What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen • Hacker News Board

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#21

Post by jasonwilk » Mon, Feb 06, 2017, 11:46 PM UTC

It's not worth buying any of these 'Smart' TVs. I don't know whether it is a shoddy developer experience provided by the likes of Samsung / Vizeo etc or if it's the developers themselves (Hulu I'm looking at you) who do not maintain their apps which are constantly bug filled.

I much prefer my old dumb TV that has a Roku plugged into it. Oh yeah, and I know it's not WATCHING ME.

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#22

Post by bitmapbrother » Mon, Feb 06, 2017, 11:46 PM UTC

Now that we know what they did the class action lawsuits should follow. If your concerned about privacy don't connect your TV to the Internet. Treat it like the dumb screen it's supposed to be and just cast or route content to it.

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#23

Post by modoc » Mon, Feb 06, 2017, 11:46 PM UTC

jeanvaljean2463 wrote: post #18

modoc wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think Samsung is doing this as well?

http://www.myce.com/news/users-fix-samsung-smart-tv-time-two... ( See comments about said Samsung TVs ) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13581771

I see DNS issues with SmartHub, etc.. but I don't see anyone suggesting that Samsung is capturing image data and sending it back? Not saying they aren't, but as an owner of two Samsung TVs, I'd be interested in any real evidence of them doing this type of thing..

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#24

Post by manarth » Mon, Feb 06, 2017, 11:46 PM UTC

PhantomGremlin wrote: post #13

jeanvaljean2463 wrote: post #2

Huge schocker /s Pretty sure that Samsung does very similar things. I've been interested in actually capturing outgoing pcap data for this purpose. Looks like I have a new project to add the pile.

capturing outgoing pcap data Why wouldn't that data be encrypted? All you would see is packets going to specific IP addresses. No way to analyze the contents. Of course, the data might not be encrypted. Why go thru the effort? Because of the large quantity of data being passed back and forth by almost all Internet connected devices, it's tedious to interpret what's happening even if the flows are completely open.

  Why wouldn't that data be encrypted?

Because manufacturers are rubbish?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/02/17/samsung_smart_tv_pri...

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#25

Post by kevin_b_er » Mon, Feb 06, 2017, 11:47 PM UTC

This is why you do not use a smart TV: Nefarious data collection on what you watch and Samsungs are known to demand to show ads or else. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13585132 https://www.extremetech.com/electronics/241500-samsung-smart... http://www.techtimes.com/articles/190222/20161227/samsung-sm...

I'm also, for political reasons, suspicious of the FTC's willingness to pursue such cases in the future.

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#26

Post by Narkov » Mon, Feb 06, 2017, 11:48 PM UTC

passivepinetree wrote: post #15

The amount of money they made from that data is probably orders of magnitude more than the paltry $2.2 million penalty. I hate to get all paranoid, but it seems like every day there's news of a company's data being hacked, and what information isn't being hacked is being actively sold. What can an average citizen do (short of living Ron Swanson-style in a cabin in the woods) to protect their privacy?

"orders of magnitude more" ? As in, ~$200m? No chance.

With a little bit of industry knowledge, I would posit that they made roughly the same quantum as the fine.

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#27

Post by tps5 » Mon, Feb 06, 2017, 11:49 PM UTC

> Consumers have bought more than 11 million internet-connected Vizio televisions since 2010

11 million televisions. 2.2 million penalty. 20 cents per television.

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#28

Post by mathgeek » Mon, Feb 06, 2017, 11:49 PM UTC

I wonder how many meetings were called at other manufacturers when this went public, both to check on what they themselves were doing, and to make plans to stop doing it where relevant.

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#29

Post by elorant » Mon, Feb 06, 2017, 11:51 PM UTC

passivepinetree wrote: post #15

The amount of money they made from that data is probably orders of magnitude more than the paltry $2.2 million penalty. I hate to get all paranoid, but it seems like every day there's news of a company's data being hacked, and what information isn't being hacked is being actively sold. What can an average citizen do (short of living Ron Swanson-style in a cabin in the woods) to protect their privacy?

Build a blacklist of companies that adopt such policies and boycott the shit out of them.

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#30

Post by thenayr » Mon, Feb 06, 2017, 11:52 PM UTC

ComputerGuru wrote: post #6

A 2.2M settlement is absolute peanuts compared to the mountains of cash they likely made.

Yeah not much of a punishment to discourage further abuse. Should have fined them on a ratio of the number of data points they collected (100 billion). Even a 100:1 seems like a reasonable punishment for this scale of abuse ($1 billion)