Smart TVs Track More Than What’s on Tonight
mobile.nytimes.com
mobile.nytimes.com
I haven't updated my Samsung 40" TV in about 7 years for this reason. It's damn near impossible to just find a high quality "dumb" TV.
[1] https://www.cnet.com/news/new-hdmi-standard-brings-internet-...
Frankly, the Internet of Shit scares me.
If your TV has a microphone then in order to use it you must accept that they may record everything you say. You can always purchase a different brand/model however you might also be sacrificing features (e.g. All LG OLED TVs have mics in the remotes). Some STBs include microphones with their remotes but many do not, you have a choice.
Most vendors do not regularly update their smart TV firmware or require the user to update it manually via a USB stick. On the other hand, vendors of STBs regularly update the firmware on their devices. From a security perspective I'd rather connect a STB to the internet than a smart TV.
That's basically the same exact thing. A SmartTV is just a TV with a set-top box built in. Nearly all Set-top boxes (like a Roku, Chromecast, Fire Stick, your old game console) report back your viewing habits and advertising/privacy data too, in basically the same way that any average SmartTV does.
These two devices are so identical that many manufacturers just directly use a more user-friendly STB as their SmartTV. Here's a list of Roku-based SmartTV's https://www.roku.com/products/finder/roku-tv and another with Fire Stick built in https://www.roku.com/products/finder/roku-tv , and another with Chromecast https://www.google.com/chromecast/built-in/tv/ as some examples.
With a roku, roku is selling or having stolen your privacy. With a smart TV running roku app, both samsung and roku are selling or having stolen your privacy.
The opposite direction of single point of privacy failure is watching TV must flow thru the TV. Theoretically I could watch amazon prime by plugging something that doesn't spy into a HDMI, and the TV can report very little spy data back.
The argument is most CC theft doesn't involve stealing photocopies of CCs, so why go to any effort to avoid getting your physical CC photocopied? However, the real question is, what do I personally gain by making photocopies of my credit card and leaving them laying around? Nothing? Well, why bother?
There are secondary effects because the primary purpose of a roku is being a roku they tend to do a better job at it, including better security/privacy/whatever, whereas the primary purpose of a TV is to display HDMI signals and there's a parasitic infection of privacy violation built into the smart TVs that no consumers want, as a secondary task of being a fake roku it'll never be a very good roku. Very much like asking why hardware stores exist in a post-swiss-army-knife world. My pocket knife has a terrible little pair of scissors why would any market exist for dedicated "real" scissors? The smart TV, at this era, distributes "smartness" at the quality level of the worst 80s era infomercial products, because for most people, its just a TV so expending more effort on the app beyond "well, it boots most of the time" is lost profit.
I’d be interested in people’s recommendations for this. Can you use a raspberry pi, for instance, and get good performance, and access to online services like Netflix? Do most people use some open source set top box software, or just raspbian and a browser?
Kodi (which powers most RPi-based HTPC's) had a Netflix add-on for awhile, although last I checked it was more or less just the page running in a browser.
So use a device from one of the three companies that all make money from advertising based on gathering user's data....
Good thing you have a Samsung.
If you had a Sony, you wouldn't even be able to use the Antenna input. In past years Sony pushed over-the-air updates to their TVs. I think they piggybacked local PBS stations for this.
I don't know if Sony still does this. I didn't search too hard, but here's an note from 2015 acknowledging what happens: https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/articles/00008947
key text is:
The update is received directly
from an over-the-air broadcast.Good point.
But the TVs (like mine) are 120 Hz refresh. So they need algorithms to interpolate/smooth the video inputs that are 24 Hz, 60 Hz interlaced, 60 Hz.
Sounds like a nice feature. But people complained that the new algorithms pushed to the TV without people's knowledge or consent were inferior to the old algorithms. I personally wouldn't know, I kept my TV far away from an antenna input.
Sony can't "spy" on you with this method, but they can "break" your TV while you're asleep.
So I resorted to use it with Apple TV only (its great that Apple TV also has Dolby Vision support, so DV content looks stunning on this display).
I thought I was smart in not connecting the TV to the internets. Once I did connect it for a few days, later at some point Vizio forced me to connect it because, they changed the physical remote, sent it to me for free, and then the UI was blocked until I setup the new remote, which needed internet. For a moment, I thought of returning the TV to Costco saying "it is not working". But I didn't have the patience to do that :-/
So technically, Vizio or any smart TV can prevent you from using the TV after you start using it, if you refuse to update the firmware, remote etc.
I'm willing to pay 2x the price I paid for Vizio, if Apple comes out with a display, because thats the only brand I trust for privacy. But only problem in that case, will be HDMI ports. I doubt an Apple Display would have more than 1 or 2 HDMI ports (looking at how they are port unfriendly on Macbooks :)
I assume Google is reporting on my Chromecast usage, but Vizio doing unaccepted updates to essentially brick my tv unless I agree to be monitored? That’s a step or two too far.
I too would pay a sizable premium for a high quality mid-high tier dumb TV just to never have to worry about the associated privacy implications. I’d guess most folks who have any kind of serious media center setups would also agree. Perhaps it’s time for a few boutique TV companies to enter the scene?
Unfortunately it would be niche indeed, as it’d be a very hard sell to push a “non-smart” TV at a premium, and I can’t see how the economies of scale could ever work. :(
I would assume the biggest cost would be that big display panel, but have no experience with manufacturing/supply chain to back that up. How does one research such a thing I wonder...
Not if you never connect it, right? It seems you were fine until you connected it online "for a few days"...
(I don’t even know why I did that)
https://www.apple.com/privacy/
>Roku Devices regularly upload usage information to Roku as part of their use. The collected information includes the specific identifiers of streams played, duration played, various quality measures, error logs, software version numbers, and other usage statistics. Usage information uploaded from Roku Devices is personally identifiable by product serial number. In some instances, serial numbers are associated with personally identifiable information to aid in customer service and support.
https://soundbridge.roku.com/privacy/
>Lol
https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en
Also he didn't mention the Raspberry Pi by name, but Linux does not collect your information and you have complete control over everything it does.
What does that mean? These models have reviews online just like regular TVs (sure, maybe there are fewer data points), and the tech specs tend to be even more detailed.
That may work with current TVs, but system-on-a-chip vendors have offered devices with LTE/etc baseband processors for several years. The only reason the TVs are still using your internet connection instead of the cellular networks is because nobody has spent the time negotiating for some sort off-peak bulk rate deal with the carriers.
The precedent for that happening is OnStar; if the TV manufactures start to lose too much of their spyware revenue due to being blocked at the home LAN, they will simply bypass the problem.
edit: my point is that the solution to this problem isn't technical. Political fixes (regulation) could solve the problem. Throwing people in jail for trespassing or harassment when they willfully appropriate private spaces without informed consent would also work.
As far as I know, Sony is the only high end mfg that doesn't put ads in their current TV offerings.
My $DEITY, it's gotten that bad? Not that I'd connect a modern TV to a network connection, but yeesh, it's almost like they don't want me to buy another TV when this (thankfully, relatively new) one dies. But I'd guess there are a lot more folks willing to put up with it than there are cranky old farts like me.
That said we're just talking about ads. Both Sony and Vizio have questionable pasts regarding information collection/privacy violation.
I’ll link you to the model when I’m back at my desktop.
https://www.lg.com/ca_en/commercial-tv/lg-55UX340C-public-di...
From lg.com you have to click the sneaky "For Business" button at the top-right. From there, it's under Products > Commercial TV > Commercial Lite. Even then, the dumb-tv options are a subset of what's shown. It's not under "digital signage".
They don't make it easy for us. I was lucky enough that these products are sold to normal people at canadacomputers; I was able to pick one up in my city. YMMV.
I fairly recently ended up with a TV with a large amount of features that are just ignored because I don't ever connect it to the internet, instead relying on an Android device I have more trust in. I'd rather not have things that I don't use. I won't be buying another for quite some time but I'll keep commercial displays in mind next time or when asked for a recommendation.
My MiL doesn't have wifi internet; possibly the TV wastes a lot of time at boot trying to connect as punishment for people who don't allow it to spy, I don't know.
That being said, IIRC my TV was ~$900, and at the time the most equivalent consumer smart TV was ~1050. So I figured that I saved a bit of money. But there wasn't exactly feature parity even at that price point (e.g. the Consumer tv had another HDMI input or two).
Only downside I noticed is the long boot time it seems to show. Combined with the low black level, you need the room somewhat dark to notice if the Backlight turned on. Netflix 4k on it is gorgeous, as long as it's close by.
That said, if you have a good space for one a projector is awesome. I bought an Optoma projector a while back and have worked it to death. TV, movies and games on a gigantic projector screen are just awesome.
But that's still giving money to the dirtbag company...
If you don't need something that big or bigger, there are lots of options in the 40-50 inch range... 3 years ago I got a dumb 42" 4k@60hz Seiki "TV" solely to use as my primary workstation monitor, it works fine for movies too. I did have to get some beta firmware from Seiki's Facebook account though in order to remove the unbearable latency even for programming tasks (gaming was out of the question before the flash).
Neither of those is going to impress someone who really cares about display quality of course. They work for me.
Sites like Google and Facebook provide free services in exchange for ads.
Personally I think it is ludicrous that a company thinks it OK to use my personal information to enrich themselves, via a device that I paid for.
I've started to rely more on my PS4's apps to view TV. While it does have its own ads, none of them seem as intrusive as the one from the native TV interface.
Worse, I couldn’t tell it to stop connecting to my WiFi after all this happened. I had to ban the TV from my LAN and change the WiFi credentials.
I spent a lot of money on that TV, only to have it go rogue on me.
Recall a recent story on HN about Exactis leaking data on 100s of millions of people? That's just one of them, and until the breach almost nobody had ever heard of them.
Ie, I assume most of the sites I visit track me for advertising purposes. This is no different than Google, it's just that with Google I expect the developers of the tracking to be Google directly. With the NewYorkTimes or w/e I don't expect them to be doing it. I expect some random 3rd party to be doing all the real tracking.
Now I know nothing about Exactis, but I'd wager (perhaps incorrectly) that their product is directly related to a product I was consuming, such as written news content or w/e.
- don't login into Google Account
- don't enable GPS, because every time you enable it, you get a popup suggesting you share your location with Google. If you choose "don't ask me again", the button "decline" gets disabled so that you cannot choose a wrong option by mistake [1] (I wonder, why Google wants to know where I am going to so badly? Did NSA made an offer they couldn't refuse?)
- don't have spyware from a manufacturer (noname Chinese phones often have it)
[1] https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/115944/in-lollip...
The idea that this kind of analytics is not opt-in, and that you are essentially forced to provide this on a product that you paid full price for is ridiculous. It may feel like an overreaction to worry about someone knowing what you are cooking, but how do you guarantee that this information will not be combined with other pieces of data by a third party to create a more complete picture of the user?
While the AppleTV 4K costs a lot more. Apple made a simple proposition -- I give them money and they give me stuff. They don't make money by selling user data.
I haven't added a custom block list to my Pi-hole before, this looks more complicated than I would have hoped.
You need to firewall addresses ( tricky ), or connect to a LAN-only Wifi, or don't connect at all.
No dark patterns per se, just straight up lies.
What we need as consumers are laws that would allow the owners of smart televisions, network-connected devices, and any other physical products with included software, to more easily control the behavior of the hardware that they own, without resorting to rooting and jailbreaking to "pwn ur own" property. (Including refusal to honor DRM restrictions.) I don't know why "you can't have your cake, and eat it too" is not an actual legal principle, but you can't sell a hardware device to the consumer and still control what they can or cannot do with it.
[0] - https://thehackernews.com/2017/05/cia-mitm-hacking-tool.html
It might seem silly, but I recently considered upgrading it purely for aesthetic reasons and was ready to spend the money, but the smart TV aspect is a major turnoff so I decided against it for now. Even if I don't use the smart TV features there's still downsides like boot time.
(2) Most all of the "smart" TVs in my area don't use any of their features. They are all used as dumb monitors. They either take signal from a proprietary cable box, a game device, or some other media player.
(3) I have yet to see a TV that requires an internet connection to function. If you have one of these things, blacklist it on your network. At the firewall, or just don't give it your wifi password.
https://infographic.statista.com/normal/chartoftheday_13191_...
The statistic you're citing lumps together people watching directly on a TV vs using it as a display for a device like a Roku or X-Box, so it doesn't actually support the point you're trying to make :)
Admittedly, it's been a while (and a couple of Apple TV 4k software revisions) since I've checked, but as you get into newer display technologies it's harder to find devices that can provide you the same experience you'd get from the built-in app.
If I watch a Blu-ray or Netflix, my smart TV will still send a fingerprint of that content to their servers for analytics.
As far as not connecting your TV you the Internet: (1) The default setup says you need to, so most people will since they want to watch Netflix. (2) There's so much free wifi around these days I wouldn't be surprised if TVs try to connect to any open wifi for "automatic updates".