where the TV attempts to connect against that list, then filters traffic as required.
(1) I would assume we would trust a centralized server for this purpose as much as we would trust a server holding spam and malware sites.
Each firmware update may come with a large list of endpoints. They also may use the very same servers (IP addresses) in order to spy and also for the updates or legitimate apps.
For the customer eager to benefit from a connection to the Internet it may be a lost battle, he will be spied on.
In a hn thread the other day, someone told me their TV will simply connect to any open wifi networks it comes across, just to phone home. I couldn't get the brand or model out of them, though.
(I'm asking because I don't know. It's not advocacy. I have NONE of this equipment currently.) So, if I get gigabit cable internet and want to buy a 4K tv and plug it in for streaming Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube, etc. (no broadcast, no WiFi to reduce bandwidth), is the solution to leave the WiFi off on TV setup (or give it a bad password to avoid opportunistic connection) and to plug the ethernet cable coming out of the cable modem into an Apple TV and/or Roku instead of into the TV, getting all of my programming thru wires coming out of these secondary boxes?
Generally yes. In my (accidental) experience, don't give it a bad WiFi key, it'll just complain. Just leave it disconnected. Honestly, given the unnecessary updates, ads, and just horrid UI that WiFi brought me on my TV, I'd suggest leaving it offline even if you don't care about the privacy issues.
Oh, and WiFi won't change how much bandwidth you're using. And given the low (compared to Bluray) bitrate of 4k content on the streaming services, you probably don't need gigabit.
And, it's not for everyone, but I personally like just hooking up a small PC (Intel's NUC works well here) and using that instead of AppleTV or Roku.
I have a Sony TV that I absolutely love but the built in Android TV will have a row of ads on the main screen. I configured my WiFi to use AdGuard DNS and now they have just disappeared. The Android TV is bit faster too.
Basically, yes. And you can and should also put all of those IOT devices on separate VLANs which you can control and monitor via firewall rules and packet inspection.
Does this happen with Chromecast as well? I'm totally fine with disconnecting my tv since I only use it via Chromecast anyways. Smart tv makes no sense to me simce they are all 10x shittier than Chromecast
The spying is one thing, but you're right: SmartTVs doesn't make sense, because the software sucks.
If Sony, Phillips or some other manufacture made a SmartTV with software that rivalled the AppleTV, or even just a Chromecast, then it would make some sense to save the money from the AppleTV and buy a better TV.
The thing is that all of the SmartTVs I tried are slow and confusing. You're better off buying a cheaper TV and getting the $200 AppleTV HD.
If you factor in the cost of developing shitty software, then maybe there would be more profit in just release a new dumb TV.
I am really baffled that anyone with a clue would enable "smart" behavior from a consumer electronics product like a TV (ie, one from a company not known for privacy and security).
Our TV is old enough that it's not smart. We mostly watch things from the AppleTV on it, plus some from our very small cable package/DVR.
Choosing a set-top-box vendor you trust (and for us, that's Apple) gives you everything you'd get by trusting Samsung or Vizio, right? What even turn ON the network features of the TV?
Ex-spotifier here. I'm only somewhat familiar with this, it's been a while, and I'm not speaking for Spotify, but I wouldn't be surprised if the data is being sent for speaker/remote control device discovery. It's probably the same for Google and Chromecast.
Knowing what else gets collected online, this isn't a big concern for me. I'm more worried about these devices not having great security and not getting security updates for their entire life.
My LG C8, which I've done anything on with apps aside from installing Amazon, Youtube and Netflix (which I hope are "safe" and "reputable") is frequently trying to connect out with what appears to be a rootkit in Googling:
> Threat Management Alert 1: A Network Trojan was Detected. Signature ET MALWARE Misspelled Mozilla User-Agent (Mozila). From: 192.168.1.x:46372, to: 23.52.164.68:80, protocol: TCP
My firewall picks this up, otherwise I'd never know it.
I’ve had great luck blocking SmartTVs with a PiHole and a custom list. Also adding regex blacklists like “samsungtv” and “roku” seems to help. Granted, I sometimes disable to block to install updates and apps - but it seems to work. My next move is to start whitelisting destination IPs for smart devices and putting them on their own SSID/VLAN.
I will never buy a "smart TV". For one thing, I don't have much use for any TV. What I have is a large display attached to a media server. It doesn't have Internet access, except when I need to update packages. If there's something that I want to watch on it, I just use a DVD, or get a copy of the file.
I every now and then I have to have this conversation with my mum and dad: "the TV will occasionally ask you to tell it your name, where you live, your birthday etc. Don't tell it ANYTHING. They can't make you."
I wish the people who make my parents' TV would stop trying to trick them into doxing themselves.
Which is why I have firewall rules inside my freakin' house which prevent things from sending packets outside. It really is annoying. If you allow DNS and ping it seems the TV won't constantly complain that it doesn't have an internet connection.
Does anyone publish a set of firewall rules (pfSense would be ideal) that allows Netflix, Hulu, etc to work with a Roku or Smart TV while blocking things like facebook?
I understand that Netflix is going to track me when I'm a Netflix subscriber, but why should Facebook do it?
On an Android smart TV, I run a DNS changer and point it to local pi-hole to block trackers and ads aggressively. Not sure if it ends up cleaning up everything but I do see 15% of the DNS queries pi-holed.
I wonder - how prevalent is this in vehicles now? My car probably knows where I am, what podcasts I listen to, my daily routine, all sorts of things. It can connect via 3g without me knowing it and send all sorts of usage data.
This is why regulation is IMPORTANT. A whole industry can decide this is their business model, an industry where competitors can't really get in, and consumers are screwed. Well just don't drive a car, just don't use a tv is not a valid argument.
My LG TV webOS YouTube app, generates some hard to hear sounds when menus and content is navigated. Even thought I am not logged in in YouTube app, I suspect they can be captured by an Android device nearby and correlated with that device user. The apps that have the login data already can share whatever they like. There was a story some years ago when even shared local media names were shared by some TVs. If you have a device connected to network, you can be sure it will share whatever it can, malice intent or not.
For years, we've been avoiding this whole problem. We have a dumb TV hooked up to a computer. The computer doesn't even have a fancy couch-friendly interface installed. It's just a computer. And therefore, it literally plays all media we want, and if we prefer, it blocks ads and plays music too. The computer doesn't spy on us because we control it, and websites only spy on us to the degree that we're unable to prevent. (pihole, ublock, etc)
The next time that Apple comes out with a new model of their Apple TV 4K (likely next month), I plan on buying one and completely disconnecting my smart TV from the internet.
My TV's UI is incredibly laggy and Vizio forces upon me a barely tolerable UI with the first two rows on the main page consisting of unhideable suggestions on what I should watch---even content that I cannot watch since I'm not subscribed to every service.
My TV is completely airgapped now for privacy reasons, but I really wish there was a way to replace the OS running on it.
I used to be(and still am) a big fan of the Smart TV concept, seeing as there's a whole quad core ARM SoC built into my TV that might as well take the streaming duty instead of having an extra HTPC or Chromecast lying outside of it.
I am starting to think I should block all traffic out of my home network and force everything to go through a proxy server where I can manage all outbound traffic.
The number of devices I have plugged into my home network is astonishing and the chatter / discovery they do to each other is interesting to watch.
It's been this way for a while. That is why I get 4K Monitors, not a "smart TV". If a monitor has anything beyond a hdmi jack, I skip it.
Cars are going this way too. The current model year has all car manufacturers producing these ruined vehicles. Hold what you got, or buy used until this bullshit is regulated away.
I went in to my router to block my Samsung TV last night and thought it was cute that instead of using the device name I set it was using "localhost". I guess these companies will go to any extreme to steal your info.
the first things most apps try to do is attempt to connect w/ graph.facebook.com at launch (and periodically)
this is true for your banking apps to music apps like Pandora and Spotify
you can get Netguard, which functions as VPN/Firewall and get visibility into the data exfilitration that is happening right now on your Android phone (and block some of it). Similar things should exist on iPhone too
google apps are also constantly trying to phone home and panic when they cannot connect to the mothership, causing signficant battery drain... I haven't seen them trying to call facebook directly though
Do they send data from games consoles? I watch TV entirely through my PS4, with the actual smart TV not hooked up to my wifi. I presume that would stop TV companies from getting my data, but then again Sony might sell it themselves.
There is a simple way around this- never connect these to your LAN. I don't need the features, I don't need the data collection, and I certainly do not need the extra security footprint.
I use Kodi on a Rasbperry pi. There is a plugin for Netflix (which I dont use due to the content restrictions they have in Australia thanks to the Foxtel monopoly). Problem solved.
Spy TVs are nothing compared to Spy energy meters.
They will bring in a new era of surge-based pricing, which will eliminate all tariff comparisons as it will be impossible to compare.
Higher pricing is already starting with non-spy tariffs being more expensive than spy tariffs.
If you happen to buy a home with one, and want the spy meter removed, you are at the mercy of the supplier and they will embark on a campaign against you to keep it. The lies will soon start saying they have no analogue meters in stock etc.
What if the communication is benign? What if the TV is simply refreshing a list of recommendations? Everybody - including this forum - is so primed to read nefarious motives into basically anything a computer can do now. Soon we're not going to be able to write a single "hello world" app w/o having to fill out a ream of EU paperwork and get licensed and bonded in advance.
Odd. Most of the discussion here is about the TV and the collection, few seem interested in where that data is being sent? Has the shameless nature of Netflix's and FB's privacy invasions been normalized? Ironic given that Snowden's book dropped this week.
Smart TV's are only for stupid people. If you have one, unplug it from the internet, this removes the smartness. Add back your own smartness with a "NUC" kind of computer. Now you have a dumb TV and a smart owner.
when I wanted a 4K, I made sure it wasn't a smartTv for the reasons outlined in the article and comments. hard to find, but walmart had their own dumb 4k tv
It can't possibly block all phone home attempts. How would the Netflix or YouTube apps work on those devices if network traffic to those respective third-parties were blocked?
At this point, people have to wonder what benefits the IOT fabric provides THEM versus what benefits it provides the vendor or configurator/bundler...
Of far greater concern is the pile of unpatched linuces these crapware bloatware "embedded linux" devices tend to be equipped with. It's an entry vector...
Do these TVs have different default settings for the EU market (GDPR)? If not, this seems like a great way to get slapped with handsome fines for GDRP noncompliance...
Dig a bit deeper and you get into service provided by Samba TV and or Inscape and you can find that they're sending back frames of video in a lot of cases to track what you're watching.
This data is becoming a huge mechanism for subsidizing TV sales and the interactivity is being looked at as a huge opportunity to recoup some of the ad spend being lost via streaming and fewer 30 second spots.
With new TV's its time to view them as private as a browser (With less controls).
https://samba.tv/ https://www.inscape.tv/