How did Vizio get caught? Was it a whistle blower? https://www.propublica.org/article/own-a-vizio-smart-tv-its-...
What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen
61–70 of 340 posts
Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
This happened a while ago: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/19/samsung-s...
However, as far as anyone has shown, that audio data is only when the user uses the voice functionality on the TV. They just were bad about encryption, but to use voice search, it made sense that they were sent data. That is remarkably different than recording image data every second from every television and sending that back.
Not saying it's the same, just saying it's a potentially questionable (re privacy) thing Samsung has already been caught doing.
Not sure if they were selling any of those data, anonymized or not, either.
edit: It's also worth pointing out that while technical people (e.g. us) may see voice recognition tech and immediately suspect that it involves phoning home, most people probably have no idea that anything of what they say is leaving their living room.
Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen
#63"Vizio has agreed to stop unauthorized tracking".
As if there's any human-measurable way of confirming this. Yes they can be forced by a court. And no, the court can't know if they stopped all of the software copies on all TVs and no, the court can't know if they didn't re-activate them in the future back again.
What actual proof do we have that LG actually stopped? What actual proof can we have that Vizio will stop doing this?
Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen
#64So I have a bit of intimate knowledge of this. Not sure what I can answer but for years my company worked on an Automatic Content Recognition project using tools from a team called Cognitive Networks who were bought by Vizio and makes up the tech that did this. If I understand correctly the founder of Vizio kept this tech for himself in the sale of Vizio. When developing this we would work directly with Cognitive che…
I'm curious, did anyone on your team raise any ethical concerns in regards to the potential privacy violation? If not, how was the topic handled by employees/management?
Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen
#65So I have a bit of intimate knowledge of this. Not sure what I can answer but for years my company worked on an Automatic Content Recognition project using tools from a team called Cognitive Networks who were bought by Vizio and makes up the tech that did this. If I understand correctly the founder of Vizio kept this tech for himself in the sale of Vizio. When developing this we would work directly with Cognitive che…
Guess this is what spurred the investigation:
https://www.propublica.org/article/own-a-vizio-smart-tv-its-...
Still, how did this article come about? What is a whistle blower?
Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen
#66This 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.
Can you recommend a 50" 1080p tv that isn't "smart"? I've been shopping for a new one and I strongly suspect they don't exist.
Search for Commercial TVs. I saw someone mention this in another thread on here.
Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen
#67So I have a bit of intimate knowledge of this. Not sure what I can answer but for years my company worked on an Automatic Content Recognition project using tools from a team called Cognitive Networks who were bought by Vizio and makes up the tech that did this. If I understand correctly the founder of Vizio kept this tech for himself in the sale of Vizio. When developing this we would work directly with Cognitive che…
What proof do you have for what you're claiming, please? If you have intimate knowledge then you should know that many (me included) could accuse you of trying to push an agenda or divert the attention by posting what you did.
How do you really know LG stopped their data collection? Sure they might have made a checkbox be switched off by default, but what does that say about the underlying software? IMO, nothing. It might have been a PR damage control campaign without an actual change.
Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen
#68A 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)
There probably will be a class action lawsuit.
Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen
#69With Vizio and other Dolby HDR compatible TVs you'll have to keep it connected if they intend to get firmware updates. I wonder which TV will be ideal for purchase, now that Samsung and Vizio have been caught hoodwinking their customers.
Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen
#70"Vizio has agreed to stop unauthorized tracking". As if there's any human-measurable way of confirming this. Yes they can be forced by a court. And no, the court can't know if they stopped all of the software copies on all TVs and no, the court can't know if they didn't re-activate them in the future back again. What actual proof do we have that LG actually stopped? What actual proof can we have that Vizio will stop…
Vizio is not an individual, it's a collection of employees and contractors, some loyal, and others who hate their corporate overlord and would love nothing better that to dob them in if they ever sneakily resumed the spying.