from melroy@kbin.melroy.org to technology@lemmy.world on 26 Sep 2024 22:37
https://kbin.melroy.org/m/technology@lemmy.world/t/480211
By Jeremy Hsu on September 24, 2024
Popular smart TV models made by Samsung and LG can take multiple snapshots of what you are watching every second – even when they are being used as external displays for your laptop or video game console.
Smart TV manufacturers use these frequent screenshots, as well as audio recordings, in their automatic content recognition systems, which track viewing habits in order to target people with specific advertising. But researchers showed this tracking by some of the world’s most popular smart TV brands – Samsung TVs can take screenshots every 500 milliseconds and LG TVs every 10 milliseconds – can occur when people least expect it.
“When a user connects their laptop via HDMI just to browse stuff on their laptop on a bigger screen by using the TV as a ‘dumb’ display, they are unsuspecting of their activity being screenshotted,” says Yash Vekaria at the University of California, Davis. Samsung and LG did not respond to a request for comment.
Vekaria and his colleagues connected smart TVs from Samsung and LG to their own computer server. Their server, which was equipped with software for analysing network traffic, acted as a middleman to see what visual snapshots or audio data the TVs were uploading.
They found the smart TVs did not appear to upload any screenshots or audio data when streaming from Netflix or other third-party apps, mirroring YouTube content streamed on a separate phone or laptop or when sitting idle. But the smart TVs did upload snapshots when showing broadcasts from the TV antenna or content from an HDMI-connected device.
The researchers also discovered country-specific differences when users streamed the free ad-supported TV channel provided by Samsung or LG platforms. Such user activities were uploaded when the TV was operating in the US but not in the UK.
By recording user activity even when it’s coming from connected laptops, smart TVs might capture sensitive data, says Vekaria. For example, it might record if people are browsing for baby products or other personal items.
Customers can opt out of such tracking for Samsung and LG TVs. But the process requires customers to either enable or disable between six and 11 different options in the TV settings.
“This is the sort of privacy-intrusive technology that should require people to opt into sharing their data with clear language explaining exactly what they’re agreeing to, not baked into initial setup agreements that people tend to speed through,” says Thorin Klosowski at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital privacy non-profit based in California.
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Okay. So how do we turn it off!? I’ve read nothing in my Samsung manuals about this “feature” and here no instructions for turning it off.
Just don’t hook it up to your wifi. Don’t use any of its included apps. If you must stream get a separate device to do it.
This is the correct answer. I actually disabled LG’s version of it when I first heard about it. A few months later it had been reactivated in an update, so I just factory reset it and connected an old laptop.
You can’t trust anyone — corporation or government — to protect or respect your privacy. Ever. If it’s not open source and E2EE, assume that a criminal is going to view and process it for profit.
No it is not the correct answer! The correct answer is to put the CEOs who perpetrate this criminal shit in prison for millions of counts of hacking and stalking!
Merely shrugging and implementing a technological workaround is not an appropriate response to someone perpetrating a felony against you!
The downvotes are because your “solution” is not based in the reality that the rest of us live in.
There are no downvotes, so I’m not sure what point you think you’re making.
Okay… Though I agree the system is run by criminals, I’m gonna continue protecting my data as best I can, and recommending everyone do the same, while you live in a magical fantasy land where we don’t live in capitalist plutocracies and the rule of law applies to everyone, equally!
I have a Samsung smart TV that is not connected to any networks, and every few days it will display a ‘detecting device’ loading screen when switching to my input that fails after 30 seconds or until I cancel it (canceling does not seem to impact its functioning)
I have no evidence but I strongly suspect this to be related to attempting to record and send device data to a remote server.
I have noticed this too, I have to press the ‘back’ button on the remote to get the computer output.
Question, what separate device is best and most privacy focused? I just imagine getting a firestick, google Chromecast, etc would also give away data?
There are some open-source systems for media PCs.
Kodi seems to me to be popular, though I don’t use a media PC myself.
You’ll need to have the technical knowledge to install it yourself.
Again your media PC (or HTPC) is still connected to a smart TV. And the problem is with the TV recording HDMI data. In fact, if you read correctly, the Smart TV does no record data from the built-in apps like Netflix.
It still can connect to untrusted wifi access point (without password protection). So also try to go to: Settings Menu -> General & Privacy -> Terms & Privacy -> And there is a whole list of privacy setting. Try to find the option to: Do not agree with all. Or you need to manually disallow each privacy option.. Good luck!
Sometimes it requires Wi-Fi for setup. In that case, change the Wi-Fi password after you set it up.
No Internet for the device
They have been known to connect automatically to nearby compatible devices or unsecured wifi.
Disable internet.
You’ll have to insulate your home from any outside unsecured wifi and compatible devices to stop some of them from networking.
Since it can also connect to untrusted wifi access point (eg. without password). You need to live in a Faraday cage ..
I got an LG because despite how it looks, you can just refuse to agree to a bunch of their privacy agreements and be fine. It’s not perfect, but it’s a hell of a lot better than it would be otherwise, and miles ahead of Samsung’s lack of options.
I have come to realize this and have declined all the T&Cs except for like 3 that you just have to accept to make it function.
Yep, same. Works fine for me, I never wanted the features that disables.
Use Pi-hole and block their domains
Do you know where I can source the domains?
Pihole will log DNS requests. The requests come.from the TV. So when it pops up, Block it.
blocklistproject.github.io/Lists/ the Smart TV list under their beta lists.
I use nextdns on my network and there’s a filter there for smart tvs. Samsung seems to want to call home the most.
They’re getting smart to that and are starting to hard code server IPs, circumventing any DNS you have in place.
Joke’s on them. Their telemetry server is in another
castleVLAN.TV: mamma mia!
I love my Samsung because I never gave it the wifi credentials.
Dumb TV is better. My PS5 can do everything I want and I already give all my metrics to them just playing it
Hello 8th person I’ve had to explain this to: they still connect to stuff. Even if you disable WiFi on the Samsung TV they can mesh network with other TVs in your neighborhood or with your phone (Samsung is particularly pushy about wanting you to install and connect your phone).
Ok I’ll look into this. I have not witnessed any evidence of this behavior. What frequency would this be meshed on? Any 2.4GHz and 5Ghz I would have already seen.
You know that part of the manual that tells you to connect the TV to the Internet?
Don’t do that.
That sadly doesn’t work well enough. They will connect to things on their own.
That’s some underhanded bs. I didn’t know they started doing that. Damn.
If there are open wifi networks near your TV that you can’t lockdown, you’ll want to confirm it your make/model is known to automatically connect to those, and then take whatever mitigation steps are justified for your own use case.
For example, if you have multiple TVs, maybe you can swap models around based on their capabilities and location, or look up the schematic for the TV and see if it’s easy to block it’s internal antennas.
Or maybe that seems like too much of a hassle and you just say fuck it, and don’t worry about it. Which is always an option, because given how much data already gets sucked up by surveillance capitalism, my evening TV viewing habits have to be some of the lowest value data points, as I already block ads and avoid all ad supported services.
This is probably not the reply you want, but as someone who (in the past 40+ years) has never owned a TV, I simply can’t refrain from asking: Have you considered simply not owning a TV?
Movies and television shows can be an excellent form of entertainment and a great source of educational materials. And this is the golden age of television. Sorry you’ve been missing out on that
Edit: FYI the key to cooking a good steak is salt, butter, and to flip it every 30 secs, until you’ve reached your preferred level of doneness. If you’re really trying to impress, and don’t care about a heart attack, you can also baste with butter in between each flip.
Now, learning how much time it takes for each different type of cut and the variations within, that mostly comes with experience.
Its real tricky to get into and overwrite some of the SoC processors and ARM chipsets, but pretty earlyon the hacker crowd was turning Samsungs Smart TVs dumb.
They’ve acrually got some great resistance to screen burn.
You can go to Settings Menu -> General & Privacy -> Terms & Privacy -> And there is a whole list of privacy setting you automatically agreed with (which you didn't). However, you should find an option for: Do not agree with all. Or you need to manually disallow each privacy option.. Good luck!
wtf?
LOL “if it was opt-in, no one would do it!”
no fucking shit. there is nothing worth watching that i would buy a smart tv for
One issue that has come up recently in discussions on here is that it’s hard to get dumb TVs or computer monitors in large format in 2024.
Not impossible, but surprisingly difficult. I went looking for a large computer monitor for some user who wanted a large one. I eventually found an older one on Amazon still for sale, but it’s not that easy to get large computer monitors, which I think is part of what drives people to use smart TVs as computer monitors.
You can get projectors, but that’s not what everyone’s after.
A smart tv without an internet connection is usually close enough to a dumb TV. It’s not like your TV needs regular security updates so leaving it off your home network is fine.
I do not know how true it is, but I’ve heard that some of them will create a mesh network if your neighbor has the same brand and it’s connected to the internet.
I’ve always meant to look into it but I have big dumb TVs that work for now.
Open the tv and rip out the antenna. Y’all already forgot the classic secret agent trope of checking the hotel room for bugs? Now we all get to play that game!
Nowadays the antenna is often embedded into the pcb, so no way to rip it out other than scraping off the traces
Google part numbers (if they aren’t scratched off/lasered off/ epoxied). Once you’ve found the ethernet controller, you can short out the pins, or yeet it off the board.
“mechanical malfunction, please contact support” as a big red warning that you cannot dismiss
Would love to know how true this is as I wouldn’t put it past manufacturers
There’s another reply further down that goes into specifics. I ain’t the one because I didn’t come with receipts and I’m just a drunk.
It’s called wardriving, a practise Samsung TVs are infamous for.
I never put that together with wardriving but that’s exactly what it is. Thank you for that.
Unrelated story: ~20 years ago I was in the military and broke as hell. I went wardriving in my neighborhood looking for open wifi and found a business not too far away that had it. So I built an antenna out of a coffee can, mounted it up just outside my window, and got free wifi for months.
To me, Wardriving is back in the day when you used to drive around town with a laptop and a program that catalogues all the open wifi networks in range.
I will not give them the satisfaction.
Smart TVs are only smart when they are connected to the internet.
As mentioned by others, they sometimes network with nearby devices such as your neigbor’s TV or an unsecured wifi.
Which should be telling them that not only does no one want it, but maybe just maybe we already paid for your fucking TV. Either raise the price or stop being so fucking goddamn greedy to the point that you force us to make the government force you to stop.
Of course the bought and paid for US government won’t, but hopefully EU governments will.
If they raise the price, then they only get money once. If they sell your data, now they have an income stream.
Never connect your tv to the internet.
It automatically connects to unprotected wifi access points.
Is there evidence of this happening?
And if so, I think I would just plug it into an old router via ethernet with no external connectivity.
You could also setup a virtual LAN. And disallow internet on that VLAN. Or go to the Privacy & Terms menu in the TV and disallow all privacy settings (opt-out).
Well no.. but I can't rule it out either.
Something doesn’t add up. How can a TV take 100 Screenshots of 4k content per second? No wifi has that bandwidth. No embedded processor has that capacity.
Yea I don’t believe it, that’s some processor intensive streaming. My security camera feeds can’t even do that. 100fps is crazy for streaming. Are we sure these “screenshots” aren’t just anonymous metric gatherings like video codecs and resolution?
I’m with you, I think it’s probably BS. But I suppose it could be taking highly compressed low resolution snapshots.
I agree. I'm the OP, but not the author of this article. I do believe this author doesn't know what he is talking about. After looking at the study, it seems it does record data at 500ms interval. However, only in intervals of 1 time per minute 8kB of data is sent back, meaning its only some kind of meta data.
Thanks for the followup!
Plenty of embedded processors have that capacity, but I generally agree about the bandwidth.
It doesn’t need a 4K screenshot. It needs enough data/metrics from any given single frame to run it through analytics and an algorithm to tailor ads. Backend surveillance like this isn’t interested in fidelity to the human viewing experience. It needs identifying data. That can be had through a combination of low quality data scrapes done numerous times.
“Screenshot” is more like a metaphor here. Sort of like how your Apple or Google photos are “private,” but the data and analytics taken from them you’ve given away. It’s like if you told me I could look at all the photos on your phone and take as many notes and subject them to as much analysis as I wanted, but I promised not to actually physically keep your phone/photos. Probably makes you feel like your photos are securely still in your possession, but I got what I wanted. Your data is technically private, but my data about your data is mine.
Totally agree. It sounds like something was lost in translation here by the final edit of potentially some run though a llm for proof reading to dumb it down enough to either just make it more consumable, more clickbait or realistic both.
My guess is the actual research reported that it was 100s of packets per second (not screenshots) which is still a lot more than you would expect even for spyware. Either way it’s been well known that smart tvs are spyware ridden, I don’t need a paywalled service to tell me that.
I'm the OP, but not the author of this article posted.
After I dove deep into the study, the study said it records data at 500ms. And then it batches the data together, and only sent data once per minute back to Samsung. Between 8kB and 9kB of data per minute. So definitely not 4K screenshots.
it doesn’t necessarily take full resolution images
just because it can capture images a few hundred milliseconds apart doesn’t mean it’s continuously capturing images. It could be several in short bursts with a delay between groups of images.
You know when people say “I’ve only talked about this once, never searched for it, and then I got ads a few days later”?
What if it hasn’t been phones that were listening (despite Siri/Google Assistant/Alexa mis-identifying something as a wake-word being the most sensible explanation), but TVs?
Why not both
Being around someone who did search for something is enough (location, same wifi).
Probably a data snapshot, not an actual screenshot.
It may be snapping multiple in a small period of time, everyonce in a while. Compressing them in the background then trickling them back out.
It doesn’t say the screenshot must be full resolution and it doesn’t say the screenshot is immediately uploaded. A couple seconds to downscale and compress would work the same as far as content identification is concerned
360p is probably enough. And that’s “up to” per second, average is probably far far far less.
I’m pretty familiar with how one particular brand of TV works, and you’re right, it’s absolutely not screenshots. It’s a handful of single pixels across the screen. By matching these pixels against known content it’s possible to identify what was being watched. Not too different than how Shazam can identify a song.
That’s not to say all TV manufacturers work that way.
Not mentioning taking 100 screenshots each second with what - 25 frames per second? - is kinda overkill…
“They found the smart TVs did not appear to upload any screenshots or audio data when streaming from Netflix or other third-party apps, mirroring YouTube content streamed on a separate phone or laptop or when sitting idle. But the smart TVs did upload snapshots when showing broadcasts from the TV antenna or content from an HDMI-connected device.”
The world is owned by a big club, and you’re not in it.
But if you never connected the TV to the internet, it’s not able to upload anything right?
Correct
Thing is, it’s getting pretty cheap to build radios into devices, and companies are doing that and bridging them to whatever Internet connectivity they can reach, not just your own. You don’t necessarily have to personally plug something into an Ethernet socket to make a device Internet-connected.
From back when Amazon Sidewalk was rolling out:
www.statuscake.com/blog/what-is-amazon-mesh/
theguardian.com/…/amazon-us-customers-given-one-w…
Cellular modems with lifetime contracts from a telco are also increasingly common.
SDRs like the Hackrf Portapack are, as well.
Well. That’s it. Get the flamethrowers. Time to burn down the Amazon.
No. Not the one that’s already burning. The other one.
Yeah I remember when they rolled that out… it does not give me hope for the future of privacy.
Canada needs to really ramp up our privacy laws, I’m not crazy about GDPR specifically, but there needs to be something more substantial here.
I’m not really gung-ho about mandatory approaches either, like with licensing, but for an optional approach:
I have to be able to assess a device and its drawbacks with a reasonable amount of knowledge and time spent researching it.
There has to be at least one option on the market that does what I want.
For cars, at least, we’re really getting to the point where it’s not practical to get a new car without a cell data link that phones home.
And trying to stay atop of the privacy issues for all classes of device out there can’t be a full-time job, or it’s not reasonable to expect people to make informed purchasing decisions. Like, I should just be able to say that I don’t want a device that broadcasts any persistent unique IDs in plaintext over a radio, not have to research whether the current crop of smart automobile tire pressure valves has a protocol that exposes that information or not…
I’d like to avoid Europe’s prescription-heavy regulatory route, but the way things are now in the US isn’t my ideal either.
My hot air station has a reeeealllly long cable.
So long. It’s the best. Unlike my…
So much more goatse and bathtube girl pictures along with porn are now gonna be on my tv
What the fuck are you talking about? Lol
Man wants to watch some kinky shit.
I guess so
Don’t Google it. Just be happy you missed Liveleak and r/watchpeopledie.
Ah gotcha. Yeah I’m happy to be ignorent of this subject then. Thank you
And ebaum’s world. And rotten. And something awful.
I wish I could go back in time to warn myself not to read this. The memory of receiving those (and other awful shit) is indelibly marked in my brain.
lol yeah! My friend where dicks and would set that to our screen savers or if we left our laptops open would go to meatspin.com and then lock your laptop. You got quite the surprise when you unlocked your computer lol
I’d rather pay for pretty much all products up-front with money at purchase time rather than pay with my data.
Not gonna tell other people what to do, but for myself, whether it’s my car or television or search engine or whatever, I’d rather just pay the bill rather than having the manufacturer or service provider go data-mining my data to figure out how they can make money from it.
I think that YouTube is a great service. YouTube Premium, though, is ad-free. What I want isn’t no-ad stuff, but no-log policies. And there aren’t a lot of manufacturers selling privacy. And it’s hard to compare services and products based on that.
I’ll go one more step. I don’t want to go read through privacy policies and figure out what the latest clever loophole is. We had to deal with that kind of legal stuff back prior to standardization around a few open-source licenses, and it sucked.
And I don’t want to deal with privacy policies that change and maybe don’t do what I want.
What I want to do is look for a privacy certification, and let the certification agency deal with that.
2000 dollar/euro premium price for Samsung S95D isn't high enough?? No.. we already pay up-front with money. This is just a very nasty trick by Samsung & LG.
I run a pi hole and it blocks 1000 attempts per minute from a single Samsung TV, then it outright denies requests from the tv. Duck those douches.
Those are just dns lookups.
It’s not just DNS. I have this rule in my firewall:
udp dport 15600 counter drop comment “Block Samsung TV shenanigans”So far, it has blocked 20575 packets (constituting 1304695 bytes) in 6 days and 20 hours.
Related? https://eu.community.samsung.com/t5/tv/samsung-qled-qe55q8dn-spamming-udp-packets-on-port-15600-to/td-p/5794185
I also see it with Wireshark on my network using the
udp.port == 15600filter.It could also be the f*king soundbar?? https://github.com/home-assistant/core/issues/34810#issuecomment-621507325
Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) called Boot Server Discovery Protocol (BSDP), which is displayed in the data package section (version 0.1?).
DNS sinks can often cause elevated traffic numbers because the client is constantly failing and retrying.
I bet if you enabled it to test the numbers would drop dramatically.
Causing the smart TV become even slower hahaha
I’m happy to see this, my wife and I were about to buy a smart TV. Now I’ll just get the dumb variant.
These don’t really exist on a consumer level anymore. What you’re looking for is called a commercial display, which is what’s used in businesses and hospitals.
No, they still exist.
Ah, I stand corrected.
Luckily they exist in smaller sizes still. I’m just getting a small tv for occasional use.
The only sensible way to operate these TVs is with no internet connection. We run our entertainment through an AppleTV. If that ever starts showing ads at rest, I’ll replace it with a Mac mini or a NUC. Fuck these companies and their race to the bottom.
this is why you get a separate apple tv/android box and not connect your tv to the internet
Like those things aren’t capable of the same shit?
anythings capable of it, but the companies behind the (premium) boxes have less of an incentive. While theyre all capable, its a matter if you have trust in them. At least for the Shield TV for example, go download a shield tv rom if you really don’t trust Nvidia. If you are paranoid that they all can do it, than any smart device can do it because its connected to the internet.
Connect it to a Linux PC for optimal privacy.
Again, Samsung and LG is sniffing the HDMI port.. So especially if you use another device like an Apple TV or Android or HTPC running Linux, only then Samsung & LG will record this data and sent back to HQ.
If you use a PC, there is no need to connect the TV to your WiFi, which means it won’t send any data.
Correct. Assuming your TV doesn't connect to open wifi access points.
And assuming you never want to use any of the smart features or apps.
Yup, which you don’t because that’s what the PC is for.
I’m so tired
Moi aussi. I am le tired.
Well, have a nap
THEN FIRE ZE SAMSUNG & LG CEOS!
Bout that time eh chaps?
… right-o.
Zen have a nap
Ich auch
These are criminal violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Jail the motherfucking felon CEOs!
But the supreme court ruled to save the conviction for the election.
Worse than that, they
havegave free speech to corporations, and now that includes doing nearly anything involving communication or spending money.On politics itself no less.
I’ll believe corporations are people the moment Texas executes ones.
You know what’s really fucked up? The concept of “corporate personhood” that Citizens United depends upon was invented wholesale by a goddamn clerk! The Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co. decision itself didn’t actually address the issue; the clerk just wrote a headnote “assuming” that the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment applied to corporations for ~reasons~ and subsequent courts treated as if it were gospel.
So LG and Samsung likely have tons of illegal (copyright) content on their servers then? Ownership is 9/10ths of the law so they say. That’s gotta be exabytes
Most likely yes.. And other privacy sensitive information like banking details, passwords and more.
Well, then you should sue them.
That means they’re violating HDCP (High definition copy protection)? Do streaming services such as Netflix and Disney, as well as movie studios such as Universal, know this?
Did you go beyond the headline?
Because your laptop cannot have Netflix, or a DRM enabled browser?
No, the point here is that if you use the “smart” features, which includes running apps from their appstore, like Netflix or Disney+, it will not send the data. But if you connect your laptop via HDMI and then play Netflix in your browser, it will, because it’s not smart enough to recognize and differentiafe video and audio data coming in through that port. I don’t think it matters if it’s a DRM enabled browser or not. It should be acting as a second monitor only in those cases, nothing more.
It may be them either not trespassing their territory (as a part of a deal or as a precaution) or TV apps sharing\telegraphing that info without the need of screen cap analysis as they work on TV itself and may as well be special modified apks. At least, they differed
Laptop sends only it’s video and audio outputs, apps’ code executes at it’s hardware, so TV needs a workaround to know what you are watching. And as it’s incapable of such analysis itself, it channels that data to it’s real owner.
so? we aren’t allowed to take netflix screenshots at all
Says who?
You are allowed to take screenshots of Netflix, even under the DMCA on DRM protected material. You are not allowed to use it commercially though. Personal use only.
Does it means that it broadcast my chrome browser if connected through HDMI? If I check for a password in the password manager in chrome, it fucking sends my password to Samsung?
Yes and no. Supposedly the resolution is not in 4K or even 1080p, but something much lower that is still enough to identify content, like shows, movies and ads, but not enough to make out minute detail.
So an HDMI connected device that is streaming Netflix is getting screenshot?
I mean, even if it wasn’t a streaming service, but let’s say, video game content, or a blu ray, that is still a violation, and of course, if I’m playing content I made, then it’s violating my copyright.
No... they only record on HDMI.
Exactly. HDMI contains HDCP when HDMI is streaming something copyrighted, such as Netflix app/in-browser. While they allegedly don’t record Netflix app on TV, they’ll be recording Netflix if it’s been streamed from computer via HDMI.
So what do we do when smart TVs force us to connect to the Internet, and refuse to work until we do?
This is exhausting. We’re speeding towards a horrible, privacy-less future.
That’s a easy solution, here are the steps:
Step 1: Do not purchase a smart TV
Step 2: Yay, you did it! You did all the steps. 🥳
Edit: People are missing the point. This is a joke.
Here’s another joke: It’s a pity that a TV is a necessary item to live.
Have you bought a TV in the last 5 years?
CRT is the way baby!
i would LOVE a crt but my dad really loves smart tvs :| any model recs? i have some free space in my room
Oh man, I haven’t actually had a CRT in a long time but I did like the Sony Trinitron. Damn things just weighed a ton
No. Did you read step one?
That’s getting harder to find by the day
We own a few TVs but nobody actually watches them. If we’re all out in the living room there’s four phones out with four people watching four different things.
Dystopian
Is it? I mean, 100 years ago you might all be reading different things, with either a record on or possibly the radio. Why is it terrible that now you’re all… reading different things together in one room?
Interwebs are too addicting. It’s like we are all in one room and are snorting coke by ourselves.
It’s one thing to read a newspaper or a book, different one to scroll social media stuck in an infinite loop of dopamine. Our lives may be longer than ever but in practice they are shorter than ever
Earlier this month I finally disconnected the wifi for my 7 year old Roku TV. I miss being able to turn it on w/ voice activation but I’ll trade that in for my privacy
So how do you all guys watch content on these “dumb TVs”?
If you connect e.g. android box, how is it any different than connecting the TV itself? Do you think producers of android boxes aren’t such pricks? This bugs my mind.
best way is a mini pc you can put an open source OS on
then you totally control it. they can be found cheap used and are usually upgradable
they are thrown out by schools and buisnesses all the time. it does not have to be very powerful by pc standards
it can also be your first home server if youre interested
But that is terrible to use. I can’t imagine my kids or wife to use this with TV…
no, not true you can put whatever you want on it. ours boots into a nice tv like ui and they open stremio with a remote and thats it
its up to you to make it nice and easy
the user experience is not radically different from a corporate experience except its faster and without ads or spying
OTA antennae for sports.
For streaming, I usually watch it on my laptop so that I can have easier options to skip and replay.
My desktop is connected via HDMI so I have that as an option but I rarely take advantage of it.
I live by myself so I don’t have as much pushback as you likely would FYI
Friendly reminder that gaming console monitors, computer monitors, projectors, dumb TVs, and commercial displays exist.
Yes, I could hack a smart TV to disable its networking capabilities. (Merely withholding my wifi password is not reliable.) But that would still be showing the manufacturers that I find spyware TVs acceptable, and supporting the production of those models.
Also, this would be a good time to pressure our legislators into criminalizing this nonsense.
Only one company makes Dumb TVs anymore, Sceptre, and the quality is very hit or miss due to the way they acquire their screens.
It’s also harder to find them in larger sizes any more, even for the few for which sell them at all, so if you want a larger one, you may not have much by way of options.
assetbasedlife.com/dumb-tvs-are-a-dying-breed/
This lists Insignia, which is a Best Buy store brand.
This has a couple, at least as of last year:
tomsguide.com/…/dumb-tvs-heres-why-you-cant-find-…
It’s also possible to buy a used TV, but obviously, as with getting used cars to avoid monitoring stuff in newer cars, the pool of those will only be around for so long, and you can’t take advantage of any technological advances subsequent to them.
Plenty of companies make display TVs that only display commercial content. You see them all the time displaying menus in fast food restaurants.
These can also have all smart tech turned off because some companies also use them as digital whiteboards to display proprietary or confidential information.
Those typically come at commercial pricing, which is insane.
I would hardly consider that pricing insane. Consumer TVs are massively subsidized by the smart tech built into them, in some cases by up to 60%. Plus, they are often fragile with cheaper components because they are expected to be mounted in “safe” places away from unusual conditions or extreme temperatures.
Considering the more robust construction (for commercial use) and lack of subsidization, I would consider those prices to be spot-on and rather reasonable.
Those commercial displays are nothing but heavily stripped down TVs with anything unnecessary to being a advertising display removed. and maybe a tiny, grossly overpriced and heavily cut down computer built into it to run the slideshows/menus/whatever.
also, TVs in a certain size range are generally cheap because manufacturing has gotten to the point that each mother can produce a ton of screens for it. and the reason that cheap range size has gone up over the years is because improvements in the printing technology and the size of the mother glass.
Why is withholding the WiFi password not enough? Could they somehow piggyback off a different device or something?
I’ve heard that some of them will connect to any wifi available. So if your neighbor does not have a password on their network. The tv will connect and upload the data.
Good question. Please see my follow-up comment.
Yes. It could talk to another smart device and ask it to send its packages. You could be careful and connect none of the smart crap in your house to your network, but the smart fridge in your upstairs neighbor’s kitchen could still be helping with smuggling your data out. Or your devices could be connected to some unsecured network around.
In any case, the only surefire way to stop your data from getting smuggled out is to physically kill all the wireless connectivity capabilities of the device. Disconnect antennae, desolder chips, scrape out pcb traces. Otherwise you’re just hoping the firmware is not doing anything funny. Fortunately I think these are all hypotheticals that have not (yet) been observed in real smart home products.
I can understand that if you have a Samsung TV and a Samsung fridge, they can talk with each other. But will it work if you have a fridge from a different OEM? (I’m assuming the OEMs haven’t formed a cartel for illegal data smuggling)
Not putting your WiFi password in would absolutely be reliable. I’d love to hear your ideas on how they’d remotely break into your WiFi Network
Remember how Comcast routers made that ghost mesh network?
Any link to news? This is my first time heard of this.
Sounds standard for Comcast or whoever they are now. Couldn’t find anything though. Curious
I don’t have a link but Comcast offered a get WiFi anywhere option for their customers where they could use anyone’s combination modem/router from Comcast to get online with their company credentials. This was (is?) impossible to disable.
And Amazon sidewalk.
If you have a samsung phone in the house, it can connect to the TV and give it a hotspot of sorts. This is a hypothetical, not real (yet!)
No, it would not.
They wouldn’t, of course, nor did I say they would.
(But since you brought it up, we have already seen internet providers quietly using their CPE to create special-purpose wireless networks surrounding customers’ homes. These could obviously be made available to any company that paid the ISP for access, just as cellular networks have been made available to companies like OnStar. So a TV could do this with a business deal rather than breaking in to your normal WiFi.)
However, your network is not the only network in the world, and WiFi is not the only kind of link. Neighbors exist. Open guest networks exist. Drive-by and fly-by networks exist. Mesh networks exist (and are already created by devices like Amazon Echo). Power line networking exists. Bluetooth, LoRa, cellular, etc. etc. etc. Maybe you live on an isolated mountain top where these things are unlikely to reach you (at least until satellite links become a little smaller and cheaper) but even that is not absolute, and most of us don’t.
Unless you disassemble your TV and examine all the components within, and know what they do, it could have any number of these capabilities.
Also, partly due to how prevalent multi-network support is becoming in electronics integration, it is not unusual for related functionality to be dormant at first yet possible to activate later.
I’d love for you not to be adversarial, and to learn more about a topic before making bold claims about it in absolute terms.
To add to this, often, even if you turn off Bluetooth, your devices can still communicate via Bluetooth Low Energy, something that’s separate from classic Bluetooth and typically (to my knowledge) cannot be turned off. As an example, I’ve heard that Google uses it to send ad targeting info between devices.
I had to update my LG recently and it had to get approval for all sorts of weird shit. Oddly enough, it let me continue using just about everything even after I denied all the very invasive checkboxes. I guess even they can’t deny use of your own tv if you reject the agreement lol
For future reference, you can update LG TVs via USB so you can avoid connecting it to a network.
yep, never allow them to connect to the internet
No matter how much they ask
.
A lot of shit makes a new, random MAC address for every new connection to an access point now
.
I’ve jokingly said this before, but just wait until manufacturers start adding 4G/5G to TVs explicitly for ads and telemetry…
Just like modern cars… I wish there was some kind legislation that would limit phone-home telemetry to emergency service telecommunication frequencies, and be opt-in only. That way any OEM operating under commercial cellular frequencies would thus be unlicensed, and subject to FCC violations and import bans. Like what OnStar was originally pitched as; only auto dialing to 911, and 911 only, if you were unresponsive after airbags deployed. OEM couldn’t use the telecommunication frequencies for anything other than networking with emergency service endpoints on the same VLAN.
Anything recorded by the vehicle would be required to stay on the vehicle due privacy regulations, like the black box recorder for warranted forensic investigations. OTA updates could also be distributed offline for users to download and flash via USB, like any motherboard bios, so transactions would be write only.
.
If I just use a projector, do i still have to worry about the maker of the tablet that connects to the projector doing the same thing?
Yes, but for different reasons. They are much less popular, and have way lower market share as a result.
Lots of lower-end chinese projectors are also running Android (linux), with multi-core CPUs…
awful ethics aside what a disgusting waste of processing power. software already barely runs
now you know why
Screenshotting every 500ms is insane.
Even a 0.30$ ch32v003 could handle this tiny amount of data. It’s not a resource limit
I was curious enough to check and with 2KB SRAM that thing doesn’t have anywhere enough memory to process a 320x200 RGB image much less 1080p or 4K.
Further you definitelly don’t want to send 2 images per-second down to a server in uncompressed format (even 1080p RGB with an encoding that loses a bit of color fidelity to just use two bytes per pixel, adds up to 4MB uncompressed per image), so its either using something with hardware compression or its using processing cycles for that.
My expectation is that it’s not the snapshoting itself that would eat CPU cycles, it’s the compression.
That said, I think you make a good point, just with the wrong example - I would’ve gone with: a thing capable of handling video decoding at 50 fps - i.e. one frame per 20ms - (even if it’s actually using hardware video decoding) can probably handle compressing and sending over the network two frames per second, though performance might suffer if they’re using a chip without hardware compression support and are using complex compression methods like JPEG instead of something simpler like LZW or similar.
I don’t think they will compress the screenshot and send them but run content in a tensorflow lite model or even just hash a few of the pixels to try for an ID match
Well that makes sense but might even be more processor intensive unless they’re using an SOC that includes an NFU or similar.
I doubt it’s a straight forward hash because a hash database for video which includes all manner of small clips and has to somehow be able to match something missing over 90% of frames (if indeed the thing is sampling it at 2 fps, then it only sees 2 frames out of every 25) would be huge.
A rough calculation for a system of hashes for groups of 13 frames in a row (so that at least one would be hit if sampling at 2 fps on a 25 fps system) storing just one block of 13 frame hashes per minute in a 5 byte value (so large enough to have 5 trillion distinctive values) would in 1GB store enough hashes for 136k 2h movies in hashes alone so it would be maybe feasible if the system had 2GB+ of main memory, though even then I’m not so sure the CPU speed would be enough to search it every 500ms (though if the hashes are ordered by value in a long array and there’s a matching array of clip IDs, it might be doable since there are some pretty good algorithms for that).
I would sample a few dozens equally space pixels out of the frame, then drop similar value frames, and send that with timestamp. In the cloud, you runs those few pixels in a content recognition model.
It doesn’t have to be especially accurate or know any niche content, the point is to make a psychomarketing profile of the customer like “car guy, watches tool reviews”.
Why think of it as a compression problem? Isn’t the spy device already getting compressed video form some source? That makes it a filtering problem. You would set it to grab and ship key frames (or equivalent term) if you wanted a human to be able to see the intel. But for content matching, maybe count some interval of key frames and then grab the smallest difference frame between the next two key frames. Gives a nice, premade small data chunk. A few of those in sequence starts looking like a hash function (on a dark foggy night).
Would want some way to sync up the frames that the spy device grabs and the ones grabbed when building the db to match against. Maybe resetting the key frame interval counter when some set of simple frames come through would be enough. Like anything with a uniform color across the whole image or something similar.
Just spitballing here. I like your impulse to math this.
We’re talking about fingerprinting stuff coming in via HDMI, not stuff being played by the “smart” part of the TV itself from some source.
You would probably not need to actually sample images if it’s the TV’s processor that’s playing something from a source, because there are probably smarter approaches for most sources (for example, for a TV channel you probably just need to know the setting of the tuner, location and the local time and then get the data from available Program Guide info (called EPG, if I remember it correctly).
The problem is that anything might be coming over HDMI and it’s not compressed, so if they want to figure out what that is, it’s a much bigger problem.
Your approach does sound like it would work if the Smart TV was playing some compressed video file, though.
Mind you, I too am just “thinking out loud” rather that actually knowing what they do (or what I’m talking about ;))
I assumed HDMI had some form of encoding, thanks for the correction. Looks like v 2.1 does.
I think the syncing idea between the spy device and db is still useful. The video itself has stuff to use for reducing the search space by making sure they puck the same instants to fingerprint and exfiltrate.
TVs I’ve come across are such displeasure to use, it’s incredible
I got a nice LG C3 on an open box deal, I connected it to run updates and fiddle for a few, then deleted the apps and took it offline.
Yeah. My Samsung claws my firewall like a squirrel trapped in a box. It intensifies on certain hours of the day. I’m quite sure it also tries to send what devices are connected and what filenames are in attached memory sticks. Maybe also some media file checksums.
Do your firewall rules allow you to block your tv’s telemetry, while allowing you to still use the internet on it? If so, would you mind sharing how you did it?
You should look into PiHole, if you’re half-savvy with computers. They should be able to block all the destinations smart TVs are trying to connect to
Sinkholes can be negated by manufacturers using static, hardcoded dns addresses. Be careful and check traffic regularly.
And those can be blocked and even redirected at the router level. Though not as simple as spinning up a pihole.
Actually simpler, if you have an Asus router. Just remember to disable its telemetry stuff…
… Sending telemetry to Asus about the TV sending telemetry to LG? Wtf is this timeline?
We are on the “let’s see how back corporate greed can get” simulation server.
Blocking telemetry would not include blocking 8.8.8.8 though.
And they do. My Philips TV didn’t even ask for DNS until hardcoded IPs for Netflix et al. timed out. And when it did, it asked Google, not my router.
This is why you need to do DNS hijacking to handle hardcoded DNS requests.
Very easy to circumvent
Pi hole won't help.
Would be nice if we could have some technological privacy laws written in this century.
We need all the boomers in Capitol Senior Care Home to vacate first
You have it backwards. You have to EVICT them.
They already tried Jan 6 ! The old geezers won’t go.
Nope. Those bootlickers were on the side of the corporate/billionaire enshitifiers, trying to make the enshitification MUCH worse.
Does it really matter who does the evicting ? After it’s done it’s anybody’s guess what will fill the power vacuum. All we know is they will wear black boots and carry guns.
Yes.
And this is exactly why. In order to effect lasting, positive changes, it’s important to have builders, not to mention critical mass with the populace. “Ends-justify-the-means” thinking and ascribing friendship the the enemy of one’s enemy don’t lend themselves to establishing resilient and non-despotic results.
Until then just desolder the antennas good luck sending data with no way to connect to the internet.
Jokes on them tho, they lack common understanding.
I watch a video about someone modding a shitbox and they think i can afford this new spyker sports car or any other 80k e car.
Obviously that shit is a swing and a miss. You want to give me advertising that suits me? Start by advertising stickers about cars because that’s something i could afford…not something i would buy tho.
Hmmm
“how to diy replace stolen catalytic converter”
“96 Ford esprit strange smell and noise in roof”
Youtube: buy this $90 grand all terrain thingy on credit!
This is why our “smart” TV is not allowed to be connected to the internet.
I am a bit puzzled about the “even when your laptop is connected” part.
I have a small android box connected to it and am not using apps on the TV so it should have no chance of sending screenshot out even if it takes them.
The TV itself is not connected
what kind of Android box do you have? anything you recommend? (looking to have some sort of streaming client)
Nvidia Shield. The bigger one.
Yes, it’s a couple of years old at this point, but it’s still the best device of its kind.
Not to mention the remote is FANTASTIC.
It’s a Chinese one that I used at first for retro gaming with emuelec. Now it is dual boot and I have kodi and newpipe on it too.
the google tv with chromecast dongle is quite decent, good price/performance ratio
But if you connect your phone to the android box then the TV could use the phone to send the screenshots.
TV->android box->phone->internet.
Sorry for being paranoid but can the TV piggyback the connection used by the the streaming device/android box to send data back to the TV OEM?
Not yet but it is clear in the future most devices will be able to do that, we will have ubiquitous low grade internet access everywhere. Your neighbours devices will let your electronics snitch on you even if you seal up your own internet
Good point. We can have a honeypot wifi. Check my other comment in the thread.
Okay, so for the new folks with networking, how do you set up a honeypot wifi? Have a (second) router powered on with no connection? Or is it something you can set up with one router?
Many routers have a functionality to create a guest wifi. These usually run on a separate VLAN so that it can’t access other devices on the network. After creating this guest wifi, you have manually disable internet access on this but keep the wifi on.
Unfortunately the process varies between router to router.
The only connection the TV has is hdmi. I do not think that back and forth communication is possible there.
If the TV has wifi, it can do its thing but that would also be easy to disable.
I think for the TVs internal wifi, it’s better to create a honeypot Wi-Fi exclusively for it, or a VLAN. It will constantly try to send data and fail. If we don’t let it connect to anything, the TV might start sniffing for other open networks.
But can you really be sure that it doesn’t connect to another network? i have to check again but if i recall correctly there are TVs that try to connect to other open networks or even look for other TVs from the same manufacturer and connect through those to the internet. I have to double check this again, so take this with a grain of salt
If that’s true - lan for your own content with network isolation and ripping out the WiFi antenna, I guess?? I hate this
A smart TV is not allowed on my property.
There is such a thing called HDMI Ethernet. If you connect some sort of Android box to your TV it might establish an Ethernet connection with it and thus connect to the internet.
If you use an Android TV system you don’t get to complain about your video output device tracking.
I have searched for alternatives. There are none that I am aware of. I just want a streaming box that can run jellyfin with a simple remote. I really don’t want to use a keyboard in bed.
If anyone knows a simple setup that boots straight into jellyfin with a remote, I would love to hear about it.
Maybe put Lineage OS on a compatible Android TV box. These do have remotes and have almost no Google telemetry.
Android has closed source Google spy framework, don’t use that.
Agreed. It's not solving anything when you move to Android TV.
The amount of effort i had to put into buying a dumb tv the last time it was new tv time is positively infuriating.
I couldn’t even find one last time
Yup. When we went to buy a TV I knew this was happening because the smart TVs with wifi and extra hardware and software were cheaper than the dumb TVs. Nothing is free, I knew they had to be doing this shit.
Cool. I’ve already got more books than I’ll be able to finish before I die. Might as well get back into reading. Fuck those bastards.
At this point it’s easier to get one of those 50" gaming monitors and put an htpc near it or just something like a chromecast
.
You hear that? It’s a whisper… It’s a multinational multibillion dollar class action lawsuit coming after Samsung and LG. WTF!
mine would be getting only choppy static more than anything. where i live there is only sattelite available and it costs more than cable
The question now is, even if I don’t connect the TV to Internet, what TV brand should I buy? Currently I have LG, but no way I’m supporting that even without Internet connection.
hopfully they dont communicate locally with other lg or partnered devices
now or in the future
Like amazon ring devices? I think it’s called Sidewalk .
Fortunately these TVs are not yet sophisticated enough to communicate to the internet without your permission like Apple devices do now.
Well thing is, they all track you to some point.
Specs wise, LG still makes some of the best TVs. You want 4k 120Hz, they’ve got you. But if you feel morally unable to support a company that has opt-out tracking like this, you’re a bit more limited. I thought maybe Sony’s better, but nope. There’s instructions on how to disable ACR on their TVs too. Philips comes with Roku or Google TV, both of which snoop on you, but I don’t know if they do the automatic content recognition thing.
Dumb TVs exist, but good luck finding one with a decent resolution AND price.
Yeah. I really like LG products. Will see what happens when my current TV stops working.
That raises the question: is there one that has decent resolution and privacy, but is expensive? Those of us who can afford it should surely go for the privacy friendly option regardless of price. Boycotting the surveillance society that’s in full development is worth a lot.
Commercial ones would work I think, but viewing angles can be off on at least outdoor models.
Many video projectors don’t. My Epson doesn’t.
that name invokes the old horror that is printers
Epsons were pretty chill printers. You could buy just the print head and you could use your own ink refills
Bought an EH-TW7000 4K PRO-UHD Projector a couple years back for less than 1 kEUR. Was about the best value then, haven’t looked recently.
I can top it - my first desktop PC was an Epson. Come to think of it, my first printer was an Epson dot matrix. Loud as fuck but it was a good little workhorse.
Epson printers are pretty nice, on par with Brother for usability.
epson is kinda scummy with their ink cartridges and also has bloat
brother is superior
Yeah I get that. But I don’t want to use projector.
I can’t imagine using a TV. None of them are wall sized and I don’t have the space. Pull down screen fits the bill.
I can completely understand the use case, I just prefer the better display quality of a TV
Projectors > *
/song note emoji/I always feel like/end song note emoji/
LG by now will have several weeks of footage of me scrolling through streaming services and failing to find anything to watch.
Diagnosis: ADHD. Display ads for stimulants.
Probably won’t happen as I’m not in the US, however if it does start to show ads it will be very quickly disconnected from the internet and relegated to being solely a display for the PS5. It’s not far off that anyway.
prediction if this becomes widespread: soon they will have their own wireless internet connection just so they wont have to rely on your network to spy on you lel😎
You joke but that's literally what they did with the cars. I remember when that was an upsell, now you getting that modem you asked for it or not and it will ping the merchant when it detects that you are fucking your mistress in the back seat.
Welcome to to today's America peasants
Not sure how ads for medications are legal anywhere.
Not ADHD, just very high standards!
Display ads for high-quality stimulants
Hahah my friends made fun of me for buying some cheap as fuck “smart” TV instead of an expensive LG one like them, my TV can barely run a web browser, no chance in hell that things spying on me.
Maybe it can barely run a web browser because it’s working so hard spying on you?
Exactly. Since this comment doesn't make sense. It's most likely not only Samsung and LG doing it
I never own a smart tv, but can you flash custom firmwares into it?
That would be sweet but I have never come across such a thing unfortunately!
AFAIK there's no custom firmware for these devices.
Well there are no non smart TVs anymore as far as I can tell, except the “monitor” version of TVs for 30% more money and maybe some antique 32" TVs with resolution of 1366x768
Don’t mind baby products and dildos or whatever.
They could see bank activity and even login credentials when someone is temporarily displaying their own passwords.
This basically ignores all security measures regarding everything. Sensitive communication, company secrets and so on.
That’s fucking seriously huge. What the fuck?!
I know right!?? I connected my htpc to my Samsung tv. Omg!
Right? But we’ve been convinced the Chinese government spying on us through Huawei is a problem.
Every major tech major brands and business, even cars like BMW and now also TVs like Samsung or LG are all spying on their customers. And why isn't this forbidden by lawn already?
Money & Corruption, the movie.
even if it was forbidden by lawn, most people with smart TVs keep them inside the house.
They’re both problems.
Yes but one is treated differently
They are. They just aren’t the only one.
And what are we doing about the others?
Because that’s a chinese corporation making money.
It’s fine when a US one does it
Samsung and LG are both South Korean.
But it’s not sending images. It’s content recognition, so it can tell you’re on a bank site but not decipher your password if it showed briefly
.
Like content recognition can’t recognize text, if that’s what it’s been configured to look for?
Use a pihole people, don’t go barebacking the internet
Doesn’t help if the device has a baked in DNS address and just ignores your settings tho. Amazon and Google devices seem prone to that. After blocking everything on the common DNS ports except the PiHole, some of my devices have been acting kinda sluggish.
Easy to block that - though not with pihole exclusively.
We use another tool at our network edge to block all 53/853 traffic and redirect all port 53 traffic to our internal DNS resolver (works much like pihole).
Then we also block all DoH.
Only two devices have failed using this strategy: Chromecast - which refuses to work if it can’t access googles DNS. And Philips Hue bridges. Both lie and say “internet offline”. Every other device - even some of the questionable ones on a special VLAN for devices we don’t trust - work just fine and fall back to the router-specified DNS.
I wanted to do that as well, but I can’t redirect outgoing traffic on my router, just block it entirely. Sadly it was the only device of that series not supporting OpenWRT (sigh)… Next one will either have to support that or be a DIY project… Have been starting to self host my stuff already and I’m not planning to stop there!
Sweet. It’s worth it IMO. And definitely fun for either tinkering or just having something solid that works (why not both? ;) ).
We’ve been using monowall - now pfsense since 2008.
I don’t necessarily recommend btw - there are lots of great options out there (like it’s cousin OPNSense and so many more).
Yeah, the tinkering is part of the fun. Right now I’m still perfecting my OMV NAS/Homelab but after that I might look into custom routers. I’m still hoping to get fibre in the foreseeable future, but right now it’s not looking too good in my area…
How do you identify DoH Vs normal web traffic?
That’s the problem with my router… I can’t. I’ve seen it done with OpenWRT but I chose the wrong model for that…
I asked because I’m not sure it’s really possible.
That might not help..
A DNS filter is no protection lol
Btw, is there a firmware hacking/flashing scene for smart TVs?
I would love to able to able to put a different OS that does nothing but what I actually tell it to so on my smart TV…
Buy a commercial TV. It’s a plain jane TV. I put one in as a SCADA, but it’s just a tv with no frills. When I saw what it was, I knew when I’d need to purchase a tv this would be the type I wanted.
Unfortunately no.
The best option if you want a new tv without this stuff is buying a business display, such as here:
www.sharpnecdisplays.us/products/displays/m651-2
This one even comes with a Raspberry Pi compute module.
You have to specifically search display and not TV.
The problem is that usually picture quality is not the same.
I mean it’s 4k HDR at 60Hz with an 8k:1 contrast ratio. You can see the specs on the page - seems picture quality is pretty good to me for the price.
But if you want something even fancier and have the budget for it, even LG has business displays without all the telemetry in OLED.
Uh interesting. That’s even fancier than I need, I don’t have the space for more than 48" or 50" I think. Thank you a lot for the tip!
Oops, I linked the 65". They have that same display in 45 and 50" as well
Yes there is, believe it or not. It just depends on the kind of TV you have.
I setup my LG to be “jailbroken” so I could have it inject a python script into a PS4 to mod that.
youtu.be/zYoesrUsIj8?feature=shared
Interesting stuff.
The other option is to setup a PiHole and find the telemetry they are using to send the info off and blocking that.
Do they do that in EU too?
It says not UK - obvs not EU currently - but safe bet, no?
The divide between the tech savvy and the tech illiterate grows deeper.
And wider?
As a tech savvy person, it’s already a gaping chasm. Making it wider and deeper isn’t a huge change.
Do not connect your Smart TVs to network people, seriously. Just a bad idea. Use a media center PC or some other device that allows you to stream content, and make sure the TV itself is just a big monitor, nothing more.
I hear but have not verified that they will connect to an open network without letting you know.
This!
I have definitely had to forget networks, then have them connect to that network weeks later at random, then having to forget the network again. Don’t know how that’s legal.
Forgetting a network is only when your wifi is password protected. If the TV can find an open wifi access point, it could just automatically connect to the internet. "Forgetting" a network doesn't help here..! Since there is nothing to forget (there are wifi points without password). But it should be forbidden IMO to automatically connect to these kind of access points. But even your mobile phone might do the same thing.
Yep, it was my personal, password-protected network. Either someone reconnected it (unlikely, I live with my gf who doesn’t use the TV) or it just cached the password until it decided to spy on my again 🙃
At least you should be able to block its mac address
Better yet, buy a big monitor.
If there were big monitors with the same color quality and in the same price range I’d do it. But usually large monitors are for signage.
At least that’s what I’ve found.
Where do I get a 65" monitor?
You want a “commercial display”. They are dumb TVs for signage and whatnot. You won’t be getting the cutting edge display technology, but you still get a great display and no smart functions.
…and presumably you pay through the nose for it?
Depends, but you can get a 4k 55" Samsung for under $600.
.
Bro, it’s Amazon
But it doesn’t eliminate the problem, it merely passes it to the media center PC etc
Smart TVs are designed to surveil you, a media center PC can be used however you want. Flash Linux and run Jellyfin and torrent everything through a VPN, then nothing can track you.
If you have a smart device, someone is doing this with it. Best options to reduce their ability to access your devices: smart TV’s - don’t connect them to the internet unless you’re updating the firmware. Use a streaming stick for streaming services, and then your privacy violations are minimized to the streaming stick that doesn’t have a mic, or camera. Some controllers do have a mic, it’s only a problem with who is making the tech. Other smart devices like fridge, microwave, oven, washer, etc, just never connect them to the internet, they likely will work fine their entire life without a network connection. Personal smart devices such as smart phones, remove google, and apple. Neither can truly be trusted, however apple does have a track record of keeping their snooping to themselves for what that’s worth. For robots, they will likely need a network connection, I recommend supporting home automation projects that will allow us to replace the OS on our robot vacuums, and food delivery devices with one that connects to a home based server that doesn’t need an internet connection. But never, ever, trust a smart device that is within hearing, seeing, or is touching you. It is a monitoring device, and it is being used that way by anyone with enough power.
Actual paper here.
arxiv.org/html/2409.06203v1
It is not sending full screenshots as anybody technical would already have guessed. It’s a few KB over an hour, so it’s content recognition hashes.
Opt out anyway. Their study shows the opt out option does indeed opt you out of it.
So the data is still captured every 500ms. But it batches the data together and indeed only send data of around 8kb every minute back to the centralized server. But 8kb can not be full screenshots of MBs of course, so this is some kind of meta / fingerprint data. The original author (Jeremy Hsu) is misleading here with the term "screenshot every 500ms".
Yeah, it’ll grab a few frame, crunch them up, post back something like “ac8c986ffcb770d460151b20c1cfe628612247ac2d284c780761af3b544bfea7” to the servers and from there it likely gets binned as “not recognised” but might match a segment from Star Wars 4K77.
It sounds like the sort of thing that should be off by default (and it probably is, I haven’t bought a new one for years), but what we’ve learnt since GDPR is that if a big box comes up over what you’re trying to do and it has an “Accept” button, people will generally click it and read nothing just to get back to another riveting episode of America’s Deadliest Home Shootouts or something.
Does that come on before or after “Ow! My Balls!”?
Right after “People Falling Down And Suffering Serious Injuries: Oops! All slide Whistles Edition!”
But before Merica’s Deadliest School Shootings
Is that from the Idiocracy movie? 😀
Go away. Baitin!!
“meta tags every 500ms” might be more accurate, but the end result is the same. The device is monitoring what you consume in order to aggregate data on your household.
How can I turn this input into an intrusion vector and exfiltrate all their IP to public social media and then corrupt all their servers and backups and make their IT Dept autodefenestrate ?
This shouldn’t be opt-out. This is the digital equivalent of some fucking pervert showing up at your window and taking pictures of your TV and then letting a bunch of other perverts pay to find out what you were watching so they can use that info to manipulate you, multiplied by however many millions of TVs they’ve sold. Even if the punishment for that crime was just a single week in jail, the people responsible should be facing several
hundredthousand years behind bars when you add it all up.It shouldn’t be opt in or out tbh. This shit should just be illegal.
The whole adverspying industry needs to be reined the fuck in and slowly turned to mulch.
The first step to that is letting us see what the advertiser has in our hidden “profiles” and let us modify and/or wipe them out.
This kinda stuff should be opt-IN, not opt-OUT. Just think of how many people don’t even know this is happening, or that there even is an opt-out.
i genuinely do not understand how TVs are so corrupt and greedy. You just display pixels, that’s it! The entire purpose is to convert 1s and 0s to pretty color
“Oh right, it’s money!!” — Hbomberguy
Imagine if your computer monitor just displayed ads on top of the hdmi signal
I believe that is patented
Sceptre still sells dumb TVs’. If you are in the US, Walmart sells them. I have one and it’s pretty good. No frills.
I actually like mine. 4k on clearance for $300 for a 55" 3 uears ago. HD version was more. Menus suck and remote on/off is IR only, but I can make do.
Don’t buy them, they are excessively expensive and tt’s a better idea to separate the smart functionality into an HDMI device of your choice anyway.
Most new tv’s are smart tv’s by default, yo uave to pay extra for dumbness
If I ever have to get a new one, I will madboi it with a monitor and DTV HDMI decoder.
They’re eating the dogs. 😊
So I guess they learned nothing from the last class action lawsuit https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/lawsuit-news/lg-samsung-sony-class-action-alleges-smart-tv-privacy-violations/. Also reminded me of this past gem from LG: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/11/lg-smart-tv-snooping-extends-to-home-networks-second-blogger-says/.
Buy a computer monitor, a projector or a commercial display instead, they tend to be dumb.
Alternatively, don’t connect your TV to the internet (bear in mind some are wireless). Unplug it from the wall when not in use.
As if Microsoft’s Recall wasn’t enough…
Until the first use menu gauntlet requires an internet connection to complete setup and enable the device for normal usage.
welp, that’s all done!
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run the first use connected to wifi, then disconnect, connect it to your video source via HDMI, forget wifi network, and go with god
Too much work. Mine away!
Samsung monitors now include all the smart TV crap and need a remote to set them up
The Samsung monitors we get at the office still appear to be just dumb screens. No remote or anything like that. But that’s from their business lineup of monitors. Wouldn’t surprise me too much if their consumer/gamer lineup would be different.
Yes this is on their Odyssey line of gaming monitors. Their curved ultra wide is great in the office once you get through the menus
THIS is piracy. Along with all the other personal data selling.
I hope they enjoy my 25 million screenshots of Buffy, Angel, and Stargate.
Monica.
Time should have stopped to 1999.
In 1999 this had already happened, just the information about that explosion hadn’t reached your part of the galaxy yet. Metaphorically.
I’m thinking about at least Russia (Putin taking power and the second Chechen War), Israel (repatriation and its political turn and its choice of allies in the changed world, Likud taking power), Armenia (Kocharyan taking power, Sargsyan and Demirchyan being assassinated) and Azerbaijan (starting to boycott negotiations and build up oil industry since that time) having made a clear direction change.
These may not be obviously connected to other things we see, but I think they are part of the same tendency. I think at the same time Microsoft got an anti-monopoly decision saying that documenting Windows interfaces its bundled applications use for independent developers is sufficient for it to not be a monopolist, and Netscape died, and dotcoms crashed, and Linux attained the love of corporations, albeit not so notable yet, while FreeBSD didn’t, and Amiga started dying, and DEC, and Sun received a hit, and one can notice many other things.
By the way, it’s the favorite thing to say for journalists mentioning it that The Phantom Menace was a bad movie and hated by fans, and Attack of the Clones an even worse one, and Revenge of the Sith kinda better. But these were all political statements (I’m not imagining it because Lucas said that himself many times), and when we treat them as such, they were very good as that - the predictions came out to be correct.
OK, I might just love Star Wars too much.
What an infodump.
I mean, yes, obviously I agree with Agent Smith on that part.
World should be reverted to 70s, 80s and 90s and locked in a loop of those decades forever.
That would require us to deal with both Reagan and Nixon over and over again, though.
I guess their bullshit would be reverted when each loop resets. But still.
Was still a better time.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, corporations treat you like a product. Whether you buy something from them or not. People are becoming the product that they sell.
I usually don’t care very much until it starts to affect pricing for stuff based on some algorithms impression of how desperate you are. That algorithm started with travel (airlines, online booking fees for hotels and stuff) and has expanded.
If I need a new computer because mine isn’t working, I don’t really care that advertisers come at me with ads for their computer products. I need one, they want me to buy one, it’s marketing. No worries.
If I need a new computer and suddenly all the prices for new systems goes up by $100 because it thinks I’m desperate enough to pay that, now I have a problem.
I still don’t like them selling my data, and I’ll do what I can to avoid it, but marketing is going to do marketing things.
The problem is, you don’t get a say in the matter. If the marketing company sells on your data, you don’t get to say no.
If Ford wants telemetry on your car (and they do) and they sell it to your insurance company who raises your rates because you don’t drive in a manner approved by corporate, you don’t get to say no.
If you search for wigs and antinausea meds, and Google sells that to health insurance who guesses you’ve got cancer and are a financial liability, you don’t get to say no, and you don’t get to argue that you were planning for a party.
If you’re a fifteen year old kid and your browser starts showing gay dating ads to your extremely homophobic parents, you’d better hope they don’t put it together because you don’t get to stop any of it.
You can control how your data is gathered, but you have ZERO say in how it’s distributed and interpreted.
I agree. And that’s problematic. Each company will have different policies, so it’s important to know what companies do with your data, at least for the subset of companies that you actually use.
That’s both disturbing and completely expected. I’ve generally always preferred monitors over TVs tbh, this is just another reason for it lol
Theoretically I could display highly illegal stuff and they would distribute it making them complicit?
Can the API be hacked to flood their servers with petabytes of cat pictures?
What is happening with the data? Where are the data savers?
But would you really want to?
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So they are allowed to pirate content actually? Even if it’s not Netflix or YouTube they take screenshots of potentially copyrighted content
Did you actually read the article? They don’t upload screenshots; they recognise content and upload the identification of that content.
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The blurb above says that the TVs uploads screenshots when viewing antenna and hdmi input sources, which is what most people are reacting to here. The actual article is paywalled.
However other articles go into more detail and note that only a few KB of data per hour is actually uploaded, so the TV must be doing image analysis locally and uploading metadata only.
The original author that is indeed behind a paywall doesn't know what he is talking about. I dove into the official study and it seems to be 500ms interval data gathering. But only 1 time per minute batches together 8KB data sent back to Samsung.
Right, but 480K per hour clearly isn’t going to contain a bunch of 4K screenshots, so it must be doing local analysis.
I believe they upload a hash of one frame.
my tv can barely play Netflix I doubt it’s taking pictures every second lol
maybe that’s why it can’t play Netflix :)
Don’t let your TV connect to the internet. I have mine on my wifi so I can control them using Home Assistant, but they’re on an isolated VLAN with no internet access.
Edit: Of course, this only works if you use an external box for streaming, like an Nvidia Shield, Apple TV, Google Chromecast TV or whatever they call it now, etc.
Wait what? Is there a blog or article on how to do this?
Because I can’t picture how this works in my head for my setup. It needs internet to go to Hulu/Netflix/etc.
The TV itself wouldn’t be able to reach Hulu/Netflix/etc. they’re likely using another device for that. Like a media computer or something else.
Like a apple TV / Roku which then… Reports everything you’re watching and or viewing. We truly live in the day and age where nothing you do digitally is private, and it’s almost turned into privacy via aggregation imo now since the PBs of raw data isn’t really worth it for major corporations.
Obvs if you’re the .0001% I’m sure the NSA can tap into it and you’re still gonna be fucked that way, but that can be said for pretty much any digital device.
Yes you can build your own HTPC, and connect it to the TV, that is what I've been doing for the past 8 years.
You can also find a cheap laptop with like a 7th gen Intel or newer processor and use that with a wireless keyboard and mouse and an HDMI cable.
Bang for your buck it'll be the best deal for you
Oh sorry, I completely forgot to mention that. I’m using an Nvidia Shield for all my streaming.
Another approach is to connect the TV to the internet but block all LG/Samsung/whatever stuff, for example by using a firewall on your router.
Oh that’s neat with Nvidia shield!
I currently do the pi-hole and block calls route.
Some newer TVs are starting to have hard-coded DNS servers, which means they’ll bypass most PiHole configurations.
You could try configure your router to redirect all DNS traffic (UDP port 53) to your PiHole server, but that won’t work if they’re using DoH (DNS over HTTPS) which is becoming more and more common.
Just remember to allow your pi-hole DNS request through the firewall. Otherwise nothing works.
Unfortunately there’s also DNS over HTTPS
Translated, “man in the middle attack” means “Pihole or similar”. Devices with hard coded addresses for this phone home, or don’t work.
I just never gave my TV access to the Internet and use my home theater PC to watch stuff. Never seen a need for more.
Imagine the amount of bandwidth and energy saved, if they didn’t do any of this bullshit.
They are essentially using someone else’s money to get themselves more money. Fuck these people!
I complained about shit like this more than a decade ago and everyone just laughed and said ‘Oh they’ll never do anything like that’
You get what you fucking deserve
And the rest of us get what that guy deserves too!
Yep, every one of you
For one people don’t actually have much choice if you want to buy a television. Most TVs are smart TVs now, so you are pretending we have a choice here. I have managed to avoid buying one, but only because I don’t buy televisions.
Would you like it if I blamed you for getting spied on by Microsoft because you use Windows? Switching to Linux is easier than finding a TV that isn’t smart and actually has decent specifications.
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My pi-hole blocks SO MUCH traffic from my Rokus. Never buying another Roku again.
Got a recipe for the rest of us?
I'm sure if you search the internet there are quite a few pie hole block lists that are very easy to add.
I’m sure there are dozens of not hundreds of options. But those won’t salve the curiosity i have.
It’s more interesting to actually learn from people and their experiences
Use OISD Big oisd.nl/setup/pihole and call it a day
They collect all this data and then still cancel the most watched/best shows.
Morons.
Mine isn’t connected to the internet. Too bad so sad greedy fucks
Watch next year’s models have LTE modems…for your convenience of course
No wonder these things operate slow as shit!
I had an issue with my 2016 Samsung TV where the interface slowed to a crawl and as soon as I disconnected the Ethernet cord it became responsive. I called Samsung customer service and they were able to reset my TV to factory settings without what I considered to be an adequate amount of authorization. I disconnected the TV again and banned it from my network and went with Apple TV.
Not if you never connect your smart TV to the internet to complete the setup and instead use it as a dumb display (I hope)
Certain brands automatically connect themselves to open wifis I think so there is that to consider as well.
I remember hearing that some may even have LTE to fallback to.
Damn, I can rule out open hotspots, but wouldn’t know where to start checking for LTE (a Faraday cage comes to mind…)
Ig it’s time to buy a regular tv then
My pi-hole was getting hammered by an LG smart TV.(Phrasing)
That TV no longer gets internet privileges and I definitely won’t be buying an LG again. I strayed from Sony and regretted it across the board.
Installed pi-hole this week. Number one blocked domain with 1600 queries… Scribe.logs.roku.com.
Crazy!