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What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

ftc.gov

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Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#291

Post by criley2 »

Just further confirms that "Smart" TV's are a ripoff at best and a scam at worst.

Never, ever, ever buy a television described as smart. For any reason at all. All of the solutions are miserably pathetic. All of the solutions are riddled with bugs, design omissions and potentially nasty security zero days. All implementations have little to no update support from major third parties.

And, in many cases from many companies, the units spy on you as aggressively as could be to sell data for marketing purposes.

"Smart" tv's are lose lose lose lose. You pay more, you get inferior software, inferior hardware and ultimately have your privacy abused.

EDIT: To be fair, I love my Vizio dumb TV I just got. 40" 1080p dumb TV for $167 inc. taxes this past black friday. Got a HDR/4K Roku for an additional $70 and this TV is beautiful and the Roku is so much impossibly better in both hardware, software and third party support than any "smart" solution ever could be, and costs far less than the "smart" upgrade!

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#292

Post by pdimitar »

voltagex_ wrote: post #149
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…

Easier - when I upgrade from my 6+ year old Sony, my TV will either be disconnected (ironically I trust the Xiaomi Mi Box more) or only allowed to access *.youtube.com. I realise this isn't tenable for most consumers.

This is probably gonna be the "temporary solution" which is gonna solidify as the permanent solution unless I really find some extra energy and motivation, yep.

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#293

Post by antisthenes »

criley2 wrote: post #291

Just further confirms that "Smart" TV's are a ripoff at best and a scam at worst. Never, ever, ever buy a television described as smart. For any reason at all. All of the solutions are miserably pathetic. All of the solutions are riddled with bugs, design omissions and potentially nasty security zero days. All implementations have little to no update support from major third parties. And, in many cases from many comp…

I don't understand why someone just doesn't hook up their TV with their computer via HDMI or DP. Is switching sources too complicated for people?

Even the shittiest Dell boxes these days have 2 video outputs, I believe, so you can run 1 monitor + TV. Most laptops have an extra video out port too.

That way you can actually type on your keyboard when you search youtube, unlike typing with god forbid, a remote or an xbone controller (like a console peasant)

By using a $5 cable, pretty much anyone can make a TV 'Smart', and not just smart, but smarter than the ones that are marketed as such.

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#294

Post by mirkules »

scient wrote: post #263
mirkules wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible to bring about a similar complaint against Facebook with the FTC? Or, if the FTC is the wrong agency, what would be the right one? Of particular concern are "shadow profiles" - dossiers on people who have never even used or consented to using Facebook[1]. I'm no lawyer, but there could be precedent per this Vizio case. In my opinion Facebook is hugely overstepping people's privacy bounds, even if they…

By using FB, you consent to them using the information about you that others and you yourself provide. Dont like it? Dont use FB.

By that logic, we shouldn't buy or use Vizio TVs either. But the issue here with the FTC complaint is that there was not a prominent warning that the data was being collected or used in such a way.

I certainly never read or even saw any warning about facial matching in all my photos or my children's photos.

Besides all that, people with shadow profiles who never even used Facebook or agreed to their TOS are being tracked. This is not ok.

I feel like there is a double standard here: we are vilifying Vizio - a company that has mutliple competitors - for much less wrongdoing than what Facebook is guilty of, even though FB has a de facto monopoly on social networking.

Edit: there is a link on the ftc.gov website where you can file a complaint against a company with concerns how it handles your privacy: https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/Company#crnt

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#295

Post by tripzilch »

moonfern wrote: post #174
hueving wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>here is a particular major AV vendor who is selling raw clickstream data of millions of their user's internet usage directly to marketers and other parties right now. As far as I can tell, as long as it is buried somewhere in the terms and conditions no one cares. ugh. Name them please! If it's in the ToS they shouldn't mind being called out.

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."

> removing personally identifiable information

no such thing.

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#296

Post by yaur »

xtracto wrote: post #265
AJ007 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for posting this. When I saw the original FTC story I recalled reading about this once or twice in the past but couldn't think of any key phrases or sources. In response to some of the other comments here, basically what they are guilty of isn't spying but failing to properly disclose and opt-in users. There is a particular major AV vendor who is selling raw clickstream data of millions of their user's interne…

What Facebook is doing is quite frankly scary. This Sunday over a birthday meeting with some friends, one of them was telling us about a restaurant called "Lucuma" (this is in Guadalajara, Mexico). My wife did nothing with her cell-phone, except having it with her during the conversation. Later that day when we are back at home, she showed me an ad about that same restaurant. We never searched for something similar (…

Here in NY recording people without their consent is definitely against the law and is likely to piss off important people. As fun as this CT is it seems extraordinarily unlikely that FB employees would risk going to jail for this feature.

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#297

Post by [deleted] »

xtracto wrote: post #265
AJ007 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for posting this. When I saw the original FTC story I recalled reading about this once or twice in the past but couldn't think of any key phrases or sources. In response to some of the other comments here, basically what they are guilty of isn't spying but failing to properly disclose and opt-in users. There is a particular major AV vendor who is selling raw clickstream data of millions of their user's interne…

What Facebook is doing is quite frankly scary. This Sunday over a birthday meeting with some friends, one of them was telling us about a restaurant called "Lucuma" (this is in Guadalajara, Mexico). My wife did nothing with her cell-phone, except having it with her during the conversation. Later that day when we are back at home, she showed me an ad about that same restaurant. We never searched for something similar (…

[deleted]

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#298

Post by antisthenes »

scient wrote: post #264
spangry wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt it would cost nearly that much. I could build something similar in a couple of days, and I'm not even a developer by trade. Just use something like pHash (e.g. https://github.com/JohannesBuchner/imagehash ), screen cap the centre of the screen (say, a quarter of the screen in total) every minute, hash and then send the 8 byte hex string back to home base.

Ah, the "I'm no developer, but this is easy" person. Glad to have your valuable input here :)

"I could build a twitter clone over the weekend!"

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#300

Post by Arizhel »

remir wrote: post #157
richardwhiuk wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an absurd amount of technical knowledge that you are suggesting that every household in America should subscriber to. Also, if you have a SmartTV, you probably need to allow it contact the internet, otherwise playing internet TV (Netflix, iPlayer, Hulu, etc) is not going to work. If it can access Netflix, it can probably phone home with your data.

Don't connect your TV to the internet and use something like a Chromecast, Roku, Apple TV, instead.

Yeah, but those spy on you too, so I don't see how they're any better. The main advantage with things like those is that you can more easily upgrade them later as technology changes.
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