181–190 of 524 posts
I guess it's time to fire up Wireshark. I love these TV's because they can be integrated with home automation like Home Assistant. But maybe it's time to put it on a VLAN with no access to the WAN.
I disabled WiFi on my Samsung TV after they were injecting ads into the home screen. Spend $800 to get ads served in their shitty/slow UI.
My Samsung SmartTV randomly turns on itself. Sometimes, we can't turn it on and I have to remove the batteris from the remote, plug them back then it works. The UI is sooo sluggish. I just wish they make a dump TV with superior image quality and let the other streaming devices handling the "smart" features. I will not buy another Samsung electronic product.
The UI seems to gotten much more sluggish over the last year or two. I have a 500 Mbps internet connection, but speed tests in the TV's browser measure only 40 Mbps (on Wi-Fi or Ethernet). The TV's apps load images and data as if I'm on a 2G connection.
The Amazon and YouTube apps hang if I turn the TV off and try to resume playback later. I have to switch to two other apps and then back to Amazon to force the app to crash. Then I can launch it again. And sometimes the only way to exit the Netflix app is to power cycle the TV.
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How do Doctor's that use TVs like this in meeting rooms get around HIPAA? or other places with PII, etc? With so much stuff being thrown to TVs now, a lot of times they are inheriently monitors, and there are very few people who think taking a screenshot of a monitor is not invasive.
The article cites things like location, IP addresses, and the content being watched. That's a far cry from relaying an audio recording of a surgical conference containing HIPAA-sensitive data.
> The researchers also found that other smart devices including speakers and cameras were sending user data to dozens of third parties including Spotify and Microsoft.
Maybe someone can find the referenced studies to see what data is actually sent...
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The article cites things like location, IP addresses, and the content being watched. That's a far cry from relaying an audio recording of a surgical conference containing HIPAA-sensitive data.
The article mentions this bit: > The researchers also found that other smart devices including speakers and cameras were sending user data to dozens of third parties including Spotify and Microsoft. Maybe someone can find the referenced studies to see what data is actually sent...
Just wait for TVs and other gadgets with built in 5g and iot sim cards that you can’t simply “skip network” on.
I was shocked when a medical device I got had a built-in CDMA modem to send telemetry to my insurance company. Thankfully there's an airplane mode.
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An acquaintance attempted that with Kindle, by keeping it in flight mode. After some days it popped up a message kindly asking to give it some network access. After a few more days it simply ignored the flight mode and connected to get fresh ads. Edit: I've checked with my wife who has an ad supported Kindle for over a year and keeps it in flight mode for months at a time. It never did that to her. So either Amazon c…
My Kindle's never been connected to the network (always in flight mode) since I got it and I haven't had issues. I use Calibri and a USB cable to load ebooks. Not sure, would it be possible for it to call home through the USB cable?
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Roku enabled TVs very clearly send back frames of what you are watching. I've been watching YouTube casted via chromecast plugged into HDMI (NOT the built in chromecast, I have verified multiple times) and the Roku will give me a full width toast saying to press `*` to watch the full movie or some similar contextual option I was pretty put off the first time this happened. That said, I don't even know if I looked thr…
Are you sure about this? If the TV really is phoning home with whatever is on the screen, including anything personal the owner might happen to be displaying, that's a vast set of lawsuits waiting to happen. The GDPR fines alone could be staggering. I could easily imagine spyware logging whatever TV shows you're streaming and the like, but it's hard to imagine any business in this industry having lawyers dumb enough…
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Roku enabled TVs very clearly send back frames of what you are watching. I've been watching YouTube casted via chromecast plugged into HDMI (NOT the built in chromecast, I have verified multiple times) and the Roku will give me a full width toast saying to press `*` to watch the full movie or some similar contextual option I was pretty put off the first time this happened. That said, I don't even know if I looked thr…
It may be sending video or audio frames but it’s also possible without it. The Chromecast can send side channel data to the TV.
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Things like this are why I never will buy a so-called smart tv, the only exception being is that it is better/cheaper than alternative and in that case will keep connectivity disabled like you did.
Good luck in 5 years, there will likely only be an option or two left and they will be as shitty as today's flip-phones. A few years ago I was in the market for a TV and was flabbergasted as to why I couldn't get a nice, big, 'dumb' TV.
I’ve had great luck blocking SmartTVs with a PiHole and a custom list. Also adding regex blacklists like “samsungtv” and “roku” seems to help. Granted, I sometimes disable to block to install updates and apps - but it seems to work. My next move is to start whitelisting destination IPs for smart devices and putting them on their own SSID/VLAN.