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Ask Slashdot: Should I Allow A 'Smart TV' To Connect To The Internet?
Slashdot reader GovCheese has a question:
I use Roku and also the client apps on my gaming consoles for Amazon and Netflix. But it seems less prudent to allow my television, a Samsung, to connect to the internet. My Phillips Blu-ray wants to connect also. But I'd rather not. Is it illogical to allow Roku and a console to connect to streaming services but prevent a "smart" television from doing so?
Slashdot reader gurps_npc argues there's a distinction between devices that need internet access and devices that want it, adding "Smart TVs overcharge in privacy invasion for the minimal advantages they offer."
Leave your own best answers in the comments. Should you let a smart TV connect to the internet?
Slashdot reader gurps_npc argues there's a distinction between devices that need internet access and devices that want it, adding "Smart TVs overcharge in privacy invasion for the minimal advantages they offer."
Leave your own best answers in the comments. Should you let a smart TV connect to the internet?
Pretty much the only reason I let my "smart" TV connect to the Internet is for firmware updates. Don't think I've had one in a while though now so assuming they've stopped being developed I may disconnect it soon.
The Blu-Ray player needs to connect to the internet for updates to be able to play the latest discs. The Smart TV does not, unless you are actually using its "smart" features.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Didn't Samsung get caught for their TVs always listening to everything around them, with no permission asked? LG was caught snooping on all files and filenames on the network, if my memory serves. Then there were a couple of others whose names I've already forgotten..Heck, pretty much every TV-manufacturer has gotten caught with their pants down by this point. A Roku is somewhat of a different beasts, because it needs Internet for streaming. I would hazard a guess that they track whatever you do on the Roku-box itself, but may not go to the same lengths as TV-manufacturers do, when it comes to overall spying in general.
Personally, I would rather give the TV a middle finger than any connectivity, whatsoever.
To expand on this: hell no. God no. Fuck no.
That seems to be ... pretty stupid and short-sighted. If you're not paying monthly, but get the updates free of charge as included in the original purchase price for the TV (or phone, or IoT Fridge or whatever), then it's still a real product.
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My LG is hardwired. I use its DLNA features but I also block it by MAC from sending any traffic out of the local RFC1918. This obviously isn't going to work if you use the TV's streaming features but for locally hosted content it's ideal.
As for firmware updates, Samsung's recent brick debacle where it took a technician physically opening the case to get them back pretty much answers that question. The general rule for stuff held in programmable ROM is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." I understand many will want KRACK fixes for WiFi as soon as they're available, yet I also wouldn't be holding my breath thinking this is a priority for vendors; they have your money, you're on your own. However, if there's a flaw in the monetisation of your viewing habits they'll be jamming those bytes down your digital throat before you can blink.
Resistance is futile. Reactance buggers it up.
However with the holes in the firmware that you can find today it might be a good idea to put your entertainment system on a separate subnet at home compared to the other devices - and only open that net when you really need.
Segmentation of networks is a good security measure these days.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Does connecting your TV to the internet brings you something?
- Yes : connect it
- No : don't
It's that simple.
And the fact that you connect a device to the internet (because it is useful for you to do so) doesn't mean you have to connect everything. It is not all or nothing. From a security/privacy perspective you want to keep your attack surface as small as possible, but it doesn't mean you need to completely wall yourself in unless you have more to hide than normal people.
I just recently bought a pair of 55in Samsung Smart TVs
They each connected to the internet once for firmware updates, and were immediately disconnected afterwards. Unless there's a problem that requires me to update their firmware again, they won't ever be connected again.
All of the apps that the TV offers are already present on my Roku's and quite franky, the Roku's do it better
What kind of retarded question is this? If you use any features that require the internet, connect it to the internet. I watch Amazon Video on my Smart TV, so it is online. If you don't need anything like that you might as well not connect it.
If you are worried about the top-secret national security level stuff you have on your local network, well, ask you security team, not slashdot... And in any case from a security/privacy perspective you should probably be even more worried about other devices (starting with your mobile phone).
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Do you know your device?
Do not let anything connect to the Internet if you don't know why it should.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
In my home I implement two different networks. Each with it's own gate way. Now this requires more than your average level of IT skills in the home.
One network is for what I will call class one devices. These are devices that I specifically add to the it. These will be things like computers, tablets, gaming and phones. The second network and the default network is for every other device. Now this requires me actually promote devices the class one network. Typically be mac address.
Thus all those pesky iot devices end up in the default network. The default network is blocked from the internet.
Note a device that runs something like pfsense will do the job. There are lots of alternative setups.
Now. I can also tailor each device in each network to have slightly different network privileges than the each networks default. Example would be a security camera uploading data to my private cloud storage. But I also block all DNS resolution of add servers and malware end points etc in my class one network.
This is not something a regular I know how to turn on my laptop kinda person can do. This requires a reasonable amount of automated scripting, network monitoring and pro-active tuning as situations change. However it can all be done rather cheaply with couple hundred dollar pfsense box installed between the internet modem->pfsense->router(wifi).
So yeah I block everything. I only enable access when required and even then I can make it temporary. The more IOT crap that ends up in the house the more this setup is saving my backside.
( Note: I don't use pfsense I implemented all the services I need from pfsense myself in VM's. But it's basically the same thing. )
We actually got rid of our TVs. All of them. We are now a TV-free household. It just got to be too much of a pain to watch what we wanted to watch.
Our family life has gotten immeasurably better since now we do things together as a family instead of sitting around watching TV. Having made this transition, I am fully convinced that TV is the major culprit behind the destruction of the family and the decline of our society.
Came here to say the same thing. Create a separate, isolated network for your TVs. Avoid ones with cameras and microphones. Job done.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I lock all of my smart devices in a faraday cage.
Is convenience of watching YouTube cat videos worth your privacy?
That's a silly comment. I use Youtube a lot but have never watched a cat video. I watch it for car and camera repair techniques, for which it is invaluable.
Connect devices which need updates periodically and then disconnect them.
But do they "need" it/
Should you allow a Windows computer to connect to the Internet?
Have gnu, will travel.
Botnets.
Have gnu, will travel.
Try buying a TV that isn't "smart" these days. Even cheap, low end TVs have some sort of smarts built in. As much as I'd like to, you can't buy a "dumb" TV anymore.
Time and again various IoT crapware has proven that it is insecure. The reason for this is simple. Companies making TVs have experience making TVs. And even if the corporation behind it (like with, say, Sony) should have some experience with computers and securing them (ok, I admit, Sony is a bad example...), that doesn't mean that they talk with each other. Or that securing computers applies equally to securing IoT devices. If anything, IoT has more in common with cellphones, and even here you can easily see (with Samsun, no less) that experience in one area does not translate to the other.
Embedded devices and developing them has fundamentally different rules than developing "real" computers or cellphones. Unlike with computers and cellphones, you're not only responsible for the hardware, you're developing the software, and you either even have to develop your own OS or at the very least tailor a Linux distribution to your needs. If you're lucky, you have someone in your team (or you buy one) that can actually tailor Linux.
Your chances of this person also being a security expert is slim to zero.
What you're dealing here is a very newly developed piece of software, a veritable "v1.0" (which, as anyone in IT knows is more akin to a "v0.9beta"). And you pit that against people who have literally decades of experience hacking machines on the internet who know all the old tricks and the new 0days. This is a pitched battle if there has ever been one.
And all the old tricks that every security conscious developer of internet facing computer software knows by now work again. Because the people developing the IoT-Software, i.e. people developing embedded software, have no experience with security issues. They developed for closed systems, with a focus on small code and optimal use of resources rather than sanity checking and input testing.
If you throw someone into a job where he suddenly should react to a threat he cannot even assess because he doesn't even KNOW what the threat is, the result is the IoT crap we have today.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What was the reason you purchased Smart TV in the first place?
Try buying a 55" TV today which isn't "smart". You won't find one, at least where I live. I would gladly buy a non-smart TV because I only use it as a screen for whatever devices are connected to it, but that is simply not an option.
I tried this and had issues when certain devices couldn't connect to the TV. The better solution was rather than putting the TV on the "untrusted / less trusted" network segment to lock down the trusted segment to only allow very specific items (my & wife's computers) to go out. This also contains the traffic of other objects to the trusted network (printers, hdhomerun, future IoT items, NAS media server, UbiFi's extra chatty wifi devices, etc.).
All cell phones, windows computers, and visiting family & friends devices all sit on the untrusted network segment, including a separate wifi AP for the untrusted network. They can't see the trusted side (just the internet)
- Sig
I run the pihole software on an early raspberry pi.
This allowed me to watch dns activity. With what I saw, which was the tv constantly accessing certain addresses, I blocked those addresses with the blacklist feature of the pihole.
This allows me to use things like netflix, etc while keeping the data collection to a minimum. This allows me to get updates to the tv's firmware while terminating the tracking and spying on my daily activity.
The pihole can be used for a lot of other reasons too.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Some smart TV's have been known to IDENTIFY the CONTENT that you are watching on it, and report that back to a server. It does this by fingerprinting various pixels around the screen. Now, you may not actually use your TV to watch hot latino donkey porn, but your content may be misinterpreted as that.
Worried yet?