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What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

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Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#181

Post by PacketPaul »

foxylad wrote: post #128
jasonwilk wrote: post #21

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.

Agreed. We have a dumb Sony 40" LCD that is over ten years old. It's not 4K but our eyes aren't good enough to see the difference, and over the years we've used a range of front ends - currently a Raspberry Pi running Kodi (with the HiFiberry sound card - awesome!). This has been very economic, and environmentally friendly, and I can't see why we can't continue for several more years with the same screen.

If you were using the Exodus plugin for Kodi, you were a part of a botnet. Make sure you upgrade to 3.0.5. Who knows what the other apps are doing?

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#183

Post by sitkack »

Narkov wrote: post #26
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.

No way. They absolutely made more than 2.2M. The content detection system, recv servers, writing the firmware, all cost more than 2.2M.

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#185

Post by TwoBit »

bduerst wrote: post #46
wrsh07 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want a high end tv you don't have much choice. But also, why do you not expect your Roku / apple tv / etc to be watching you?

You can still find OLED or 4K off-brand "dumb" TVs, like from Hisense and Selki, but you run the risk of terrible support.

Somebody other than LG sells an OLED TV? Where?

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#186

Post by digikata »

pdimitar wrote: post #94
digikata wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, one could monitor all outgoing packets from your smart TV, but you would also need to know exactly how to decode what was contained those packets... unless of course they conveniently set the evil bit for you. With the poor level of development associated with this type of work, it would probably be enough to identify a different set servers for receiving the data. With more sophisticated coding, you really do…

I realize that a good router configuration (and a trusted router no less) might entirely eliminate the problem, but the thing is, there might be some other agreements between vendors we don't know about. For example, I have an ASUS router. I don't know if a Vizio TV can't send a packet to my router with which it gains unlimited and unfiltered net access. We simply don't know. Anyway, probably my paranoia, but once yo…

Replace your default router software with open source.

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#187

Post by TwoBit »

jaimex2 wrote: post #123

I caught my TV doing this and went to war. For the last two years I have had a service running that floods garbage data back to the collection point from several addresses throughout the Internet. You're welcome.

Good luck defending those cyber hacking charges that are going to be brought against you.

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#188

Post by Buge »

OkGoDoIt wrote: post #179
FullMtlAlcoholc wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why i torrent behind a VPN despite being subscribed to HBO now, Netflix, and Amazon Video. My guilt is ameliorated and at least a sliver of ny privacy is maintained.

I thought Netflix and related services work the same way Spotify does: they pay content providers a small fee based on actual content viewing. If you pay Netflix a monthly subscription but never view any content on your account, I would assume Netflix keeps all of the revenue and doesn't pay out anything to the actual content providers. Just a guess, but it's possible your plan is backfiring by paying the company you…

Netflix also makes a lot of their own content. If he is pirating that content, then it's fair.

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#189

Post by nojvek »

Consumers want the best service at the cheapest price. Producers want to maximize the profit on products and services. Advertisers want the best return on investment for their ad dollars so they also maximise profit.

This are fundamental thruths of the market. It's why Google and Facebook are behemoths.

The only way to win the game is precision tracking, addictive services and building good models of customer behavior for advertising.

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#190

Post by rasz_pl »

jasonwilk wrote: post #21

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.

The difference between smart 1080p tv and dumb one is $15 LCD controller from ebay.
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