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Samsung Smart TVs Injected Ads Into Streamed Video
mpicpp sends this news from CNET:
Reports are emerging that Samsung smart TVs have begun inserting short advertisements directly into video streaming apps, with no influence from the third-party app providers. The news comes just days after Samsung made headlines for another incursion into users' lounge rooms, when it was revealed that its TV voice recognition software is capable of capturing personal information and transmitting it to third parties. ... The issue has been reported on the Plex streaming service — a brand of media player that allows users to stream their own video from a personal library or hard drive and push it to a smart TV.
Samsung says this was not intentional, and that they've fixed it so the ads should no longer show up.
What they mean by that is that they didn't intend for people to object to the ads or for their poor behavior to be called out.
It's really too bad, I have an older Samsung HDTV and it's really great. I was considering buying another Samsung when the time came to replace it. Now what am I going to buy? Sony? Vizio?
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Well, don't buy LG -- they do the same thing as Samsung. In addition to forcibly displaying ads, they have other problems, too -- they invalidated my HDMI cables because they updated the protocol ports without asking leaving me to buy new equipment so they could 'enforce copyright laws'.
It was an accident? So all this ad injection tech was a typo by some developer? lol. Why is it that the more popular a tech company gets the more of a dick it becomes? Is that some sort of business law? Samsung's trustworthiness is zero as far as I'm concerned.
Check the qualifiers. That behavior was intended, but for other markets. Samsung does have plans to introduce it to the Australian market, but in the long term.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I mean, with the plethora of set-top boxes like AppleTV, Roku, FireTV, ChromeCast, why would anyone in their right mind buy an all-in-one, especially from a known UI offender like Samsung (TouchWiz?).
Samsung should focus on making a TV with sound that doesn't suck (i.e., integrated wireless speakers that auto-calibrate) or maybe focus on style and setup for differentiation.
Whatever... they are a low-price disruptor and they essentially kicked Panasonic and Pioneer out of the market so they could foist this "app crap" on us. Whoever buys a Samsung "smart" TV deserves one I guess.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
I have been in the market for an HDTV for a while now, but haven't been convinced that any aren't massive security holes.
So quarantine it on the network just like you would any other untrusted machine. Firewall, DMZ, etc. I think it is only sane to regard devices like this as insecure and to behave accordingly. I think the same could be said for lots of so-called smart home devices. Anything you don't have a reasonable approximation of full control over should be treated as insecure by default
Vizio is a pretty solid brand... at least for their larger TVs. Decent contrast, good response time, and if you choose carefully, no Smart TV nastiness. Of course, we bought the Smart TV at the time, but it doesn't get in the way. The only way you'll see it is if you press a certain button. And personally, they did Smart TV right. If you need it, it's there and easy to access. If you don't want it, don't worry about it - out of mind, out of sight.
Check the qualifiers. That behavior was intended, but for other markets. Samsung does have plans to introduce it to the Australian market, but in the long term.
That's exactly it. There's no way for them to claim it's unintentional, as it takes intentional code to create this behavior. I don't know what on earth these people are thinking, but I won't be buying any "smart" TV that decides to share my conversations and injects ads where they don't belong. Same thing goes for Keurig and their DRM'd coffe makers or any other "smart" applicances. It seems that every "smart" appliance has a lot of foolish thinking behind it.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Unfortunately above a certain screen size it's basically impossible to get a non-"smart" TV. Personally I can do without all the extra fluff and would prefer they just give me lots of input ports and great picture and drop the price a lot. If I want to stream something I'll get a separate device (Roku, Bluray etc) to do that. I already have a TiVo and it does pretty much 90%+ of what I want out of a TV.
Personally all I want is a huge screen with excellent picture and sound features and lots of input ports. Basically just a big monitor. Good luck getting that in 60+ inch screen size though...
Surely we've reached the point where advertisers can be classified as a highly invasive species of mammalian pests and our attentions turned to exterminating them, no?
Well, you can sort of test this. Either start randomly saying strawberries and see if you get adds for them. Alternatively, you can mock a murder scene in your living room, have someone come in and shriek at the horrer and describe the carnage then mock kill them. Spend thr next 20 minute trying to get blood off the walls and carpets. See if the cops show up or if you get adds for cleaning services.
Yep! After a firmware update for my LG that basically told me "allright, now I'm going to report on what you watch to whomever I damn well please", I blocked its access to the internet on my firewall (I keep my Wifi on a separate subnet), so sorry LG TV, no more Internet access for you (but I obviously can still stream stuff from my own LAN)
when something like a TV will require accepting an EULA in order to use it as intended. No doubt, buried in the EULA will be your agreeing to let them send ads whenever they want. What's next, a coffee machine that can insert other brands of coffee into the brew cycle?
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Since when were dumb TVs ever subsidized by ads? The low cost of today's flat panel televisions is largely due to advances in electronics and mass manufacturing, not some hidden stealth subsidy. It's the programming that is subsidized by ads, not the device itself.
It seems that every "smart" appliance has a lot of foolish thinking behind it.
AKA greed. I'd be surprised if I'm the only person who avoids companies that keep finding ways to get around ad blockers.
VENDORS: Wanna advertize to me? Do it DISCRETELY while I'm SEARCHING for YOUR product; and ONLY if you have a product I'm looking for; otherwise, you lose me as a customer/client. Want me to receive your ads? PAY *me*, not only the ad pushers!
Gotta wonder... would Pepsi, Coke and other "name brands" really lose much business if they stopped advertising? Or would their net profit increase by not wasting $$ on ads?
I use AdBlock and Ghostery's lists to block ad networks and trackers at the router level. Any computer/phone/smart device that connects to my network automatically has ads and trackers blocked. So far, so good. Granted, it's not simple enough for the everyday person to implement. Also, I don't buy any smart TVs because their software is most often crap, you shouldn't have to accept an EULA to use a TV (or a coffee machine, toaster, etc), and they have the capacity to be bricked unlike a regular "dumb" TV. And then there's this eavesdropping and injecting additional ads BS.
My LG TV got a firmware update that - after the upgrade was installed - prompted me to accept a new agreement that would allow them to monitor everything I do and send it to a third party. I declined, and in return most of the SMART features were disabled. LG's support only refers me to an email address they claim should be displayed on the agreement page (which of course does not contain any contact information at all), and when pushing them they told me to email an address that is more or less a black hole (they never reply).
But if all tv makers do the same thing, you'll vote with your wallet by not having a tv at all. Other people (like me) only found out about LG reporting back to their servers what you're watching only after buying the TV, and unplugging ethernet was easier than taking the TV back.
It's an invasion of privacy, no different than medical information or what you talk about with your lawyer, yet there are privacy protections there. It should be the same here.
Vizio is a pretty solid brand... at least for their larger TVs. Decent contrast, good response time, and if you choose carefully, no Smart TV nastiness. Of course, we bought the Smart TV at the time, but it doesn't get in the way. The only way you'll see it is if you press a certain button. And personally, they did Smart TV right. If you need it, it's there and easy to access. If you don't want it, don't worry about it - out of mind, out of sight.
How terrible is it that I am now suspicious of every post saying something good about a company or product? This could be a legit post, written by someone who has a positive experience with their TV. But I read the content and see it's posted by an AC and immediately think "astroturf". There is a trust that has been broken in our society; a lot actually. Something has been lost and I'm not sure if/how we get it back.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
There used to be a fiduciary responsibility to maintain the public trust. We didn't need laws to protect people, because there weren't unnamed unknown faceless corporations hiding nefarious activities.
This is why, I suggest that we start using the Corporation Death Penalty for gross violations of public trust. And use it in cases like this, where public trust is abused behind corporate greed.
THIS, backhanded, sleazy greed, this abuse of public trust, needs to be slapped down hard.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Looks like I just need a router with the same smarts as the TV, where the telly would be on its own network segment (so it can't change its IP and get around it.)
Maybe this is a harbinger of things to come where IoT devices in general would need firewalled due to privacy and security concerns.
Of course, the next counter from the TV makers, will be the TV either just not working at all with any inputs unless it has the ability to phone home (think games that require a constant network connection), or it gets a 3G antenna... so even without a direct Net connection, it still can phone home.
Maybe the best of all worlds is as described above... a HTPC + a large monitor. Smart TVs seem dumb to me, as they don't add any useful features, but seem be another vector for ad-slinging and invading privacy.
Of course! That's why they're all designed to work with the "cloud." Making it easy for Joe Dumbass to use without having to teach him how to set up his own server is only the excuse they tell "consumers;" the real reason they do it is for that sweet, sweet Big Data.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
No, it would not. Modifications of websites using Greasemonkey and Adblock are done by the end user, which means no distribution of the modified work has occurred and therefore copyright law does not apply. Using Greasemonkey or Adblock is conceptually no different than taking a black marker to (your own copy of) a magazine and scribbling out the stuff you don't want to see.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
We all need to get together and form some Big Dumb Companies:
* Big Dumb Pipe: High-Speed Symmetrical Broadband with no other restrictions, bells, whistles, nor even the ability to log your activities, given that it is only a Big. Dumb. Pipe.
* Big Dumb Appliances: No, they will not be running apps nor making predictive adjustments based on your FitBit. But they will have ALL user-replaceable parts and be so durable, most if not all will be handed down at least two generations.
* Big Dumb Panels: no built-in anything, such as DRM, locked-down SOCs, near-useless speakers, nor web cams, nor mics: just a big, beautiful screen, tiny bezels, a plethora of mounting holes, and damn near every type of video connection, period.
The ad campaign writes itself: "Big. Dumb. Ideas who's time have come."
From a manufacturing standpoint, Smart TVs aren't dumb. If you've ever taken apart a modern HDTV, it's basically a monitor plus a small computer which does the image decoding and processing. On some HDTVs the computer half even plugs into the monitor half with a DVI cable.
For the manufacturer, it's trivial to beef up the computer with $10-$20 of extra hardware (faster CPU and more RAM), add some software, and charge an extra $200 for it being a Smart TV. As you surmise, the buyer is much better off buying a "dumb" TV and adding a HTPC (I recommend an old laptop so you don't kill your dollar savings with extra electricity burned by a 100 Watt old desktop).