Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

ftc.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 340 posts

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#331

Post by kakarot »

FullMtlAlcoholc wrote: post #327
kakarot wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multiple compromised nodes working together to identify you. We already see this with things like ultrasonic communication. A compromised (has sketchy app installed) phone could, for example, communicate with your television or computer speakers and mic via ultrasonic frequencies to determine what ads you have seen, or what digital streaming content you are consuming. An app could take it even a step further and use…

It doesn't even require anything that complex. If I remember correctly, even if your smartphone never connects to wifi AP's, while thhe WiFi radio is on, it does periodically scan for AP's in the area while either surrendering some identifiable information or establishing a pattern that can be used to identify you. Frak it, TV is going in a Faraday cage

Get a projector a and a dozen or two bulbs and prepare for the technological winter.

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#332

Post by jaclaz »

silveira wrote: post #130

> Consumers have bought more than 11 million internet-connected Vizio televisions since 2010. > The order also includes a $1.5 million payment to the FTC and an additional civil penalty to New Jersey for a total of $2.2 million. > Vizio then turned that mountain of data into cash by selling consumers’ viewing histories to advertisers and others. $2.2 million / 11 million tvs = $0.20 per tv

To be picky, the thingy was introduced "only" in 2014, so maybe "only" 4.5 million tv affected, that would raise the cost for the company to a whopping $0.50/each, more than double what you calculated but still peanuts ...

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#333

Post by jaclaz »

knodi wrote: post #176

3.7mill is not enough of a fine. The fine should have been 50mill plus.

... and it's not even 3.7 millon, the total is seemingly 2.2 million including the 1.5 million FTC:

>The order also includes a $1.5 million payment to the FTC and an additional civil penalty to New Jersey for a total of $2.2 million.

Or am I reading it wrongly?

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#334

Post by compuguy »

chris_wot wrote: post #322
compuguy wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heck if your using a tunnel broker for ipv6, it thinks your using a vpn, sigh .

That sort of makes sense, given that is also punching through the geoblock.

I understand that, but I'm using an endpoint in the same physical area my actual internet connection is (NoVA).

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#335

Post by ebtalley »

jjawssd wrote: post #313
mirkules wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tra…

> By that logic, we shouldn't buy or use Vizio TVs either. Burn it all. Facebook and Vizio.

And every other company. Go live in a cave because thats where all companies are going and no one is slowing the process down. This consumer choice gambit very well be a false statement in the future.

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#336

Post by Narkov »

falcor84 wrote: post #238
Narkov wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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

Correct, and "orders" (plural) of magnitude would be ~$200m

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#337

Post by criley2 »

Shorel wrote: post #321
criley2 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because a full desktop UI is vastly inferior to a simple remote interface if you don't have a full mouse/kbb available, and having to have a mouse/kbb to, I don't know, pick a movie is very lame from a couch user perspective. Because you can get 4K/HDR with regularly updated high quality third party apps like Netflix from Roku for $80 with hardware that can handle it/ But a Media PC running Windows would require you…

Install Kodi, use the wireless gamepad as the remote control. Problem solved, no money spent, best of both worlds.

>Problem solved, no money spent, best of both worlds.

Many new problems:

* Gamepad costs roughly 70% the cost of any entire 4k/HDR Roku setup. A first party game pad costs $50-65 dollars, while a HD Roku costs $80.

* A gamepad is VASTLY INFERIOR to a remote. This one is very easy. Gamepads are crappy, crappy remotes. The back triggers (L2 R2) are stupidly mapped to seeking causing endless fastfoward/rewind triggering by mistake. The buttons are unintelligble (what does a Square do to my movie? What does Y do to my TV show?) and are only usable by basically the 1 geek who set it up and is unusable by all other users who have to learn custom button mappings per application

* Kodi is vastly inferior to Roku for average use, like Netflix. Users must use unsupported, buggy third party non-Netflix based Netflix add-ons which are inferior in every way to an officially distributed Netflix app. At this point, the best solution is the PAID "PlayOn" subscription service, meaning the user must pay monthly just to access basic apps like Netflix which are free monthly on Roku (outside of the actual subscription, which both methods require)

I'm sorry but Kodi is pretty crap as a home media solution, have you ever relied on it for your full library and media consumption and watched it be used by the less tech-focused people in your home? Regular users, children, elderly people?

Roku is easy for my grandfather to use. Kodi + a Xbox1 controller? Not so much

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#338

Post by GabrielSpenser »

i am very suspicious of my fiance of two years now that she's cheating on me, she has changed passwords to every account that she has, plus put a pin lock on her phone, i have been searching for ways to retrieve her text messages without installing any software on her phone or having access to it, so far i am not having any luck. we have a 19 year history together, plus a beautiful 18 year old daughter & this is eating me up inside. But i finally burst on this page from Google and found the God eye who changed my whole story for good! He help me hack her FB, her emails and her phone number and i got to see all his messages and apps from her phone. only for me to found out she's cheating and have a son out there without my consent but i thank the God eye for letting me know all this and am moving on fine with my life and my daughter. He's also involved in any sort of hacking issues. Hurray!! Get to him on (Godeyeviewhacker AT hotmail DOT com)

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#339

Post by calvinbhai »

kofejnik wrote: post #74
calvinbhai wrote: post #69

With 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.

why do you want firmware updates? they will only bring more tracking

only reason, with Vizio, is if you buy a 4k HDR TV thats Dolby HDR compatible and a year or two later HDR 10 becomes the standard and Dolby HDR dies, then Vizio 'can' update the TV to be compatible with HDR 10.

Otherwise, its safe I guess to keep it disconnected.

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#340

Post by Shorel »

criley2 wrote: post #337
Shorel wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Install Kodi, use the wireless gamepad as the remote control. Problem solved, no money spent, best of both worlds.

>Problem solved, no money spent, best of both worlds. Many new problems: * Gamepad costs roughly 70% the cost of any entire 4k/HDR Roku setup. A first party game pad costs $50-65 dollars, while a HD Roku costs $80. * A gamepad is VASTLY INFERIOR to a remote. This one is very easy. Gamepads are crappy, crappy remotes. The back triggers (L2 R2) are stupidly mapped to seeking causing endless fastfoward/rewind triggering…

Well, I already had all the hardware, and the hard disks already have most of the content.

I kind of disagree about gamepads being bad remotes. The default mappings are bad and I do agree about the triggers. We don't need more than half the control to do forward and rewind. I had remapped mine, particularly to add changing subtitles and audio streams.

But: the gamepad is the control I can use without having to look at it, because it is not a matrix of similar rectangular buttons, and after a while everything is just second nature. For me, nothing is faster or more intuitive now. And the buttons are REAL solid buttons, not crappy pieces of rubber. I get frustrated when I have to use a regular remote control now.

I don't use Netflix because I'm not in the USA and in South America it honestly sucks. And they hunt and shutdown VPNs now.

However, nothing beats the price of your Roku for a new setup. That one I concede. Your setup is much cheaper. But you can't play Batman Arkham games on it :D

Post reply on HN