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72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

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Re: 72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

#341

Post by protomyth »

jon-wood wrote: post #10

I’m responsible for a bunch of IoT hardware, and every firmware spec I write includes a note on not using the DNS servers provided via DHCP. While sure there are companies explicitly doing this to avoid filtering, at least in my case it’s because a significant proportion of DHCP servers are configured to send DNS to your ISP, and ISP provided DNS is almost universally terrible. They’ll ignore TTLs, rewrite NXDOMAIN r…

I’m responsible for a bunch of IoT hardware, and every firmware spec I write includes a note on not using the DNS servers provided via DHCP.

And that along with DoH is contributing to making my life a pain in the butt. How exactly do you folks who avoid our DHCP's DNS expect us to comply with legal filtering requirements? Also, what happens when your hard coded DNS servers are shutdown?

Re: 72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

#343

Post by mattnewton »

idiot900 wrote: post #312
Bud wrote: post #261

This isn't difficult: TVs should not be "smart". TVs should be incredibly dumb. They should be screens for displaying stuff. That's it. Nothing else. No network connection of any kind, no apps, no software beyond that necessary to do basic setup of how that screen works: brightness, input selection, etc.

You're in luck. Buy a commercial TV, or a hospitality TV. For example: https://www.lg.com/us/business/commercial-tvs/lg-65ut640s0ua Other TV manufacturers make similar products.

Commercial signage tvs tend to be much more expensive and never really go on sale though. I can't even find out the price of this product without calling them to talk to a salesperson?

Re: 72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

#344

Post by jeffbee »

Bud wrote: post #261

This isn't difficult: TVs should not be "smart". TVs should be incredibly dumb. They should be screens for displaying stuff. That's it. Nothing else. No network connection of any kind, no apps, no software beyond that necessary to do basic setup of how that screen works: brightness, input selection, etc.

Counterpoint: smart TVs are great. My LG has replaced almost every other thing that used to be in my media room. It is my streaming music box (I can target it for casting from my favorite iOS app, and I can use the interface on it for browsing my home network storage if I want). It has Netflix, Amazon, YouTube, Hulu, Disney, Vudu, Google TV, and every other damn thing on it. It has voice search, so I just say the name of the show I want to watch and it finds and displays which apps have that in their catalog. It also has a web browser so I can just watch anything I want. I can start a video on YouTube on my phone and later transfer it to the TV (I can do this from either device). I can cast any tab from Chrome to my TV.

I say these TVs are just the right amount of smart. Maybe there are worse ones (I imagine, having once owned a Sony Playstation, that the software on a Sony TV is atrocious) but LG WebOS is brilliant.

Re: 72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

#345

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

shawnz wrote: post #295
LanternLight83 wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would absolutely love to have control over HTTPS traffic on my network, specifically to enable my Squid proxy to cache HTTPS pages, but unfortunately not every device or even program supports custom CA's. I'd be the man-in-the-middle between the internet and every device I own.

I think that is a pretty user-hostile attitude and I suspect you probably wouldn't really love it if every network operator was doing that kind of thing.

What’s user-hostile is every consumer device insisting on pushing its defaults and ignoring any network policies I’ve configured.

Re: 72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

#346

Post by Ecstatify »

Spivak wrote: post #210
Ecstatify wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is because they don’t give you the option to change it. Set the default to what ever you want, but give me the user who bought the goddamn thing the option to configure it how I see fit. You think TV companies are injecting adverts into peoples TV home screens for their benefit, I don’t see a big sticker on the box when I buy the TV “Ads Integrated Directly into Device”

So as a techie I agree with you but as a user I don’t really think it matters. If your device exists to connect to public endpoints and uses mDNS for local discovery then any public DNS server should be fine. All these devices want is a clean connection to the public internet and you’ll never see them officially supporting blocking. At best DNS filtering is a hack that currently works because most people don’t do it…

I bought the device to stream content not to display ads. So you'd be happy if every laptop manufacturer installed crypto-miners on a new laptop you purchased without telling you before purchasing the device with no way to remove it. It's no different than ads, they are using your resources without your explicit permission after the sale of the device to generate income for their company.

It's madness to me that people find this acceptable. These companies are profiting off the ignorance of people and misleading customers on what they're actually selling them.

Re: 72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

#347

Post by 1stranger »

Bud wrote: post #261

This isn't difficult: TVs should not be "smart". TVs should be incredibly dumb. They should be screens for displaying stuff. That's it. Nothing else. No network connection of any kind, no apps, no software beyond that necessary to do basic setup of how that screen works: brightness, input selection, etc.

> This isn't difficult: TVs should not be "smart".

As it turns out other people have different priorities than you do. The world not conforming to your personal preferences does not make it wrong.

Re: 72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

#348

Post by [deleted] »

Bud wrote: post #261

This isn't difficult: TVs should not be "smart". TVs should be incredibly dumb. They should be screens for displaying stuff. That's it. Nothing else. No network connection of any kind, no apps, no software beyond that necessary to do basic setup of how that screen works: brightness, input selection, etc.

[deleted]

Re: 72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

#349

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

muststopmyths wrote: post #325
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #227

>Fortunately, with a few simple firewall rules, you can intercept these hardcoded DNS queries and redirect them to your PiHole. These instructions are for pfSense I can see running pihole instead of a pfSense+pfBlocker rig. But if you've already got pfSesne at the edge, why not just polish it off with pfBlocker/DNSBL instead of erecting a separate pihole machine?

I have pfsense with pfblockerng/dnsbl and it lets in way more ads than pihole. I could be doing something wrong, but I have no idea what.

Likely somewhere in the lists. IIRC, we can use pihole lists with DNSBL. That should add full pihole blocking to DNSBL.

Re: 72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

#350

Post by kzrdude »

onion2k wrote: post #292
Bud wrote: post #261

This isn't difficult: TVs should not be "smart". TVs should be incredibly dumb. They should be screens for displaying stuff. That's it. Nothing else. No network connection of any kind, no apps, no software beyond that necessary to do basic setup of how that screen works: brightness, input selection, etc.

That would essentially force people to buy two devices - one for receiving content to display and a second to display it. All your solution does is shift the problem on to the receiving device. It wouldn't fix anything, and at the same time it'd increase the cost and complexity for the user (by a very small amount admittedly).

But the media box device can be replaced more readily.
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