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Tracking systems of TV streaming devices

blog.acolyer.org

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Re: Tracking systems of TV streaming devices

#41

Post by willis936 »

baq wrote: post #4

money quotes > Running with a Pi-hole helps, but still misses about 27% of A ID leaks, and 45% of serial number leaks. and > Our measurements showed that tracking is prevalent on the OTT platforms we studied, with traffic to known trackers present on 69% of Roku channels and 89% of Amazon Fire TV channels… Our analysis of the available privacy countermeasures showed that they are ineffective at preventing tracking. t…

I only checked one of the listed urls (the tables are images???) but found 15 hits in my pi-hole. I’m using the “safe” (as in marked likely to not break things) set of lists from wally3k’s github. So the standard set of lists won’t catch many things, but it is prudent to add more. There are currently nearly a million domains being filtered in my pi-hole and 13.0% of http/https requests are filtered out.

Re: Tracking systems of TV streaming devices

#42

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

baq wrote: post #4

money quotes > Running with a Pi-hole helps, but still misses about 27% of A ID leaks, and 45% of serial number leaks. and > Our measurements showed that tracking is prevalent on the OTT platforms we studied, with traffic to known trackers present on 69% of Roku channels and 89% of Amazon Fire TV channels… Our analysis of the available privacy countermeasures showed that they are ineffective at preventing tracking. t…

It is an arms race. It started like it normally does. Pihole guys were dismissed as not a threat since setup required user setup and maintenance. Clearly, there was a miscalculation of sentiment since adtech seems to be actively working on subverting it.

I hope pihole can keep up. I am at a point, where I would pay for it ( donation may no longer be viable ).

Re: Tracking systems of TV streaming devices

#43

Post by gruez »

willis936 wrote: post #36
SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mind boggling that they continue to make life so difficult for paying customers when it's possible to go to a site like Pirate Bay and get a bit-perfect rip in less than 15 minutes without Hollywood making a single penny. Just let me buy DRM-free movies and download them to my NAS - and without all the tracking bullshit!

Is it though? I have never seen a bit perfect rip on tpb. I have paid for sketchy software to have access to blu-ray ripping software to get around this while trying to play with high bitrate material and understand a bit more about it. 25 GB is the smallest a blu ray gets, with most being 50 GB (and potentially up to 300 GB, though I have not seen this personally). UHD blu ray goes from 50 GB to 100 GB. No one is ri…

I wouldn’t say no one is seeding/leeching those things. You can find plenty of remuxes on rarbg (a public tracker), and they’re well seeded a few days after release (after the initial influx of leechers are gone) up to a few months later (before people start deleting it from their machines).

Re: Tracking systems of TV streaming devices

#46

Post by jasonjayr »

stevenicr wrote: post #27
TeMPOraL wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advertising works because people have little choice in the matter. It's exploiting that people value "consumption with ads" more than "no consumption at all", and most are not skilled enough to remove the ads themselves. (It's not like they wouldn't do it if they knew how; remember the popularity of VCRs? Their main use case was that on a recorded show, you could fast-forward through ads.) People are not OK with metr…

Indeed. I had planned to purchase a few Roku devices for me and someone else. Then I stumbled upon an article describing the amount of third party data sharing and how it varies by channel. Stopped me from purchasing. And this is after a bit of research on streaming devices and plans and all that! People in one of the online neighbor groups routinely ask about options for this channel or that channel and such as the…

Cable companies to this too with their STB. OTA or pirating content is the only way to maintain privacy.

Re: Tracking systems of TV streaming devices

#47

Post by donclark »

trekrich wrote: post #19

That’s a handy list of domains to put into pi-hole for them to be blocked.

I did not see a list of domains on that site. I thought they talk about using a pihole in general. If you saw, or recommend specific lists - please do - and thank you in advance.

Re: Tracking systems of TV streaming devices

#48

Post by chr1 »

Nicksil wrote: post #24
chr1 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advertisement works because most people do not feel this way and are ok with metrics and adds as long as they get something back. Is that ok, or is there a rational argument why everyone should feel bad about being subject to metrics?

>most people do not feel this way and are ok with metrics and adds Where did you get this information? I suspect most people have no idea what goes on behind the curtain.

I do not feel that way, and was fascinated by the intensity with which some people on HN dislike metrics and adds. So I had tried an informal survey of people i knew, and out of 39 only 7 were somewhat concerned and some said they thought phones and tvs can capture video or audio and were not particularly concerned even with that.

Another indirect piece of evidence is that even NSA backdoors did not get the attention they deserved.

Re: Tracking systems of TV streaming devices

#50

Post by spydum »

donclark wrote: post #47
trekrich wrote: post #19

That’s a handy list of domains to put into pi-hole for them to be blocked.

I did not see a list of domains on that site. I thought they talk about using a pihole in general. If you saw, or recommend specific lists - please do - and thank you in advance.

It was in the table (image): https://adriancolyer.files.wordpress.com/2020/02/ott-table-2...
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