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Smart TVs sending sensitive user data to Netflix and Facebook

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Re: Smart TVs sending sensitive user data to Netflix and Facebook

#291

Post by partialrecall »

jeffk_teh_haxor wrote: post #278

What if the communication is benign? What if the TV is simply refreshing a list of recommendations? Everybody - including this forum - is so primed to read nefarious motives into basically anything a computer can do now. Soon we're not going to be able to write a single "hello world" app w/o having to fill out a ream of EU paperwork and get licensed and bonded in advance.

"Recommendations" is just newspeak for advertising. I don't want my TV doing that.

Here is a novel idea: if your shit is so great for users, not contrary to their interests, why don't you ask them to opt-in?

Re: Smart TVs sending sensitive user data to Netflix and Facebook

#292

Post by zbrozek »

PenguinCoder wrote: post #99
blackflame7000 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would skip the VLAN step and just block communication from the TV to the internet. That way you could still access media on other devices on your lan via DLNA or something

What happens when you want to use Netflix, Amazon prime, or an external Plex server with the smart TV? You NEED internet access for those

FYI you can't use an internal Plex server either. The Plex client is unable to operate without an Internet connection.

Re: Smart TVs sending sensitive user data to Netflix and Facebook

#293

Post by somehnguy »

sjwright wrote: post #220
move-on-by wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any way to turn it off? Or perhaps block a specific domain via pihole?

Don’t let your TV access the internet at all. Smart TV interfaces are almost uniformly worse than set top boxes (one or more of: bad UI, slow CPU, weird quirks, few updates) so you should avoid it anyway. The current Apple TV (which I cite only because of familiarity) has a great UI, every major app, and robust HDMI-CEC support so you might never have to touch your TV’s remote again. And Apple respects your privacy.

In the past I would have agreed with you on the poor quality of smart TVs. My Roku TV shatters all those expectations however, its fantastic. Great UI, plenty fast, no quirks I have found, and updates regularly.

I specifically bought a smart TV with Roku instead of whatever software Samsung/Sony is doing for these reasons.

Re: Smart TVs sending sensitive user data to Netflix and Facebook

#294

Post by askafriend »

bryan_w wrote: post #191
throwaway122378 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can make DuckDuckGo your default search engine on all Apple devices. Apple is definitely a for profit business and they charge for their products instead of subsidizing with data aggregation or theft.

Still doesn't change the fact that if Apple was principled on privacy, they would refuse google's billions in spy money and wouldn't, by default, send their customers to Google search engine to be harvested

Apple takes more proactive steps to ensuring user privacy than anyone else in the industry at their scale. They put out products that are by far the privacy conscious of the bunch.

Statements like yours seem to exist in some weird ideological vacuum. Reality is far messier and much more nuanced.

So unless you're willing to let your ideology clash with reality to produce something of value in the real world, it's essentially grandstanding.

Re: Smart TVs sending sensitive user data to Netflix and Facebook

#295

Post by ignoramous »

Johnny555 wrote: post #289

Does anyone publish a set of firewall rules (pfSense would be ideal) that allows Netflix, Hulu, etc to work with a Roku or Smart TV while blocking things like facebook? I understand that Netflix is going to track me when I'm a Netflix subscriber, but why should Facebook do it?

On an Android smart TV, I run a DNS changer and point it to local pi-hole to block trackers and ads aggressively. Not sure if it ends up cleaning up everything but I do see 15% of the DNS queries pi-holed.

Re: Smart TVs sending sensitive user data to Netflix and Facebook

#296

Post by sharkweek »

flukus wrote: post #249
paxys wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even a secret. A TV manufacturer publicly said a while ago that a TV without "smart" features is more expensive for the company (even if sold at the same retail price) because they cannot make any money from selling usage data.

How much do they make per user? I would have have thought it was in the $10-$20 range and not enough to trigger any price sensitivity. I'm a tightass with an aldi TV but wouldn't have cared if it cost $10 more.

Not entirely related, but I remember thinking when Hulu was talking about an ad-free version of their streaming library that “this will clearly cost a lot more per month because my eyeballs are worth A LOT!!”

Imagine my surprise when it turned out only being $4 a month to remove commercials. It almost hurts my feelings knowing how little I’m worth to advertisers...

Re: Smart TVs sending sensitive user data to Netflix and Facebook

#297

Post by oger »

sjwright wrote: post #275
rodgerd wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some smart TVs will join open networks if you don't give them one. And I expect that if 5G works as advertised you'll see surveillance capitalism adding 5G connectivity so you no longer have control over connectivity.

A website that catalogued the misbehaviours of the various smart TV operating systems (and the easiest methods of defeat) would be handy here. E.g. Some TVs will honor wifi off setting. Or alternatively setting the TV to use the Ethernet port. Or if it needs something on the other end, set up old underclocked Raspberry Pi as a basic router/DHCP server that connects to nothing; power it with TV's USB port. If you've g…

A Pi-Hole is good to have in every household. Takes minutes to set up and makes sure that queries to unwanted domains end up in the land of /dev/null

Re: Smart TVs sending sensitive user data to Netflix and Facebook

#298

Post by myaccount80 »

lrem wrote: post #53
throw03172019 wrote: post #36

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.

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…

If you want to get rid of the ads without hacks, just contact amazon with the web chat and ask if they can remove them. They did it for me for free. (I’m serious)

Re: Smart TVs sending sensitive user data to Netflix and Facebook

#299

Post by dandare »

I still don't understand this whole "business model". Could someone ELI5 these three questions?

1) How exactly is this targeting information useful to advertisers? Do they pay for targeting in order to pay for fewer ads?

2) Where is the market for "user data"? How do you sell your blog visitor's data?

3) How much is the data worth? Some equivalent to CPM? Could you monetize your blog not by showing ads but by selling user information?

Re: Smart TVs sending sensitive user data to Netflix and Facebook

#300

Post by 19ylram49 »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #54
the_svd_doctor wrote: post #33

I tried to never connect my Smart TV to anything, but I realized one day (when someone's stuff was playing on it without me accepting any request...) it connected an open network in my residence. The only trick that worked to prevent it from connecting was putting the wrong password, and let it loop forever, trying to connect. Ugly.

I have an extra SSID which has no internet access and logs all of the things for exactly this reason.

I’ve been wanting to set up something like this, but I’m too lazy. It probably wouldn’t even take that long to set up.
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