Viewing Data Harvested From Smart TVs Used To Push Ads To Other Screens? (securityledger.com)

chicksdaddy writes: In the latest episode of EULA overreach, electronics maker Vizio Holdings has been called out by the non profit investigative reporting outfit ProPublica for an on-by-default feature on its smart TVs called "Smart Interactivity" that analyzes both broadcast and streamed content viewed using the device. ProPublica noted that the company's privacy policy failed to clearly describe the tracking behavior, which included the collection of information such as the date, time, channel and whether the program was viewed live or recorded.

According to ProPublica, the monitoring of viewing information through IP addresses, while it does not identify individuals, can be combined with other data available in commercial databases from brokers such as Experian, creating a detailed picture of an individual or household. Vizio has since updated its privacy policy with a supplement that explains how "Smart Interactivity" works.

The bigger issue may be what that updated privacy policy reveals. As The Security Ledger notes, the updated Vizio privacy policy makes clear that the company will combine "your IP address and other Non-Personal Information in order to inform third party selection and delivery of targeted and re-targeted advertisements." Those advertisements "may be delivered to smartphones, tablets, PCs or other internet-connected devices that share an IP address or other identifier with your Smart TV."

In other words, TV viewing patterns will be used to serve ads to any device user who happens to be connected to the same network as the Vizio Smart TV — an obvious problem for households with a mix of say... adults and children?! Vizio does provide instructions for disabling the Smart Interactivity features and says that "connected" features of the device aren't contingent on monitoring. That's better than some other vendors. In 2014, for example, LG used a firmware update for its smart televisions to link the "smart" features of the device to viewer tracking and monitoring. Viewers who applied the update, but refused to consent to monitoring were not able to use services like Netflix and YouTube.

Comments

Weasel words

[olsmeister]

Wow, who wouldn't want to leave "Smart Interactivity" on? I don't know what it is or does, but if it's smart, and interactive, I had better leave it on, right? I want to get my money's worth out of this smart TV. I sure don't want to start disabling the smart features on my new smart TV.

Some marketing drone really earned their salary when they came up with that name.

Re:Weasel words

[bill_mcgonigle]

I don't know what it is or does

Making the right decision here creates or solves most of our privacy/security problems.

Re:Weasel words

[MyAlternateID]

As I've advised people before, never give a smart TV its own Internet connection. Instead, use a cheap media center PC and an HDMI cable (or whatever). It will be a small portion of the cost of setting up a home theater. Then you'll have something that has serious storage, can stream whatever you like, has upgradable hardware, and easily updatable software. If you go open source, you won't have to worry about phoning home and you can put the package manager in your cron tab.

While I've advised this in the past for security purposes (I'm not on board with the whole Internet of Things for solid reasons), it's no surprise that we're seeing concrete privacy reasons as well. Corporations and the sociopaths who run them have no sense of honor or respect for their customers. That's why you can't expect them to simply ignore another chance to get advertising revenue. They're counting on the average person being too stupid and ill-informed to resist and that alone is why they don't deserve to get their way.

It would be nice to see customers rejecting this kind of practice early on, rather than waiting for it to become so bad and widespread that government finally sees an opportunity (yet one more thing to regulate!) and steps in.

Re:Weasel words

[Ol Olsoc]

It would be nice to see customers rejecting this kind of practice early on, rather than waiting for it to become so bad and widespread that government finally sees an opportunity (yet one more thing to regulate!) and steps in.

You kind of nailed the issue, but how do you figure that the customer can foil the sociopath? Disliking regulations is good and all, but the sociopaths don't need no stinking EULA, they'll just collect it secretly if they want too. Does the solution have to be a 1985 Television and over-the-air reception?

I have pretty much the same cynical outlook you do towards this stuff, but 90 percent of people don't, and a sizable group has their cynicism misplaced in moon landing and rainbow conspiracies.

And that's the problem - sociopaths won't stop until it hurts them personally. It's why the wet dream of libertarians and some republicans doesn't work. Those ideals only exist in a universe where all are honest.

Re:Weasel words

[Anonymous Coward]

Does the solution have to be a 1985 Television and over-the-air reception?

My recently purchased 4K television did not come with any "Smart" features. I don't want it online, it doesn't need to be online. If I want access to all that other stuff I'm more than capable of choosing to use something like a Roku or Chromecast, a TiVo, a cable box, etc. All I want the TV to be is a display device, and if I could find one that doesn't have built-in speakers I'd ditch those as well, since I have an external sound system.... but I do understand there's a pretty big demand for built-in sound so that doesn't bother me much. I just hate paying for features I neither want nor use.

Re:Weasel words

[MyAlternateID]

You kind of nailed the issue, but how do you figure that the customer can foil the sociopath?

The way I see it, it's up to us, on an interpersonal level, to make sure our friends and family hear about these things especially when they're making a significant purchase.

Disliking regulations is good and all, but the sociopaths don't need no stinking EULA, they'll just collect it secretly if they want too. Does the solution have to be a 1985 Television and over-the-air reception?

The problem with regulations is that they're imposed by the same kind of sociopaths who created these problems in the first place. They're also a shitty substitute for an informed public. I'll take a 1985 television over a 1984 telescreen any day, but with some basic understanding of networking a potentially hostile device can be contained. That's what I view as the real solution, in terms of security.

And that's the problem - sociopaths won't stop until it hurts them personally. It's why the wet dream of libertarians and some republicans doesn't work. Those ideals only exist in a universe where all are honest.

Actually the dream of a libertarian society doesn't depend on everyone being honest. A libertarian plan still includes a government and it still includes making the use of force and fraud illegal. If you thought libertarian vision was anarcho-capitalism, you've been misled by someone with a vested interest. This is a really, extremely common misunderstanding. I believe it's promoted by members of the two major parties who want to discredit libertarian thought because of the tremendous power it could cost them. It certainly wouldn't be the first time negative PR was used this way.

The best way to have that kind of society is for everyone to be tough-minded and well-informed. Smart TVs that spy on you would never sell if the average person understood what was wrong with them. It's this intellectually lazy (and arguably, moronic) tendency to buy and use devices without the slightest clue concerning how they work or what they can do that provides the conditions sociopaths crave.

Re:Weasel words

[Anonymous Coward]

TV Smart. Buyer? Not so much.

Re: Weasel words

[Anonymous Coward]

Most plebs don't know what a firewall is.

Re:Weasel words

[Blaskowicz]

Nope, it will be half the cost : $200 for the TV and $200 for the mini PC, or $300 for TV and $300 for PC, or $400 and $150.. but the TV can play stuff on its own, even "non-smart" are somehow smart enough to play divx and h264 from USB drives. So a non-smart TV is smart already, "smart" means wifi or network and is a small incremental cost ergo the cheap TVs will likely have the features.

Re:Weasel words

[lgw]

It would be nice to see customers rejecting this kind of practice early on, rather than waiting for it to become so bad and widespread that government finally sees an opportunity (yet one more thing to regulate!) and steps in

TFA doesn't go into how this has been monetized before ad-serving: this is the new Neilson Ratings. Broadcast, stream, or torrent, a smart TV with an internet connection can report what you're watching to a ratings firm. The funny thing is: Neilson is an all-volunteer service, and had the TV makers been open about this I'm sure only a few /. nerds would have opted out, while most people would be delighted that their viewing habits were important to someone.

I somehow doubt there will be much pushback about this.

What I dread is the MPAA finding a way to start using this to sue random people. "We caught you watching the new Star Wars movie and you're no paying to stream it, so you're automatically a thief - pay up!" Remember when an idea like that was tinfoil hat material?

Re:Weasel words

[BarbaraHudson]

I guess smart TVs now need a tinfoil hat.

Buying a smart TV isn't all that smart.

$20 over-the-air antenna sure beats cable or satellite to keep your viewing habits private.

Re:Weasel words

[Anonymous Coward]

You state the open source solutions don't track users. Applications like Plex are infested with Google Analytics, while it can be filtered, it is on by default.

Re:Weasel words

[Anonymous Coward]

As I've advised people before, never give a smart TV its own Internet connection. Instead, use a cheap media center PC and an HDMI cable (or whatever). It will be a small portion of the cost of setting up a home theater. Then you'll have something that has serious storage, can stream whatever you like, has upgradable hardware, and easily updatable software. If you go open source, you won't have to worry about phoning home and you can put the package manager in your cron tab.

I think the weak link to this idea is still the content providers. If you use Hulu or Amazon video to stream content or even buy UltraViolet or iTunes digital copies with your 3D Blue-Ray, there's nothing stopping them from collecting your viewing habits and pushing advertising in much the same way. The only way to avoid it entirely is to restrict yourself to local content only. Depending on how you curate this local content, you may be into dubious legal territory...

Re:Weasel words

[kheldan]

Does the solution have to be a 1985 Television and over-the-air reception?

So cable TV, satellite, and streaming are such gods-be-damned great alternatives? How does 'FREE HDTV' sound to you, pretty good? That's OTA broadcasts. Buy an antenna, once, and get free HDTV, and the quality is as good if not better than anything else (less compression).

Re:Weasel words

[Anonymous Coward]

Two thoughts here...

I was hit by the IoT privacy thing recently. i want to design a button that does something private. Why do I need 2 third party clouds to do that? So, I'm now building my own button based on Arduino at a way higher price... sigh.

Second, its hard to reject a practice when you aren't given a choice. All TV's today have these "smart" features. And ones that don't (if any) aren't any better in a perceivable way or any cheaper. There really is no incentive to not have the features (or only have them if you really want them). Most people don't care (or don't know any better to care) and will go for the one that looks the nicest at the price they want.

Re:Weasel words

[D.McG.]

There is nothing broadcast over the airwaves that I'd be worried about. Heck, letting them know which primetime shows on ABC/CBS/NBC etc. that I watch would actually help the ratings of the shows, increasing the probability that my favorite shows will be picked up for another season.

Why is it that the good sci-fi shows keep getting cancelled? Is it because the folks here are preventing the ratings from being calculated? Seems counter-intuitive.

Re:Weasel words

[nnull]

Unfortunately, due to the untrustworthy nature of devices lately, I've pretty much reverted to PFsense default settings: Block everything outgoing and incoming. If I need to browse the web, I just use squid and proxy. Tired of this crap.

Re: Weasel words

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's a new TV, I would put a sniffer on the line just to make sure. They're certainly not going to tell you what it connects to.

Re:Weasel words

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of Open Source projects track their users. They don't call it "phoning home" or "tracking", but "telemetry" really is the same thing. Besides, there are features where the tracking is built-in regardless of the implementation you use, because the tracking happens on the server. This is the case with all media libraries and movie streaming services, but also with things like HbbTV that augment live OTA programming with on demand data (some may know this as the "red button" feature). If you don't turn off HbbTV, many TV stations will instruct your TV set to download "augmenting" information that is actually just referenced to track what you're viewing. Is it any wonder that TV manufacturers don't want to be left out? Everybody else is tracking you and the people who made your TV must not? If your TV signal is sent to you as an IPTV stream, like many fiber ISPs do, then even if that is multicast streaming, the ISP can track what you watch. It doesn't matter if your player is pristine hand-vetted Open Source or not.

Re: Weasel words

[Dr. Zim]

You don't need to sniff if you never plug it in or give it your wifi password to begin with. Then for good measure, don't add the MAC to your DHCP list so it never gets and IP address even if it does find it's way on to your network.

Re:Weasel words

[shaitand]

Something that deceptive is illegal on a television ad. Why is it a deception free-for-all in Vizio configuration menus or bills in congress for that matter.

This crap needs fixed. And frankly the privacy notices, terms and conditions, and end user license agreements should all be void if longer than 50 words in common English. Anything written for attorneys-by-attorneys does not constitute a meeting of minds when presented as an agreement for the purchase and use of a consumer good and/or service including a web based one and we all damn well know it.

There are too many such goods and services per consumer and too many consumers per good and/or service for hiring an attorney to review such agreements to be considered a reasonable burden or even to expect consumers to read them themselves at their current lengths. Additionally, allowing such long and complicated agreements allows for burying anti-consumer terms so complicated that they can't reasonably be used as a point of competition and instead become industry practice creating the same anti-consumer result as collusion or a monopoly.

Re:Weasel words

[krakelohm]

They are better alternatives if you want a wider selection of programming. That is the key. Believe me though I am no pay tv loyalist been cord free for a while now. It does make it kind of interesting finding specific shows you are interested in legally that is.

Re: Weasel words

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless it auto connects to your naihbors unsecured wifi.

Re:Weasel words

[shaitand]

Industry collusion can largely negate realistic options. There is no reason services like netflix can't exist while preserving privacy (security is an illusion and therefore false by definition). But there is profit in stealing our data and therefore the industry creates an artificial dichotomy, choose between no/inferior service and your private data being stolen and sold by vendors.

"LG used a firmware update for its smart televisions to link the "smart" features of the device to viewer tracking and monitoring. Viewers who applied the update, but refused to consent to monitoring were not able to use services like Netflix and YouTube."

Consumers who opt-in and/or are opted in to data collection should have to be paid a mandatory non-transferable or waivable 50% commission on all sales of data and advertising revenues for which it is used or face fines which are at a minimum treble damages (paid back to consumers) without regard for damage to business model viability, bankruptcy, or allowance of settlements below the minimum and criminals penalties for negligent failure to prosecute.

Going to steal my data? If I can't stop you then you should at least have to split the proceeds 50/50 and be denied all manner of ways to pressure me into giving up my cut.

Re:Weasel words

[BarbaraHudson]

There is nothing broadcast over the airwaves that I'd be worried about.

Different strokes for different folks. I'll often watch the news, and there are a couple of shows I'll try to make a point of watching (Murdoch Mysteries and The Blackist). Sometimes the Big Bang Theory. CBC's Marketplace is pretty good for exposes on the latest scams. The odd movie. That's about it, I'm afraid. Really don't need cable or satellite.

Re:Weasel words

[kheldan]

I'm starting to wonder about people. I used to have cable and spent what seems like way too much time watching TV. These days it's all OTA and I have other interests and TiVo gets piled up with things I enjoy watching because I'm busy with other things. What I start to wonder is whether people should be spending less time watching TV and more time doing other things.

Re:Weasel words

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. Except I now recommend something like a Fire TV (if they have no local storage system) or the Stick (if they have a computer that's on all the time anyway; to serve media) instead of a full media computer. Put Kodi on it and go to town.

Re: Weasel words

[Slashdot Junky]

That was my thought. If possible, I would disable the wireless NIC, and I would not have the wired NIC connected.

No concept of family or shared homes.

[daq man]

"In other words, TV viewing patterns will be used to serve ads to any device user who happens to be connected to the same network as the Vizio Smart TV — an obvious problem for households with a mix of say... adults and children?"

How about a house with a mix of older and younger adults. My kids (23 and 21) watch all sorts of stuff that I don't and watch a lot more TV than me so my TV, laptop or whatever device on the same network would show ads that are dominated by the tastes of my children.

Similarly how about students or other similar groups who share a house, and thereby the same IP address. The advertising would be a mishmash of varying tastes or maybe dominated by the one guy who has the TV on all day to provide "white noise" in the background.

Re:No concept of family or shared homes.

[known_coward_69]

i get all kinds of lingerie and bra ads on my chrome browser because my wife surfs this stuff at home on safari. sometimes big fredricks of hollywood ads at work because i bought something a year ago and get emails into my gmail every other day

Re:No concept of family or shared homes.

[bill_mcgonigle]

The advertising would be a mishmash of varying tastes

It's still going to get a better result than the shotgun approach. Marketers are good at many things - not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good is one of them.

Re:No concept of family or shared homes.

[AmiMoJo]

I was going to suggest installing AdBlock and Privacy Badger, but of course they are not available for smart TVs.

Once again, APK's hosts file is looking like it will be useful again. A little DD-WRT script to download an integrate it with the router's DNS server seems wise. I just wish DD-WRT had an easy way to spy on URLs and IP addresses being accessed by a single device (my TV) so I can block them where they are inappropriate.

Re: No concept of family or shared homes.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, not router DNS. Route the outbound packets through the loop back interface if the destination is one of the adreses in there. And you may set TTL to 0 too.

Re:No concept of family or shared homes.

[Ol Olsoc]

i get all kinds of lingerie and bra ads on my chrome browser because my wife surfs this stuff at home on safari. sometimes big fredricks of hollywood ads at work because i bought something a year ago and get emails into my gmail every other day

I get some women's clothing advertisements, and I have no idea what prompted that. I must have bought something from some group who has another business line.

Regardless, its harmless, and the ladies look nice, so I let it through.

Or is it..... Will some group decide I'm a cross dresser? That would be funny. Old Ol looks a tad like a hairy Neanderthal. Dressing that hot mess up like a wimmin would definitely scare off the normal folk.

Re:No concept of family or shared homes.

[DarkOx]

The biggest hurdle really is the in ability to install ssl ca certs on these devices.

SQUID with ssl_bump and using Privoxy as a forward works wonders. You can use iptables to redirect everything on 80/443 and 53 (tcp and udp) to your local router. I have found its very important to force the use of my own DNS as well.

SQUID can be a transparent proxy and Privoxy does the filtering. The setup works really well but if you want to do SSL intercept you have to be able to install your own CA certificate on devices behind the proxy. You effective offload certificate and revocation checking to SQUID. This setup is nice because other than installing the cert there is no setup and you don't have to trust software to respect your proxy and DNS settings, the router WILL ensure everything gets proxied!

Privoxy gives you a nice interface for capturing the URLs and writing rules to block or change content.

Unfortunately the inability to modify the certificate trust store on these devices means you will either break SSL or if you don't intercept SSL from these devices they are back to being able to do whatever they like leaving you with no ability to filter.

Re:No concept of family or shared homes.

[DarkOx]

They have the technology, to solve that. They correlate the TV viewing with any other device that appears behind the same IP address. They have other research that tells them what demographics each show appeals to. Knowing you're an older adult with two grown children living with you is information they want to have as well.

So they know the 21 year old probably isn't watching NCIS religiously, that has to be you. They track your other devices individually behind that NAT. They use cookies, your user agent, JS to identify browser quirks and even machine performance to uniquely identify the devices and probably their users, time of day when the requests are made and more. There is a good change the advertiser knows the Kindle Fire Tablet is mostly used by you and the Asus Tansformer belongs to your 23 year old. They show the ads accordingly.

Re:No concept of family or shared homes.

[BarbaraHudson]

Sure, sure, blame it on the wife :-)

Re:No concept of family or shared homes.

[Trailer Trash]

The advertising would be a mishmash of varying tastes

It's still going to get a better result than the shotgun approach. Marketers are good at many things - not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good is one of them.

Yeah, kind of. Before netflix allowed different profiles for different users my kids "consumed" every single kung fu movie on there. A year later I still can't get any "recommended for you" entries that aren't kung fu.

I fear what my mix of commercials would look like.

Re:No concept of family or shared homes.

[pnutjam]

So, your claiming their TOS allows their device to enumerate the other devices on your network and report that they see 2 ipods, 3 iphones, 1 xbox, etc.
I ??

Yet another reason

[Anonymous Coward]

Why "smart" internet connected TV's are a bad idea. If a device (any device) can spy on you to gather information a marketer might want, you should probably assume it will.

Get a "dumb" TV (or a smart TV that you don't set up to connect to the internet), and use a dedicated device that you choose (and preferably an open one like XBMC that you explicitly control) to stream content to it. It's not much more expensive, and isolating components to only do the thing you expect them to do prevents this kind of attack on your privacy.

Re:Yet another reason

[devilsdean]

Sorry AC. I agree with you and moderated incorrectly.

Re:Yet another reason

[aaarrrgggh]

Same problem for all IoT crap. Effectively you need to firewall it from your trusted network and the Internet, and manage any data exchange.

Re:Yet another reason

[Gr8Apes]

Absolutely, it's not just "Smart TVs" that matter. A truly "Smart" TV would be one that has useful stuff built in that can work standalone. But as soon as you achieve that, you basically get what I have - an HTPC setup. And why would I want to limit my HTPC setup to a single screen that likely will be replaced? So, HTPC and various monitors that can work with said HTPC via some setup is all I need. None of my TVs are connected to the LAN, nor are any IoT devices except 1 rooted hub that is segmented from everything except 1 control channel running on... my HTPC. So it's all integrated and local, no cloud anything.

Re:Yet another reason

[nnull]

Well, now it should be regular practice, so...

Re:Yet another reason

[HalAtWork]

Agreed. Also: open firmwares for TVs please. Running SamyGo and it's great.

Re:Yet another reason

[aaarrrgggh]

I think my personal challenge is that doing so isn't practical for 99% of the people out there. Even users with a general understanding of firewalls, DMZs, and maybe even VLANs would struggle to effectively control access to a wifi-connected smart television.

Re:Yet another reason

[swb]

Complexity is part of it, but cost is another.

We extensively remodeled our house in 2003, and I pulled a pair of Cat 5 cables to every location the remodeling gave me access to.

Wasn't enough -- the living room has 6 networked devices, the bedroom 4, the den 3, the laundry room has two but only one run to it (a Cat 5 run previously used for analog telephone).

So now I have four rooms with their own ethernet switches, which doesn't count the semi-central wiring aggregation point or my office.

Doing VLANs to every possible location with any flexibility would mean smart switches in 6 places, not to mention the time sucking chore in actually doing the configuration and the cursing-like-a-sailor irritation of discovering that the port I want to use needs some other VLAN access profile applied to it.

Re:Yet another reason

[purplie]

This is probably why ISPs like Comcast are trying to set up unrestricted "Guest" networks in addition to your own network. It's probably a deal with these Smart TV bastards so that the TV will never be without a connection, even if you don't give it access to your network.

May be delivered?

[Viol8]

"may be delivered to smartphones, tablets, PCs or other internet-connected devices that share an IP address or other identifier with your Smart TV."

According to TFA , they somehow link the cookies they store on your browser when you visit their website to your TV. So I'm guessing they store the external IP address of the TV and if the same address suddenly starts querying their website they assume its a device behind NAT and feed it ads.

Solution - don't visit their website or delete your cookies. Quite why anyone needs a smart TV anyway is another matter. My TV is just a monitor - the smart stuff happens on my other devices.

Re:May be delivered?

[BradleyUffner]

"may be delivered to smartphones, tablets, PCs or other internet-connected devices that share an IP address or other identifier with your Smart TV."

According to TFA , they somehow link the cookies they store on your browser when you visit their website to your TV. So I'm guessing they store the external IP address of the TV and if the same address suddenly starts querying their website they assume its a device behind NAT and feed it ads.

Solution - don't visit their website or delete your cookies. Quite why anyone needs a smart TV anyway is another matter. My TV is just a monitor - the smart stuff happens on my other devices.

What is "not buying a smart TV" really going to change though? They are still going to push an ad to you no matter what, this just ties it to something you previously watched on TV instead of the result of a random number generator.

Re:May be delivered?

[Anonymous Coward]

"may be delivered to smartphones, tablets, PCs or other internet-connected devices that share an IP address or other identifier with your Smart TV."

According to TFA , they somehow link the cookies they store on your browser when you visit their website to your TV. So I'm guessing they store the external IP address of the TV and if the same address suddenly starts querying their website they assume its a device behind NAT and feed it ads.

Solution - don't visit their website or delete your cookies. Quite why anyone needs a smart TV anyway is another matter. My TV is just a monitor - the smart stuff happens on my other devices.

What is "not buying a smart TV" really going to change though? They are still going to push an ad to you no matter what, this just ties it to something you previously watched on TV instead of the result of a random number generator.

Because it keeps those rat bastards from collecting more personal information on everyone in the world! They can send me random ads and not know things about me.

Re:May be delivered?

[BarbaraHudson]

Pushing targeted ads just creates an echo chamber effect - you see the same type of ad over and over. One of the purposes of advertising is to expand your market to non-users. Targeted ads completely fail this.

Re:May be delivered?

[MyAlternateID]

Pushing targeted ads just creates an echo chamber effect - you see the same type of ad over and over. One of the purposes of advertising is to expand your market to non-users. Targeted ads completely fail this.

I assume the marketers conduct surveys, hire focus groups, and use statistics to determine things like "80% of people who enjoyed W were also interested in X, Y, and Z". This could involve a great variety of things, certainly too many to constitute "the same type ... over and over". While the marketers have many flaws, unfortunately stupidity isn't one of them.

Re:May be delivered?

[BarbaraHudson]

While the marketers have many flaws, unfortunately stupidity isn't one of them.

Disable your ad blocker and see how stupid marketers really are, repeatedly advertising something you searched for and bought a couple of weeks ago.

Re:May be delivered?

[MyAlternateID]

While the marketers have many flaws, unfortunately stupidity isn't one of them.

Disable your ad blocker and see how stupid marketers really are, repeatedly advertising something you searched for and bought a couple of weeks ago.

I admit, you got me there. It never once occurred to me to ever disable my ad blocker for any reason. I guess I'll extend some credibility and take your word for it. I am unwilling to actually put your proposal to the test. My ad blocker remains on. Yet you make an interesting claim.

Worse

[nospam007]

"Viewers who applied the update, but refused to consent to monitoring were not able to use services like Netflix and YouTube."

Another reason to use torrents and VPNs instead of apple tv, chromecast, netflix, hulu and so on.
I have a 'smart' TV as well, but I just use it as a monitor, no network cable attached.

Re:Worse

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

Did you really disable all the networking features? Would it still be possible for it to connect to a network via WiFi? What if the company is doing exactly that but isn't even listing that feature in the configuration settings? How would you know if it's connecting to a neighbour's open WiFi? You can't monitor what happens on your neighbour's WiFi.

Fight for your bitcoins!

Re:Worse

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Don't worry, in a few years the big brands will all be generating their own mesh networks with home "smart" devices for these purposes anyway. Then they don't need anything other than your house not to be inside a large metal frame, and they won't have to trouble you for a network connection (or permission) to track you, as long as someone somewhere on the mesh helpfully provides one.

Re:Worse

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

A partnership between hardware manufacturers and cellphone companies is likely to emerge.

Fight for your bitcoins!

Re:Worse

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, you mention the neighbor's open WiFi. I have not seen a neighbor with open WiFi in a long time. Sometimes I do see printers that are open to connect to over WiFi (but no, I don't print crap on my neighbor's printer). But I really don't see open networks in homes by me anymore. As far as these TVs, they don't just up and connect - at least the ones today. They ask you to pick the SSID and then enter the PSK.

Re:Worse

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Fortunately for me, the local cell reception where I live (about a mile from a city centre) is so awful that any such partnership is unlikely to trouble me. Ha! Take that, corporate evil-doers!

Re:Worse

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

What you could do is send a page to your neighbour's printer explaining that it's not secured and that anyone can send anything to it.

If the neighbour has children, he would not want someone sending pornography on the printer. Or imagine the wife finding the prints before the husband.

Or if someone hates the family, they could send fake drug/crime/etc-related paperwork/notes to the printer and then call the SWAT team to their house.

The dangers of an open WiFi printer are real.

Fight for your bitcoins!

Re:Worse

[MyAlternateID]

A partnership between hardware manufacturers and cellphone companies is likely to emerge.

Fight for your bitcoins!

I see a potential market for directional (or very short-range - place atop TV) cell phone repeaters that provide the 3G/4G/whatever equivalent of a null route.

Re:Worse

[Anonymous Coward]

The dangers of being too stupid to understand what you bought and what its capabilities are are real.

Fixed that for you.

Re:Worse

[mbone]

How would you know if it's connecting to a neighbour's open WiFi? You can't monitor what happens on your neighbour's WiFi.

There are no open WIFI's in my neighborhood. What sort of people are you living with?

Re:Worse

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm in Canada.

Fight for your bitcoins!

Slashdot only allows a user with your karma to post 25 times per day (more or less, depending on moderation). You've already shared your thoughts with us that many times. Take a breather, and come back and see us in 24 hours or so. If you think this is unfair, please email posting@slashdot.org with your username "U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M". Let us know how many comments you think you've posted in the last 24 hours.

Re:Worse

[nytes]

I wonder if the FCC might have something to say about effectively jamming a communication signal, even if it is your own TV that you're jamming.

And if such a thing happens, I'll bet you that, somewhere in the 95 page EULA for your new TV is buried a clause that says, "You agree that you will not interfere with communications from this TV to the manufacturer".

Re:Worse

[MyAlternateID]

I wonder if the FCC might have something to say about effectively jamming a communication signal, even if it is your own TV that you're jamming.

And if such a thing happens, I'll bet you that, somewhere in the 95 page EULA for your new TV is buried a clause that says, "You agree that you will not interfere with communications from this TV to the manufacturer".

Yet if it's an extremely short-range equivalent of a null route, precisely how would they detect that this is happening? Against what would they contrast their total lack of a connection of any sort? Just a hypothetical of course.

Re:Worse

[nytes]

All hypothetically, obviously. (But I wouldn't put it completely past some megacorp.)

If a company were really determined to pursue this, they could put a cheap GPS chip in the TV.

Then, the TV only needs a momentary connection to the actual network (like, while you're upgrading your short range null router) to say, "Hey, I'm at location xxx,yyy and I've been running for 635 days, and sent you 60000 packets of information and received zero replies."

The company also files a lawsuit against John Doe (before they even find out who you are) and subpoenas the customer list of the manufacturer of the very short range null route cellphone repeaters (which, in itself, may be running afoul of FCC rules simply by making the devices).

Then the company tracks you down and sues you for contract infringement, and also turns you over to the FCC to make an example of you.

Everyone else sees what happened to you and a handful of other targets and learns to toe the line.

ads for your ads

[Anonymous Coward]

Smart tvs uses APPS for ads. Ads that are for COWS. Get adblock for your tv? That's now illegal.

sleazy, but howzabout we stop helping the slease?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think there comes a point where people have to look to themselves. If we don't want all our devices to turn our lives into a panopticon of tracking, we need to stop participating in the tracking. Don't connect your damned TV, fridge, and washing machine to the internet! Stop loading tracking cookies in your web browser. Don't upload your thermostat data to anything but your own computer.

Every time you send your personal data to the marketeers, it is another brick in the wall that forms this world of monitoring and monitization. Stop adding bricks, people, if you don't want that wall to grow taller.

What does one gain from a "smart" TV anyway?

[mlts]

Other than an "enhanced advertising experience", and perhaps viewing some web content, what does a smart TV actually give as a service? Especially if one has a set top box from their provider, or something like a Roku, Chromecast, Apple TV, or a HTPC. At best, I can see the TV streaming Netflix as a feature... but with all the data sent back, it isn't worth the privacy invasion.

Of course, if the TV can't work unless it has Internet access, it will go back to the store -stat-.

Re:What does one gain from a "smart" TV anyway?

[known_coward_69]

the only thing pay TV is good for is sports, so a smart TV will let you watch content without buying a set top box like a roku or a chromecast stick. you think google, amazon and roku don't track what you watch and sell it?

Re:What does one gain from a "smart" TV anyway?

[StormReaver]

the only thing pay TV is good for is sports....

I complete agree that pay TV is 100% worthless.

Re:What does one gain from a "smart" TV anyway?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Well, they do also finally deliver that watched-in-your-own-home experience that the brochure was trying to sell as far back as 1949.

I mean, you have a camera literally watching your living room, an Internet connection, and a load of software written and maintained (or not) by people whose interests are unlikely to include your security or privacy. What could possibly go wrong? It's not like any major brands have had problems with this already or anything.

Re:What does one gain from a "smart" TV anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

Roku, Chromecast, Apple TV, or a HTPC

And you think your Chromecast and Apple TV are not monitoring your habits in the same ways?

How cute.

Re:What does one gain from a "smart" TV anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly why you want to build your own HTPC. It's easier than ever these days. Get yourself something like an Asus VivoMini some RAM and install Kodi. Or if you want even simpler, there's a RasPi plus dedicated OSs for HTPCs (you sacrifice Netflix with these.) Or even simpler are these X86 sticks that plug right into the HDMI port.

Re:What does one gain from a "smart" TV anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

Herp derp I got hit in the face with a football on the playground and it broke my glasses and all my friends laughed at me.

Re:What does one gain from a "smart" TV anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer is obvious. You do not need a third party device to use other services. The majority of people aren't interesting in cruddy little Chromecasts, Apple TVs, Roku boxen et al. They want to watch Netflix, or use BBC iPlayer without any fuss. Most so-called smart TVs offer better codec support than all but HTPCs too. Almost all over them use Linux based SoC for their "smart", which would be used on the mobo for menus and setting UIs anyway - because they're only about $5.

Cable TV is dying. Many are cutting the cable, the young aren't even getting a cable to cut, it's all online. The STB scam is coming to an end, and that end is accelerating as people realise how much they spend on shitty DVRs and cable decoders over the years. Lethargy and live sport is the main thing keeping them alive. Utilising existing processing power in every TV is a good idea. The problem being is that lack of laws preventing Sony, LG, Samsung, as well as Apple, Google, Netgear via their boxes, monitoring your usage and reporting back to base. Yes, they all do it, every single one of them logs what you watch on local media, how you accessed it, and what services you use. Slap a network logger in between them and the router (modern switches and routers prevent full sniffing), and watch what they're reporting back. I dare you.

Re:What does one gain from a "smart" TV anyway?

[crow_t_robot]

Shouldn't you be standing in the kitchen area of your office talking about your fantasy football team for 6 hours of the workday right now? And, remember, don't masturbate too much each day while watching other men play sports.

Re:What does one gain from a "smart" TV anyway?

[Ol Olsoc]

Other than an "enhanced advertising experience", and perhaps viewing some web content, what does a smart TV actually give as a service?

Computer like features. It's not all bad. When the wife and I want some completely mindless entertainment, we'll watch youtube stupid pet videos on the tv. And Comcast knows what we watch as part of their whole hd system. That has the upside of them troubleshooting from the office. I've had a couple hd boxes go bad, and we troubleshot it over the phone at my convenience, and got a new box in a couple hours. That beats the old take a day of vacation and wait around the house for the technician all morning paradigm.

But ad serving from the smartTV? If it were being done on mine, we wouldn't be getting all those half dead old people advertisements and the leaky women, stopped up men and sue someone ads that all creep me out.

Re:What does one gain from a "smart" TV anyway?

[Ol Olsoc]

the only thing pay TV is good for is sports, so a smart TV will let you watch content without buying a set top box like a roku or a chromecast stick. you think google, amazon and roku don't track what you watch and sell it?

HBO?

Re:What does one gain from a "smart" TV anyway?

[jedidiah]

> The majority of people aren't interesting in cruddy little Chromecasts, Apple TVs, Roku boxen et al.

SmartTVs are what's cruddy here.

I have devices with "built in support" for things like Netflix. They don't get used because THEY'RE CRAP. Even the "end users" don't like them.

TV apps are going to require some "fuss" regardless of what device the "app" is residing in. That doesn't change if it's the TV itself or a little box attached to it.

Re:What does one gain from a "smart" TV anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is wrong with masturbating over other men playing sports? Being homosexual isn't a crime anymore.

Re:What does one gain from a "smart" TV anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is wrong with masturbating over other men playing sports? Being homosexual isn't a crime anymore.

I assume the GP refers to men who would identify themselves as heterosexual (and deny having homosexual feelings) viewing sports that have identifiable homoerotic elements, such as men (most of who also call themselves hetero) routinely slapping each other on the ass, undressing together in locker rooms, piling on top of each other, that sort of thing.

Time for Max Headroom 2

[Anonymous Coward]

We need another Max Headroom, the industry moved from blipverts to screw your privacy, we gotta advertise.

Use a computer monitor

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

What's the difference between a TV and a computer monitor? They both have HDMI inputs and most people will be using external set-top boxes anyway. The real problem is finding a regular 1080p computer monitor bigger than 23~27".

Fight for your bitcoins!

Re:Use a computer monitor

[Anonymous Coward]

"What's the difference between a TV and a computer monitor?"

About $100

Re:Use a computer monitor

[MyAlternateID]

That won't work very well. Most cable channels require the HDMI connection to be encrypted with HDCP.

... which has done precisely nothing to stop people from uploading torrents of their favorite shows.

I once heard it said that a monkey will stop doing something that doesn't work. This makes them smarter than the assholes who advocate useless copy protection schemes.

Re:Use a computer monitor

[Megane]

The primary definition is whether or not it has an RF tuner, but the primary thing you will notice is overscan.

Overscan is something they did with CRT TV sets to prevent you from having black bars at the edge, or VIR crap at the top, and to avoid having to explain to people why those edges moved noticeably when you rotated the set 90 degrees in the earth's magnetic field.

Out of seven LCD TVs between my place and my mom's, the only one that doesn't do overscan is a 16:10 Dynex (yes, the Best Buy store brand) that I bought years ago because it still had S-video inputs, at a time when the industry was going nuts over HDMI. The others seem to have about 2.5% overscan, which is more than enough to prevent you from seeing UI elements at the edges of the screen. Even changing video modes resulted in the same degree of overscan on the sets I tried. (OS X can adjust for overscan, but it seems to do this by scaling in the video card, rather than reducing the dimensions of the frame buffer.)

About the only way you can know whether a given set does overscan is by bringing something to the store with an HDMI output. A cell phone with the right adapter cable could be good for this, and you can find overscan test graphics with a google image search.

It might also be possible to tell by if the TV set has an old-school 15-pin VGA input, which my Dynex does.

Re:Use a computer monitor

[Megane]

Quick add here: one of my sets that does overscan also has a VGA input. The VGA input has overscan. Yeah, WTF. So I guess you can't necessarily tell even from that. But I think you can be sure that Sharp Aquos sets all have overscan these days, those made up three or four of my sample population.

Re:Use a computer monitor

[Anonymous Coward]

Same AC here. I totally agree with you, copy protection schemes are utterly useless against people who are intent on breaking them. For ordinary users, things like HDCP and the CCI flag make their life difficult. For example, I can't use my HD Homerun Prime and cablecard for watching TV on Linux or my Mac. Only Windows Media Center is licensed for the DRM that's used to restrict "copy once" channels. My cable company loves to set every channel they can to "copy once" so I can't watch much of anything on my Mac or Linux systems. Basically, they inconvenience the hell out of users like me who just want to watch and record TV for their own viewing later, but they do absolutely nothing to stop actual piracy.

As for torrents, I tend to watch a lot of sports. There's no good reason I shouldn't be able to record a Formula 1 race that's on TV at like 5 AM local time on my Linux box and watch it on my Mac when I wake up. The DRM stops me from doing that, but doesn't serve it's purpose. And unfortunately, the DRM is also a pain in the ass for anyone with a set-top box that wants to connect it via HDMI to a normal computer monitor.

Re:Use a computer monitor

[MyAlternateID]

Same AC here. I totally agree with you, copy protection schemes are utterly useless against people who are intent on breaking them. For ordinary users, things like HDCP and the CCI flag make their life difficult. For example, I can't use my HD Homerun Prime and cablecard for watching TV on Linux or my Mac. Only Windows Media Center is licensed for the DRM that's used to restrict "copy once" channels. My cable company loves to set every channel they can to "copy once" so I can't watch much of anything on my Mac or Linux systems. Basically, they inconvenience the hell out of users like me who just want to watch and record TV for their own viewing later, but they do absolutely nothing to stop actual piracy.

As for torrents, I tend to watch a lot of sports. There's no good reason I shouldn't be able to record a Formula 1 race that's on TV at like 5 AM local time on my Linux box and watch it on my Mac when I wake up. The DRM stops me from doing that, but doesn't serve it's purpose. And unfortunately, the DRM is also a pain in the ass for anyone with a set-top box that wants to connect it via HDMI to a normal computer monitor.

Sports may be one exception, but it sounds like you'd have a better and more convenient experience if you pirated whatever you want to watch (not that I would advocate such a thing, of course). This is the real-world effect of copy protection schemes. So not only do they fail to work, they encourage the very thing they were intended to prevent. It's amazing how such madness can become enshrined and institutionalized.

Increasing trend

[Anonymous Coward]

The "smart" features of television are something you pay extra for. This is a long increasing trend. The original appeal of cable was a crystal clear picture of the local networks and lots of specialized content (the [noun] channel) with no advertisements. Nowadays? Hundreds of dollars a month for hundreds of channels with ads, many of them repeated three or more times in the same half hour block. I'm not sure if it is still this way, but the difference between Hulu and Hulu+ a few years back was just access to back content. You had to watch the same number of ads (with much greater repetition than the cable packages). Movies used to show a cartoon before the feature. Then previews snuck in, only one or two per show. Then they multiplied to 6 or more. Now there's ads AND previews. What has happened to ticket prices? They've gone up substantially! Why the hell are we paying for the privilege of being advertised to?

Re:Increasing trend

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Why the hell are we paying for the privilege of being advertised to?

Because, sadly, it appears to be what the market will bear.

Even a few years ago, when I wanted to buy a new TV I had to explicitly say I wanted one that wasn't "smart", just a good screen and sensible inputs. That narrowed the range I could choose from quite significantly. Today, hardly anything I could buy off the shelf from any local store does not have these "smart" features built-in, even though they are almost invariably poorly functioning, quickly obsolete, or outright customer-hostile as with the privacy and security issues.

Re:Increasing trend

[nnull]

You mean like youtube ads that shows me the same ad for every 2 minute video I watch? Thank you ad blocks for being able to block all those annoying youtube ads.

Re:Increasing trend

[MyAlternateID]

You mean like youtube ads that shows me the same ad for every 2 minute video I watch? Thank you ad blocks for being able to block all those annoying youtube ads.

Heh, no joke. My initial response to the first sentence of your post was, "Youtube has ads??". I really forgot that it did. My attitude towards advertising and most marketing is: fuck 'em. I actually used JunkBuster back in the days of Netscape and dial-up. It was an ad-filtering proxy -- browsers at that time had plug-ins but they did not have the capability for sophisticated extensions, so this was one of the only practical ways to block ads. The old URL (I still remember it!) was internet.junkbuster.com, but it hasn't been maintained in a long time. Now it just gives a link to EPIC and two privacy-related sites. According to Wikipedia, the proxy program itself hasn't been maintained since 1998.

Junkbusters was a group that advocated against advertising in all forms, especially direct marketing (professional nuisances). They provided that filtering proxy before much else was available, they gave advice on reducing physical junk mail, and (as this was prior to the Do Not Call list) gave tips to reduce or defeat telemarketing calls, if I recall correctly.

Am I the only one who remembers them?

What worked for me

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't owned a TV in almost 15 years. I encourage everyone to do the same.

Re:What worked for me

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

Same as me! I only have a 27" computer monitor connected to an Apple TV to watch movies from iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, Crunchy Roll and Crackle!

Fight for your bitcoins!

Re:What worked for me

[Anonymous Coward]

The only reason to get a TV is because a monitor may not come in the size someone wants. Otherwise, a monitor is perfectly useful:

1: There are no such thing as HDCP splitters. They don't exist. The HDCP protocol is 100% secure.
2: Who needs TV stations? You have YouTube, Netflix, and many other online choices. Even the money I pay for Youtube Red, Netflix, and Hulu, I'm paying less than a cable package, and I can watch what I want at the time I choose... not when some TV exec tells me I can have an "appointment".
3: Why have another layer of spying on your network?
4: Why have another locked down device on your network that is out of your control and can be used for spying (video and audio) at any time?
5: Why agree to another EULA and have one's rights further ground down?

Re:What worked for me

[Anonymous Coward]

So you get all your entertainment easily tracked from the internet? Actual broadcast TV is one of the few media sources which cannot be tracked.

Re:What worked for me

[Anonymous Coward]

2: Who needs TV stations?

People in the unfortunate situation of wanting to watch things that aren't legally available online.

Good way to stop this...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's possible to render something like this pretty useless. Just like it's possible to put false information in online surveys, it's also possible to deliver false data. For example, my cable box is probably tracking me. If I want to reduce the effectiveness, I can record programming that doesn't interest me or put shows on that aren't interesting while I do other stuff. In the process, I can build up an inaccurate profile that reduces the effectiveness of their targeted advertising. If enough people did this, I think it would reduce the tracking.

Re:Good way to stop this...

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

But you will watch the shows and movies you want to watch, so even within that inaccurate profile there's going to be a percentage of good data. Which is probably more than enough to still track you and try to sell things that matter to you, so you're not stopping anything.

Fight for your bitcoins!

Re:Good way to stop this...

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Don't worry. You can rest assured that your pattern of watching shows relating to civil liberties, legalising recreational drug consumption, and footage of police raids does not in any way reflect upon your character as viewed by the authorities. We were just passing through your neighbourhood offering a free swatting to randomly selected individuals.

Re:Good way to stop this...

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

Woo-hoo! Free!

Fight for your bitcoins!

"Smart" is the new dumb

[Anonymous Coward]

Apart from the smartphone, "smart" is quickly becoming a quick way to identify dumb things the consumer neither wants nor needs. Everything from "smart" lightbulbs that need firmware updates (half hour per bulb where you can't TURN ON THE LIGHTS) to "smart" devices monitoring nearly every aspect of your life straight out of an NSA wet dream (all in the name of advertising, you know, the thing consumers always skip with DVRs and block with internet browsers.)

Unaffiliated, but how I feel: https://twitter.com/internetofshit

Mandate open access

[XB-70]

A couple of years ago, I bought a Samsung TV. The O/S was so bad that I returned it and wrote the president (getting no response).

The stupid thing would randomly update itself - right in the middle of footballs games or other live events - going offline for15 minutes at a time. Changing channels was also extremely slow: about 2 seconds between stations. TWO WHOLE SECONDS.

There was no way to get rid of crapware on the TV. The main menu was 'polluted' with all sorts of junk trying to push the viewer to Samsung's corporate offerings.

I can't wait for an Android or Linux smart TV that will give the viewer ONE remote with one entirely user-configurable menu.

Wouldn't it be great to never have to switch between HDMI inputs? Just... click on genre or network or streaming service and watch.

Wouldn't it be even better to completely block all those crappy cable advertising channels?

Re:Mandate open access

[Lumpy]

Stop waiting. Buy a dumb TV and get a nexus player. Honestly you wont die having to have 2 devices and 2 remotes.

Re:Mandate open access

[mbone]

If finding your remote was a life-or-death issue, America would be rapidly depopulated.

Re:Mandate open access

[Megane]

Changing channels was also extremely slow: about 2 seconds between stations. TWO WHOLE SECONDS.

That's actually pretty normal for digital channels, because it takes time to decode enough of the stream to show a picture. But if it does that when switching analog channels, that's unacceptable.

Re:Mandate open access

[MyAlternateID]

Changing channels was also extremely slow: about 2 seconds between stations. TWO WHOLE SECONDS.

That's actually pretty normal for digital channels, because it takes time to decode enough of the stream to show a picture. But if it does that when switching analog channels, that's unacceptable.

Makes me wonder how much shorter the delay would be if the device didn't have to bother with useless HDCP, any other encryption, and copyright flags.

How long of your sentence left?

[Viol8]

Must be getting boring in that cell.

Re:How long of your sentence left?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really. He enjoys telling people he doesn't own a television

Re:How long of your sentence left?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm the first AC.. LOL @ that onion link.. I do have a projector but I mostly watch sports.. really can't get into most TV shows or movies anymore..

Re: No concept of Ashley-Madison

[mnemotronic]

i get all kinds of lingerie and bra ads on my chrome browser because my wife surfs this stuff at home on safari. sometimes big fredricks of hollywood ads at work

At our house it's only me, my wife and the cat. I'm seeing ads for something called "Ashley-Madison". Are they related to Dolly-Madison cupcakes?

I usually get dinner and a show before I get

[Anonymous Coward]

royally screwed in the ass

Joke's On Them

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha ha. The joke's on them. All my content comes through my cable/ISP DVR.

Wait... What?

Block at the router?

[A10Mechanic]

I'm going to monitor my smart TV at the router and see what it connects to, then block those marketing addresses. This should be fun.

Re:Block at the router?

[BradleyUffner]

I'm going to monitor my smart TV at the router and see what it connects to, then block those marketing addresses. This should be fun.

If they were smart it would connect to a single company controlled address for everything and be proxied out from there. Blocking that address would basically disable any special features. If they were smart.

Re:Block at the router?

[Anonymous Coward]

Better hope you don't have a Samsung then. If they can't talk to Samsung directly, clients like Netflix, iPlayer, DS Video, Hulu and other commercial streaming services will all be disabled. They won't even let you browse the LAN with the built-in media players.

After the LG midget pron debacle, you'd think the companies would learn, but nothing gets done, so they keep spying on you. Even going as far as locking you out of services you pay for separately. In case you're wondering, after the news channels ran with the LG spying, their PR said they'd look into it and address it. The result (many weeks later) was a software updated, the change was nothing more than text in the ToS, which you had to accept or the TV would lock you out of any usage. Your option was to return it, something no retailer would accept, and clearly illegal. But no one cares. The news outlets didn't bother to pick up this,or perhaps they knew but were told to ignore it. Make up your own mind.

Suffice to say, there isn't a single consumer HDTV on the market today that doesn't log and report what you're doing. And we're not even getting into what they do with built-in camera and mics, even when they're disabled.

Re:Block at the router?

[Megane]

They can't log and report what you're doing when the set has no network connection, and you're only using it to display content from a computer over HDMI.

Re: Block at the router?

[Anonymous Coward]

Until they start analysing what the screen is actually displaying (think OCR to read any on screen text) and then use an On-Star type sat connection to upload it to them anyway.

I Don't Know Why They're Called Smart TVs

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you'd have to be dumb to buy one.

Seriously, how could anyone NOT see this coming?

Wake Up

[Anonymous Coward]

"Smart" means Spying on You. The price of all the features on any of these devices is your privacy.
But don't worry, they have mottos like "do no evil". Wait, now that they some marketable data they changed that. It's "do what's right" now. Tomorrow it will be "do what's right for the bottom line".

Ha, and you pay more for a smart tv...

[Anonymous Coward]

And stories like this is why I only have a dumb tv. I can control and provide the content to my display device just fine.

Smart TV?

[mbone]

I have a nominally Smart TV, but have never put it on our network*. I see absolutely no reason to change that; it works just fine as a monitor to show movies, do video games, etc.

* Look for the likes of Samsung to install WEP and WAP password cracking software on these devices, so they can get on protected networks. They'll probably say it is a customer "protection" feature.

Re:Smart TV?

[sconeu]

* Look for the likes of Samsung to install WEP and WAP password cracking software on these devices, so they can get on protected networks. They'll probably say it is a customer "protection" feature.

I wonder if you could file a DMCA suit in that case, since you have data you generated (therefore copyrighted) on your internal network?

[Yeah, I know, the DMCA is for the $BIGCORPS to use against the $littleguys, not the other way around]

Assuming this is a genuine question...

[Voyager529]

First off, pretend you're the average person going to Best Buy with $500 to spend on a new TV (approximately the median for a ~40" LED set). You're not super technical, but you know that you watch TV from your cable company, DVDs on occasion, and Netflix. You don't presently have a Roku or other set top box for streaming (that side of things is done on your tablet at the moment), so you have to factor that into your purchase.

You get to Best Buy, and there are a dozen TVs in your price range to choose from. You need to weed them out somehow. Start with the size - units that are too large to fit in the entertainment center are out, but if you're wall mounting, kill off the smallest ones available; no need to get a 40" when you can get 50" for the same price. That leaves you with half a dozen possibilities. Rule out the Insignia ones, because Best Buy's store brand doesn't instill confidence. You've got an LG unit, a Samsung unit, and a Sony unit left, all 46". Now, you need a differentiating factor to ultimately choose which you prefer. Now, one may well search the internet for reviews to see if there are any obvious standouts in either direction, but let's assume that that's not practical for whatever reason. If you get a TV with Netflix integrated, you save $70 by not buying a Roku, and another $70 by not buying an HDMI cable, and you won't need a separate Roku remote. On top of that, the integrated camera and microphone would make it really nice to be able to Skype with out of state family - not a purchase consideration initially, but it'd be really nice, especially with grandma's eyesight going - and Roku can't provide that sort of functionality, anyway.

So yeah, for those who don't read a EULA and "have nothing to hide", a lower initial purchase price over a TV + Roku + cable, a single remote for most functions, and fewer wires to run are all things that are deemed positive selling points for TVs, much more so than buying one that avoids a questionable practice on page 29 of a legal document that no one has ever read.

Re:Assuming this is a genuine question...

[sconeu]

$70 for an HDMI cable??? Are you buying from Monster again?

Re:Assuming this is a genuine question...

[Blaskowicz]

"So yeah, for those who don't read a EULA and "have nothing to hide", a lower initial purchase price over a TV + Roku + cable, a single remote for most functions, and fewer wires to run are all things that are deemed positive selling points for TVs, much more so than buying one that avoids a questionable practice on page 29 of a legal document that no one has ever read."

I don't think the average people knows that the new TV spies on them, so I'm not sure "nothing to hide" is at play there. Hell, TV over DSL and perhaps cable (since it's now digital and data goes both ways) likely already is reporting everything watched - the ISP's set top box plugged on the TV does it - but I guess the awareness is low and we would need a comprehensive survey to know what it is.

Smart TV is like a smartphone in the TV : there's likely higher awareness that smartphone spies on you, but while for geeks/nerds this immediately translates to what happens with the smart TV, the average consumer might not do that equivalence.

It's stoppable

[bagofbeans]

Router flashed with DD-WRT, go to Access Restrictions tab, add the TV/player MAC address to an Access Policy under WAN Access that denies WAN access to those devices. Network browsing features will still work, but no phoning home to big brother.

Re:It's stoppable

[Anonymous Coward]

...For now. Won't be easily stoppable when manufacturers start installing cell transceivers in every device or start forming ad-hoc wireless networks with other IoT devices in range. If one device (even a neighbor's) has phone-home access, they all will.

In commercial future ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Each person will be issued an IP address at birth

Netflix support

[bagofbeans]

My Panasonic bluray player offers Netflix support, but the traffic is proxied through some Panasonic server. Apart from the security & privacy aspects, this means that the feature can be discontinued by Panasonic at any time.

Re: No concept of Ashley-Madison

[sociocapitalist]

i get all kinds of lingerie and bra ads on my chrome browser because my wife surfs this stuff at home on safari. sometimes big fredricks of hollywood ads at work

At our house it's only me, my wife and the cat. I'm seeing ads for something called "Ashley-Madison". Are they related to Dolly-Madison cupcakes?

Don't worry that's just the pussy looking for someone to play with.

Working on a Fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Just in case anyone was interested...

I'm working on a fix for this type of IP-based correlation. I've got alpha level software running on my router as I post this.

I use a VPN provider that provides unlimited VPN tunnels from a single end point. I pin up a different tunnel for every device on my home network and set the router to force all of the device's traffic through its dedicated tunnel so that every device gets a different public facing IP address. The next step is to automate discovery of new devices.

Longer term the plan is to put each device on its own VLAN to prevent them from spying on each other and to do port and address filtering to reduce the ability for remote exploits (like being co-opted by a bot-net) as well as outright blocking contact with 3rd party tracking servers. Maybe even some deep packet inspection and rewriting to strip out or pollute information like viewing data.

I hope to build a database of device profiles so that 99% of the time it will just automagically work.

Re:Working on a Fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds interesting, but here's my take on the situation: Have you tried blocking ads on Slashdot with AdBlock+? The Easylist refresh interval is a couple of days, but Slashdot works around it within a day. If you download the current Easylist, the ads are gone. The next day they're back again, until Easylist refreshes automatically or you force it to download an update. I know this because I have a system that is set up more like a normal user would do things. I don't see the ads on my main systems, no need to educate me. Anyway, this is a cat and mouse game that I'm not going to play with every goddamn appliance. The only winning move is not to play. The TV does not get a connection. I play movies from my local NAS through a separate Open Source media player.

Re:Working on a Fix

[Anonymous Coward]

It is important for you to recognize that you are not a the typical consumer. I'm sure you don't own a nest, hue bulbs, networked doorbell, security camera system that records to the cloud, roku, etc. You might not even use your phone on your home's wifi depending on how paranoid you are.

You aren't the kind of person who wants the functionality but would prefer to minimize the exposure. There is room in the world for security absolutists, but they define the margins.

Re:Working on a Fix

[Anonymous Coward]

We need more people like the parent AC and the grandparent AC. People who take the time to go "hmm, this is BS" and toss/return a product before hitting "accept" on the EULA.

There is a compromise -- home NAS models are offering a lot of functionality, so using them as media servers is definitely a viable thing. Of course, there is always RedBox + DvdIdle (to get past the prohibited user operations so you can watch a movie, and not worthless ads/previews). It may not be as cool as Netflix... but there is no buffering/streaming, and no army of tracking companies logging every play/pause/rewind you do, although they can link the rental movies to a credit card (although there are privacy laws protecting that info). If you don't mind breaking the law, you can even toss the image onto your NAS for further watching.

Re:Working on a Fix

[Anonymous Coward]

> People who take the time to go "hmm, this is BS" and toss/return a product before hitting "accept" on the EULA.

And if wishes were horses beggars would fly. "We need" means you know it's not going to change without a drastic, disruptive new set of circumstances.

Convenience

[Solandri]

I completely agree. The TV is just a monitor, and tying it to tie it with another device/service on a different upgrade cycle is silly bordering on stupid. An extreme case is the high-end iMac, where they've coupled a beautiful monitor that'll probably be usable for 15-20 years, with computer hardware which will be obsolete in 5-7.

But you have to remember the vast majority of people used to have VCRs endlessly flashing 12:00. They have a hard enough time just changing video input mode when they plug in a Roku or Chromecast. You start talking about Kodi (XBMC) and streaming, and their eyes will glaze over. Something that is integrated and works out the box offers value to them, despite the higher costs (purchase price, needing more frequent replacement, and loss of privacy). That's why those iMacs sell. That's why Smart TVs sell.

Re: No concept of Ashley-Madison

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry. If it's Ashley Madison, it's not your wife doing it: there's a lawsuit about that.

"Smart" IoT. just say no.

[swschrad]

the only IoT I have connected is my remote-control alarm system, because they have a surety bond.

Re: No concept of Ashley-Madison

[Type44Q]

I'm seeing ads for something called "Ashley-Madison". Are they related to Dolly-Madison cupcakes?

Too much of the latter on the part of one can definitely lead to a craving for the former on the part of the other. ;)

Ask for dumb TVs

[WaffleMonster]

The next time you go shopping for a TV ask the salesperson for a dumb TV. When they look at you and shrug walk away. The only way the bullshit stops is lost sales.

Static IP address

[Anonymous Coward]

BZZZZZTTTT, I live alone and have static IP addresses, so I am very much identifiable.