Live data from Hacker News

I Tested an HDMI Adapter That Demands Your Location and Spams You with Ads

404media.co

11–20 of 132 posts

Re: I Tested an HDMI Adapter That Demands Your Location and Spams You with Ads

#13
So from my reading, the shitty behaviour is from the app, not the cable. Have I misread it?

What happens if you try to use the cable without downloading the app? I for one would assume that my cable was defective, if it needed an app to work. I realize that HDMI cables are weird, and that like quite a lot of modern interconnect are not a monolithic standard, but come with multiple support levels; I wish that would stop.

A standard is a standard, and market partitioning is no part of the job of a standard.

Re: I Tested an HDMI Adapter That Demands Your Location and Spams You with Ads

#14

So from my reading, the shitty behaviour is from the app, not the cable. Have I misread it? What happens if you try to use the cable without downloading the app? I for one would assume that my cable was defective, if it needed an app to work. I realize that HDMI cables are weird, and that like quite a lot of modern interconnect are not a monolithic standard, but come with multiple support levels; I wish that would st…

The adapter flashes a QR code on your monitor. It's not plug-n-play.

Re: I Tested an HDMI Adapter That Demands Your Location and Spams You with Ads

#15
Given that the device is plugged in, trusted, shows up as a computer, and requires external power, it has all the connections it needs spy on the screen (at minimum) and remote control the victim iPhone without permission in the worst case. (it has video feed, and can emulate USB keyboard and mouse) Yikes!

Re: I Tested an HDMI Adapter That Demands Your Location and Spams You with Ads

#19
post #10
post #7

The saluspa from "bestway" demands your location before allowing you to setup wifi remote control of the portable hot tub on the android app. I wonder how on android I can spoof the location used by an app, or if anyone figured out if you can control it without the app. I set it up away from my house and use a separate wifi network but it pissed me off.

Android apps used to need "location" access for bluetooth discovery. https://www.androidpolice.com/2021/05/19/android-12-apps-won...

Because your location can be inferred by finding which Bluetooth devices are around you, as that article says...

> See, back in Android 6 Marshmallow, Google changed things so that apps needed location permissions to scan for Bluetooth devices. At the time, the rationale was that Bluetooth was going to be used for things like interior navigation or location tracking in a more abstract sense, and your location could indirectly be inferred via Bluetooth scanning alone if a given hardware identifier was tied to a specific location.

Post reply on HN