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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

#231

Post by deadbunny »

alkonaut wrote: post #207
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 smart features mostly suck, but the idea of using two remotes (or a nonstandard programmable remote) is pretty unattractive. I jump through a lot of hoops to be able to plug my tv antenna cable into my tv rather than a set top box of some kind, so it would defeat the point to have a set top box for the smart features. I suppose if the streaming services I use were all compatible with e.g. ChromeCast I could use t…

On the remote issue, HDMI CRC is fairly well supported these days.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Electronics_Control

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#232

Post by deadbunny »

PacketPaul wrote: post #181
foxylad wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Don't run sketchy plugins then?

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#233

Post by deadbunny »

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.

And it will have taken them no effort to blacklist your IP for sending junk data.

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#234

Post by splike »

010a wrote: post #177
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?

Honestly, I'm 100% more fine with Apple spying on me than pretty much anyone else. I'm less perturbed with the entire concept of spying than I am with who is doing it.

I don't agree with this. Why do you feel that way?

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#236

Post by falcor84 »

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.

Couldn't you equivalently just not connect the smart tv to the internet?

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#238

Post by falcor84 »

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.

An order of magnitude would be ~$20m (actually ~$50m, together with the other fine). And I too believe that the fines were too small

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#239

Post by codedokode »

chinathrow wrote: post #201
moonfern wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Avast, source https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13079569 AJ007 Here are the terms, it's in section 8.Privacy, processing of personal information. https://www.avast.com/eula-avast-free-products However "AVAST may publish or share such information with third parties that are not part of the AVAST Group but will only ever do so after removing personally identifiable information."

Also: https://www.pehub.com/2015/05/avast-leads-22-mln-round-for-j... "Jumpshot also captures https clickstream data to reveal in-depth buying and social behavior above and beyond simple browsing." Capturing https clickstream data is only possible when you MITM the user - see Avast.

They could make a deal with browser extension developers to bundle a surveillance module. That is why I never install any browser extensions.

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#240

Post by codedokode »

deadbunny wrote: post #229
z3t4 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It needs to be physically disconnected or on a network without Internet connection. The Mac address is the easiest to spoof. If it has any kind of radio like WiFi you need to de-solder it, as the data could be collected by a car driving by, or via your neighborers Wifi.

> as the data could be collected by a car driving by, or via your neighborers Wifi. What? How is it going to connect to your neighbours wifi? How is someone driving past going to connect to your TV? Is the TV going to set itself up as an access point? I'm completely behind not connecting random devices in my house to the internet but suggesting they are somehow trying to get data out by connecting to random networks…

The neighbours might have an access point without a password. But I think if the vendor is really interested in collecting personal data he could just install a GSM modem with a prepaid SIM card inside so that the device doesn't depend on Internet connection.
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