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User Alleges LG TVs Phone Home With Your Viewing Habits
psychonaut writes "Blogger DoctorBeet discovered that his new LG television was surreptitiously sending information about his TV viewing habits, as well as the names of the files he watched on removable media, to LG's servers. There is an undocumented setting in the TV configuration which supposedly disables this behaviour, but an inspection of the network traffic between the TV and the Internet showed that the TV continues to send the data whether or not the setting is disabled. DoctorBeet contacted LG, but they shrugged the matter off, saying that it's a matter between him and the retailer he bought the TV from."
it's a matter between him and the retailer he bought the TV from.
So, according to their logic, if I came round and kicked their asses, then that's a matter between them and the shop I bought my shoes from?
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Who did he buy it from, Sony?
This file didn't really contain "midget porn" at all, I renamed it to make sure it had a unique filename that I could spot easily in the data and one that was unlikely to come from a broadcast source.
Sure, whatever you say.
I can feel the outrage in his comments.
They'll be prying his midget porn from his cold, dead, slightlt sticky hands
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
All I watch are reruns of Law & Order. Guess that's why I keep getting targeted ads for handguns, anti-freeze, bleach, and no-contract cell phones.
This is part of the pitch to advertisers from the LG video: "Furthermore, LG Smart Ad offers useful and various advertising performance reports. That live broadcasting ads cannot. To accurately identify actual advertising effectiveness."
LG staff apparently speak like robots. Or Michael Caine. Who can only say. A few words. At a time.
That's pretty creepy.
I'd rarther reverse engineer the protocol and then build a 'crap stats generator' which sends insane viewing patterns to LG. You know, just to tilt the balance in another direction, to make their entire stats database worthless and get a few managers fired. Not allowed? Collecting data like that is highly illegal and could cost LG their import license.
Who will monitor the monitors?
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Tossed over the shark, surely.
Let Little Bobby Tables have control over the remote for a while.
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