Smart TV is snooping on you. How to limit the personal data it gathers | Hacker News Reader

Smart TV is snooping on you. How to limit the personal data it gathers

zdnet.com

79 pointsthunderbong35 comments

I am annoyed, having just bought a Samsung Frame. I'm never going to give the TV access to my network, but without network access, many of the TV's settings are disabled.

I only got a frame because I wanted a large >matte< display for a very bright room. And it works for that use case as long as I don't care about customization.

I almost gave the TV temporary access to join the my phones wifi-tether, but, then, the stupid Samsung "SmartThings" app demands to know my precise location otherwise, it won't let me add/manage the TV. Fuck that.

I can not believe how bad of an experience Samsung had.

If it tries to use Bluetooth to connect to your phone, that requires precise location permissions because BT beacons can be exploited to get your precise location.

It's very frustrating.

Do you like the frame? I am thinking about getting one for the piece of art aesthetic. I made a mistake though when I redid the wall and forgot to put in a recessed cabinet for the connect box it comes with..

Besides the things in my first post, yes. It's better than what it replaced. The Tizen OS is a bit clunky, but if you hook it to something else (I'm using a Mac mini), you can avoid Tizen.

The TV helpfully turns on to the last selected input. It starts up fast, and one of my favorite points is that the screen bezel has no branding on it, and the connectbox has discrete branding. The remote is radio not IR, meaning you can hide the connectbox entirely out of sight.

Fair warning: Using Art Mode will require the TV to have internet access and the app to be set up. Out of the box, "Art Mode" works, but only with one stock image.

I precisely wanted a Frame because the TV is placed in a very bright room on a wall directly opposite a huge south-facing window. A screen with any glossiness acts like a mirror in the daytime, making it painful to watch TV when the sun is out. With the Frame's matte screen, it is GREAT for this use case, a major step up from what it replaced.

I mounted it on a VESA arm. One very annoying design decision is that they placed the connector on the back of the TV in the dead center, meaning any VESA mount will block the connector. You can work around this, but it means you have to plug in the TV before mounting. This won't be a problem if you're using the flush mount that comes with the TV.

My (subsidized) FireTVs (as in, built into the TV) require an internet connection for HDMI-CEC to work (I use Apple TV via HDMI.) I do not sign into my Amazon account, and using PiHole, I block almost all traffic originating from the FireTV (one or two domains are needed as to not cause some error dialogs or break features like HDMI-CEC.) The FireTVs are consistently some of the chattiest devices on my network, trying to phone home thousands of times per day, and even more when the HDMI input is active. It’s pretty gross, but I should have known better when purchasing them.

You don't need to connect it to the network for it to spy on you, Amazon Sidewalk provides the network.

Only in the US luckily. It's not around in Europe.

But I've always thought this was not about convenience for the user but for easier access to datamining yes

Has anyone done an audit of sidewalk's capabilities? Both in terms of raw bandwidth and in terms of information/surveillance possibilities at scale?

Like I can't imagine it has a huge bandwidth (outside of bt range) or amazon would monetize it as a actual network, but I would still like to know (order-of-magnitude) how many bits of data per unit time it can handle and how much information can we pack into that bandwidth.

Any spying is terrible, but there is a big difference between "ids of what shows you watched yesterday" and "compressed audio clips from 20 minutes ago".

EDIT some information: 500MB per account per month & 80kbps per bridge device ... https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/devices/everything-you-need...

>but there is a big difference between "ids of what shows you watched yesterday" and "compressed audio clips from 20 minutes ago".

If they do voice recognition first then send the recognized text, that cuts down on the required bandwdith significantly.

Yeah, course of, but you lose contextual/emotional info that way. To be clear I'm definitely never buying a sidwalk enable device.

That said, (puts on black hat) If you are trying to tell when someone is open to impulse buying out sadness or anger or whatever, voice information is probably better than just doing sentiment analysis of the text.

On a low bandwidth network, getting at that same information means you'd have to try to running the analysis locally on the hub device. A device that is, in theory, servicing many clients. Maybe the device can manage TTS, but it seems less likely to be able to run a large ML model. Plus bandwidth limitations means amazon is less likely to get that information until later than they would from an Alexa device connected directly to the internet.

My goal was to gauge how bad of a security nightmare sidewalk is, not be an apologist for it.

My suggestion is that we should all be streaming bogus ad data to wherever the Smart TVs are trying to transmit our personal information. If we can't stop the TV for monitoring us, we can at least make the data less valuable and even nonsensical.

I wonder if there are any projects that facilitate that? Like Pi-Hole but with obfuscation baked in.

Great idea, in the same vein as the "Ad Nauseam" browser extension, which was the result of an art project by https://rednoise.org/~dhowe/.

I buy second hand dumb TVs for this reason. But I don't miss out on any content.

I have an old Linux laptop with Kodi and Stremio/Torrentio installed and a premium real debrid subscription connected to the TV. I can basically watch anything with no tracking.

Kodi handles the free to air stuff, Stremio for everything else.

Never connect a TV to any network. If you need to update it do it by USB stick.

Well, I think it’s ok to connect it to WiFi (with temp password), update it, then disconnect it and change the WiFi password. Yes I know it’ll try to phone out with unprotected WiFi but those are increasingly rare. You won’t be able to update it later without a usb stick though.

It’ll probably be fine. Probably.

Updates are unecessary. The security of my TV is not a concern that I have.

This is the plain answer right here. The article promotes wasting way too much effort clicking around in the manufacturer's dark-patterned paradigm that merely provides some simulation of user empowerment. The simple answer is that no network backhaul means no surveillance. And if you want bonus points, open it up and pull the wifi card.

I'd caveat by not completely ruling out updating over the network though. Because you should only really be doing updates as part of your initial purchase/setup while it's still in the product return period, otherwise you can fall victim to post-sale revocation of functionality regardless of how an update is delivered.

Also perhaps not as applicable to TVs, but the initial purchase/return period is when you should be doing any advanced setup like pulling the wifi card or installing libre software distribution on a device. Otherwise you'll likely never actually get around to it later on once the device is "working". Ideally, think about how you're going to set up any given device/model in a freedom-preserving manner before you even buy it.

A long time ago I read on Reddit that Samsung TVs would be able to use any Samsung phone to get a wifi password and connect home. Even if no access was allowed. I don’t know if it’s true but it wouldn’t surprise me.

I tried searching for a link but couldn’t immediately find any to back up the claim.

Possibly via the Samsung account which can be logged in to on both phones and TVs.

It is only a matter of time until the manufacturers include a GSM modem (under their control), and exfiltrate the info they want without using your network at all.

When soldering irons are outlawed, only outlaws will have soldering irons.

Thats what 5g is all about, so your TV can fingerprint what you are watching and send it home without ask for your wifi password.

or make some backroom deal with concast to talk to xfinitywifi directly

How is this legal?

Unregulated data collection = $, use some of that $ for lobbying and campaign contributions to hold off regulation as long as possible. Politicians can hold a couple hearings then throw up their hands and feign confusion so nothing gets changed.

Eventually, the public won’t stand for it, but you can keep the music going for a pretty long time by just greasing the palms of politicians.

Let me restate this for parent (or try to): this shouldn't be legal. At all.

Question to Eu smart Tv user: Is it a problem here? Or should I seek explicitly for stupid tvs?

Totally a problem. My Hisense TV won't stop phoning home even when using it as a dumb screen via HDMI cables. I had to create a wifi hotspot with a raspberry and black hole all internet traffic to stop it

Why not just have zero wifi credentials?

Many Smart TVs either don't work or perpetually nag you until connected to a network. I know one family member that had a "smart" sound bar that just shutoff every 6 hours until they connected it to the WiFi.

Hm I’d been thinking of buying a TV after not owning one for many years.

Guess I won’t.

I haven't purchased a TV in 8 years but it was a Sony. Never had an issue with it asking for Wifi and I've never connected it during all that time.

My guess is if you go really low end, low price like Vizio it could be an issue.

My FireTV nags both about no network and then again about not detecting a controller button press quick enough. I use it as a dumb display device and if I don't switch to HDMI quick enough using the (single!) button you can't dismiss them at all.

I can visually distinguish the times my Samsung TV is powered on on my Pi-hole dashboard just from the graphs. It's insane

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