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

Smart TVs like Samsung, LG and Roku are tracking everything

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 316 posts

Re: Smart TVs like Samsung, LG and Roku are tracking everything

#52

Post by jquinby »

netsharc wrote: post #16
butz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any way to build something like this myself, e.g. using Raspberry Pi or DD-WRT supported router?

Google Pi Hole, it's mostly for ads and trackers, but someone probably has a list of "call home" domains, or you can add your own domains/hostnames that you want blocked

There is indeed such a list: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Perflyst/PiHoleBlocklist/m...

Re: Smart TVs like Samsung, LG and Roku are tracking everything

#53

Post by glitchc »

AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #2

I had a very nice Sharp Aquos TV for a long time. One of the first reasonably priced 1080p 65" TVs. It had absolutely no "smart" features, which was perfectly fine with me. I have my TV hooked up to a home theatre system and have my devices (PS4/AppleTV/XB1/Nvidia Shield) hooked up to that. I recently upgraded to a LG 4K OLED TV. It's an absolutely gorgeous TV, but, I absolutely lament the "smart" features of this TV…

Just unplug it from the network. That should get rid of most of it. I have an LG smart TV that has never seen the network. I get no ads, no popups, no features, no EULA, nothing. It behaves like a dumb TV.

It was the LG 65UH series from Costco.

Re: Smart TVs like Samsung, LG and Roku are tracking everything

#54

Post by marcusjt »

tekstar wrote: post #40
AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #2

I had a very nice Sharp Aquos TV for a long time. One of the first reasonably priced 1080p 65" TVs. It had absolutely no "smart" features, which was perfectly fine with me. I have my TV hooked up to a home theatre system and have my devices (PS4/AppleTV/XB1/Nvidia Shield) hooked up to that. I recently upgraded to a LG 4K OLED TV. It's an absolutely gorgeous TV, but, I absolutely lament the "smart" features of this TV…

I recently bought an LG OLED as well. I never connected it to my network and never will. It was a dark pattern during setup. The options were to connect via LAN or WIFI, and only by scrolling into "nothing" did a skip option appear. This ImO is the only option and even then I bet it's trying to exhilarate data by like trying to connect to a phone or high frequency audio or something.

"exhilarate" > "exfiltrate"

Re: Smart TVs like Samsung, LG and Roku are tracking everything

#55

Post by egdod »

Mirioron wrote: post #15
myrakle wrote: post #8

I use the PCWRT router, and it allows me to block the spying by blacklisting the relevant domains. https://www.pcwrt.com/2018/08/how-to-use-your-router-to-bloc...

At some point I wonder if we might not just start whitelisting domains instead. I think that it could be possible to design a UX that wouldn't be much of a hindrance to using your computer and phone on the same network. Eg any websites you deliberately visit get added to the whitelist, same with the other services you choose to use. The amount of mostly unintentional (by the user) data transfers is out of hand.

And then everybody starts collecting data via AWS or whatever.

Re: Smart TVs like Samsung, LG and Roku are tracking everything

#56

Post by egdod »

move-on-by wrote: post #49
myrakle wrote: post #8

I use the PCWRT router, and it allows me to block the spying by blacklisting the relevant domains. https://www.pcwrt.com/2018/08/how-to-use-your-router-to-bloc...

How long till the embedded devices us DNS over HTTPS to bypass this? The consumer is under attack

I assume not long. And there’s no good way to stop that.

Re: Smart TVs like Samsung, LG and Roku are tracking everything

#57

Post by Silhouette »

shyn3 wrote: post #11
AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the options are blatantly false, the legal teams at these respective companies would never allow them to be demonstrably false. I do think they are as confusing as possible and designed to be as difficult as possible to place in "max privacy" mode and as easy as possible to place in "max tracking" mode. > block it on my home network with Pi-Hole That's a really good idea. I just configured my firewall (…

Look through this, they seem to connect to open WiFi networks. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/bpr6xs/if_you_choo...

I've been arguing for a long time that the "don't connect it to your network" defence was insufficient because sooner or later these devices will simply start including their own connectivity as well. Various other categories of device, notably cars, already do, and frequently abuse it for tracking purposes.

My take on this is that we should impose the kind of draconian restrictions we have here in the UK on products like cigarettes. You can buy them, age restrictions permitting, but they are legally required to cover a large part of their packaging with prominent disclosures of the harm they cause. If devices with consumer-hostile measures like phone home functionality were similarly required to disclose it, and exactly what it is doing, on their packaging and other promotional materials, average consumers might start asking more questions instead of just the relatively small and so usually insignificant class of techie consumers. If that still didn't produce meaningful competition, outright prohibition by law might be the only solution.

Re: Smart TVs like Samsung, LG and Roku are tracking everything

#58

Post by nrp »

A “Dumb TV” is something I’m exploring developing. There is a gap in the market for a TV with a great panel, no internet connection, and only the processing strictly required for various types of signal processing and format conversion. The closest available solutions are large commercial monitors that cost an arm and a leg.
Post reply on HN