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How Smart TVs in Millions of US Homes Track More Than What's on Tonight (nytimes.com)
The growing concern over online data and user privacy has been focused on tech giants like Facebook and devices like smartphones. But people's data is also increasingly being vacuumed right out of their living rooms via their televisions, sometimes without their knowledge. From a report: In recent years, data companies have harnessed new technology to immediately identify what people are watching on internet-connected TVs, then using that information to send targeted advertisements to other devices in their homes. Marketers, forever hungry to get their products in front of the people most likely to buy them, have eagerly embraced such practices. But the companies watching what people watch have also faced scrutiny from regulators and privacy advocates over how transparent they are being with users.
Samba TV is one of the bigger companies that track viewer information to make personalized show recommendations. The company said it collected viewing data from 13.5 million smart TVs in the United States, and it has raised $40 million in venture funding from investors including Time Warner, the cable operator Liberty Global and the billionaire Mark Cuban. Samba TV has struck deals with roughly a dozen TV brands -- including Sony, Sharp, TCL and Philips -- to place its software on certain sets. When people set up their TVs, a screen urges them to enable a service called Samba Interactive TV, saying it recommends shows and provides special offers "by cleverly recognizing onscreen content." But the screen, which contains the enable button, does not detail how much information Samba TV collects to make those recommendations.... Once enabled, Samba TV can track nearly everything that appears on the TV on a second-by-second basis, essentially reading pixels to identify network shows and ads, as well as programs on Netflix and HBO and even video games played on the TV.
Samba TV is one of the bigger companies that track viewer information to make personalized show recommendations. The company said it collected viewing data from 13.5 million smart TVs in the United States, and it has raised $40 million in venture funding from investors including Time Warner, the cable operator Liberty Global and the billionaire Mark Cuban. Samba TV has struck deals with roughly a dozen TV brands -- including Sony, Sharp, TCL and Philips -- to place its software on certain sets. When people set up their TVs, a screen urges them to enable a service called Samba Interactive TV, saying it recommends shows and provides special offers "by cleverly recognizing onscreen content." But the screen, which contains the enable button, does not detail how much information Samba TV collects to make those recommendations.... Once enabled, Samba TV can track nearly everything that appears on the TV on a second-by-second basis, essentially reading pixels to identify network shows and ads, as well as programs on Netflix and HBO and even video games played on the TV.
How many times do we need to repeat this story?
1) X is put into person's home/pocket.
2) X asks for your email address and phone number then starts to track every movement and button press.
3) People act all surprised!
Film at 11.
No sig today...
your cable box reports all kinds of info as well about what you are viewing.
Bring media and more trusted networked devices to your display.
Never allow your TV to report back your media use habits.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Thankfully I use APK's Hosts File Engine For Smart TVs, so there no chance of tracking me.
How many times do we need to repeat this story?
One more time as always.
Smart TVs tracking you and invading your privacy!
That's scandalous... that's why I only use an Amazon Firestick and control it with my Amazon Alexa. This way I can't be tracked. Nothing I do will be uploaded!
I'll make a post to Facebook recommending all my followers there to do the same.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Have you tried buying an unsmart TV in the US recently? Moreover, even if you have a home router and have access and know how to set up its routing tables, how do you know what IP address(es) your new 56 inch Spycoware TV is using? And if it's streaming, material you can't just block the miserable thing no matter how appealing the idea. I suspect the same is true in the rest of the world as well.
My question is who is actually paying for the vast amount of almost certainly worthless data they are collecting, and why? Is there any chance they will quit paying and eventually cause this nonsense to fade away?
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
>But someone has to categorize and classify all the other TV programs so that they can matched.
Why? Other than for completely new showsit's probably far more effective to simply say "you watch shows X, Y, and Z - a lot of other other people who watch those shows also watch W and R, you might like them too" Such pattern recognition tends to find a lot of non-obvious connections that would be overlooked by human classification, especially as it gets more sophisticated.
Plus, it's fairly cheap to do, so they can pocket more of the profit made from spying on consumers. And lets not assume they're only spying on your TV-related habits. They're a surveillance device connected to your home network - they can also monitor all your web-browsing activity (by site if not by specific content, with https becoming more ubiquitous), and identify every piece of networked hardware you own via MAC address
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
So that explains the ads I see after having left our house in the care of a house sitter for two weeks. Man, I knew that last guy was a freak.
That's the spirit! It's nice to finally see that some people are team players instead of looking for darkness in everything.
Now please finish entering your masturbation log (the period of July 1 - 5 appears to be incomplete). We need this data so that our algorithms can most accurately forecast when it will be the best time to show another porn ad. And you know the drill: it's free to have it scheduled for you, and a mere $0.23 to instead scheduled it to appear in the feed for that special someone.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Have you tried buying an unsmart TV in the US recently? Moreover, even if you have a home router and have access and know how to set up its routing tables, how do you know what IP address(es) your new 56 inch Spycoware TV is using?
I look at the DHCP reservations and figure out its MAC, then block that. I have yet to hear of one of these devices doing MAC randomization.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I disagree that the data is "almost certainly worthless" - it's data on your habits and preferences, which is valuable to advertisers and content producers.
If the TV uses your own internet connection, then the data it collects can plausibly be associated with your internet browsing habits since it's the same IP/account. Once that connection is made your entire life is pretty much laid bare... who you are, where you live, your gender, age, income, education, credit rating, purchasing habits, employment history, who your friends are, etc etc.
=Smidge=
your cable box reports all kinds of info as well about what you are viewing.
Yeah, but I make sure I'm always watching stuff I don't like. So the joke's on them.
I concur. The last TV I bought had no non-smart models in that price and size range. So I bought a "smart" one, and hooked it up to power and two HDMI cables. One to the cable box, and one to the streaming/media computer. (An Asus Chromebox running Ubuntu with extra memory and storage.) Given that most "smart" TVs still require you to type shit by arrowing around with the remote, I can't imaging even trying to use it as such. So much easier to have a desktop browser with wireless keyboard and mouse.
It's irritating that the TV needs to boot up and think for 4-5 seconds before it responds to remote commands, but other than that it's pretty much a dumb TV. I'm unclear why the GP has gone down the specific rabbit hole he has.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
I don't know. I'm fairly certain that's beyond the skill set of the vast majority of the population though, so it's irrelevant except to us tech geeks.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
That is all great where you are able to do that. Could you call my mom and explain it to her on how to do that?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
You can get reasonably big (65 is easy) dumb 4k tvs. Just not in a name brand.
But good news, the panels are all the same.
Once I realized that all the dumb TVs were the same, I was left with no viable choice, took the small financial risk. It's not bad, as good as any IPS screen, which isn't a surprise as the screen likely came off the same line.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I still have this feeling like all this data valuation is a bubble, it is hard enough to glean useful trends out of rigorously collected scientific data. How much does Charmin pay Samsung to find out that the basement TV primarily streams PJ Mask and use that info to try to influence whether I buy the store-brand generic at Kroger vs Sam's Club? My understanding is that the market for banner ads has mostly collapsed as a way to make money, what'll be the next fad after tracking metrics crashes?
No, that's correct. July 1-5 is one entry.
Cheap storage VM.
You were a fool to buy these so-called 'smart' devices in the first place, and you're even more fools now for keeping them -- or at least for continuing to allow them access to the Internet. You claim you don't care about your own privacy, but in reality you at some point will, and in the meantime you're being inconsiderate of everyone else by encouraging these shitty companies to use every dirty trick they can to pry into everyone else's lives, too. Repent!
Not being tracked? Really?
He explicitly said that Nothing he does will be uploaded !"
He never mentioned whether this uploading won't happen because there's no tracking happening at all,
or whether this uploading won't happen because these companies already track you to the bone on the cloud and thus there's no extra tracking information that needs to be uploaded.
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The Firestick is an almost dumb device that displays remotely served content. It doesn't track much locally and doesn't upload much... because the Amazon Streaming server already tracks and knows everything about you.
Amazon Alexa runs entirely on the cloud. The Amazon Echo device, is only a glorified internet streaming microphone+speaker combo. Beside recognizing a keyword ("Alexa !") it doesn't do much and is certainly unable to do tracking on its own ... because it's the giant AI behind Alexa on Amazon's cloud that knows everything about you up to your most secret desire.
Facebook on your computer is just basically HTML, just content. (I'm over simplifying)
All the horrible stuff that fills Mark Zuckerberg's pocket with cash happen on their servers. Be it the creepy stuff like face recognition image processing that they run on each single photo of you, even if you don't have a profile. Or the massive online behaviour monitoring : that "like" button might be a simple static image, but knowing *for which webpage* the FB servers were asked to serve it is the most interesting breadcrumbs path ever.
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in other words : Woosh
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]