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216M Spy TVs – The LG Smart TV Problem [video]

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Re: 216M Spy TVs – The LG Smart TV Problem [video]

#931

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL, but I believe the argument is that agreeing to the TOS constitutes consent. Even though no reasonable person would believe such a thing would be in the TOS and no reasonable person reads the full TOS (no person actually could...). Perhaps we start suing one another for not disclosing the wire tapping, forcing the lawsuit upwards towards LG. It'd be more efficient to sue LG, but lawyers don't seem to be done th…

IANAL, but only the owner can consent through the TOS. The owner does not collect or process the data, so it's entirely on LG to ensure proper consent, not the owner. Breaking a TOS is not a crime, and can only be punished by restricting or disallowing access to a service, but collecting personal data without consent is a huge problem in the EU.

It’s clearly unreasonable to assume that LG can know and procure consent from everyone you choose to allow into your living room.

It’s reasonable to push the burden of procuring that consent onto whoever controls entry to the space, with terms like this.

As a thought experiment, let’s take a service like Zoom where you can record video of participants. It’s reasonable to say “you’re operating the camera, if someone appears in the background, it’s your responsibility to make sure they’re informed and consent to the recording”. In fact, trying to establish the identity of the person in the background for the purposes of procuring consent is probably a greater intrusion on privacy than not.

The problem here is different. The problem is that the volume of data being collected is clearly unnecessary for achieving the purposes it’s intended for.

Re: 216M Spy TVs – The LG Smart TV Problem [video]

#932
post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> my conclusion after dealing with them for many years is they will lie, cheat, and steal to get whatever they want Honestly, it's not even that extreme in most cases. I think it's usually not malice, it's incompetence. That's why I don't trust big companies with my data. Nothing to do with some CEO's evil plans, but more to do with the hundreds/thousands of mid-level "not my job" or "doing my best" workers who are a…

> Nothing to do with some CEO's evil plans, but more to do with the hundreds/thousands of mid-level "not my job" or "doing my best" workers who are actually in charge of handling my data. The CEO is responsible for what their company does. If a major breach can occur through the oversight or "incompetence" of one worker, the CEO has already failed, whether through negligence or malice.

In China, CEOs go to prison or are executed. Not all the time, but enough. In the US, they are given a golden parachute and make more money at their next posting. There is mostly only failing upwards.

Re: 216M Spy TVs – The LG Smart TV Problem [video]

#933
post #856

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't really have alternatives, period. LG is the one in the news today, but pretty much any TV this decade has been doing similar things. Computer monitors max out at 32 inches and the idea of a modern dumb TV is non-existent.

I meant alternatives to connecting your TV directly to the internet. As in "why would you ever connect your TV to the internet?" is a stupid question - "because I want to watch things on the internet." And it's not like a roku, firetv, or chrome cast dongle is much different (and Apple TV is $200, normal people don't add 20-50% the cost of their TV to do something built in). > the idea of a modern dumb TV is non-exis…

A cheap 4k generic android media box is less than $70 on Amazon. There are dozens of them. I use one because half the apps on my old smart TV don't work anymore. The android ones are always up to date and the UX is better.

Is there any TV on the market that flat out wont work if it can't see the internet?

Re: 216M Spy TVs – The LG Smart TV Problem [video]

#934
post #852

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I can turn it on/off using Home Assistant and my phone.

What a useless feature. Reinventing a worse remote.

It is precisely so I _don't_ have to touch the actual TV remote ever.

Re: 216M Spy TVs – The LG Smart TV Problem [video]

#935
post #852

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I can turn it on/off using Home Assistant and my phone.

Why not use cheap $10 IR blaster for that? it will connect to home assistant in same manner.

Because it's one more thing that I have to own and maintain; versus a built-in feature?

Re: 216M Spy TVs – The LG Smart TV Problem [video]

#936

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple TV.

To the risk of contradicting myself, the less time I got, the more tempting it's been to jump into Apple's ecosystem. I love the hardware, I appreciate Apple's apparent care for privacy, but I just love my linux too much both in terms of UX and for what it represents.

Ha, and I completely missed the "Linux" part of your post, sorry. I do enjoy both. Apple, like you say, is a nice default for me because they clearly care about privacy to a reasonable extent.

Plus, the HDMI-CEC "just works".

Re: 216M Spy TVs – The LG Smart TV Problem [video]

#937
post #903

Here are LG's contract terms for appliances.[1] They are awful. Not only can they listen in. You have a contractual requirement to tell everyone in range of an appliance that they may be eavesdropped upon. CONSENT REQUIREMENT: You acknowledge and agree that it is your sole responsibility to obtain all necessary consents from any third parties whose voices may be captured by the Product and to notify household members…

I have an LG TV. It has been pestering me with those licensing agreements from time to time, but interestingly enough, I was only required to agree to fairly reasonable basics, everything else I just ignored and left for later. I'm guessing this is an oversight and the TV does record, but then this is criminal. But, nobody will bother to prosecute them I guess...

They are not the only ones doing it. What about Android?

Re: 216M Spy TVs – The LG Smart TV Problem [video]

#938
post #822

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a Samsung fridge. It’s not a smart fridge, it doesn’t have a screen, bluetooth, or any way to connect to it. I logged into my UniFi stack to monitor devices and it showed up. It had gotten the connection details from my wife’s phone, the other Samsung device and was transmitting data back to Google and Samsung.

The far more likely explanation is that your unifi dashboard's device identification logic is broken and is misreporting the device. Otherwise it doesn't make sense for samsung to engage it a massive conspiracy of putting wifi hardware in non-smart devices (driving up the BOM cost), creating a massive botnet that can share credentials between devices, all so they can... maybe run a residential proxy network? Then sub…

> The far more likely explanation is that your unifi dashboard's device identification logic is broken and is misreporting the device.

that does happen, but if this fridge really is connected, it is far more likely that one samsung device used Bluetooth LE to communicate its wi-fi credentials to another samsung device when they were in extremely close proximity.

This is how a new apple device can get logged into the same apple account as another device, you bring them close to each other and they communicate over BLE everything that is needed to bring the new device online and into your device ecosystem.

samsung probably isn't running a botnet, that's not why the fridge is connected; your guess is as good as mine as to what it is, but i would be surprised if it were a botnet.

Re: 216M Spy TVs – The LG Smart TV Problem [video]

#939

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can that kind of clause really be enforceable? It really doesn't seem legal in any jurisdiction I'm aware of. (not a lawyer)

LG probably can't sue you for failing to get consent from a guest, but the guest can sue you, not LG, for being recorded.

I’m sure this would not work under GDPR. The host surely isn’t a data processor.

Re: 216M Spy TVs – The LG Smart TV Problem [video]

#940
post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, you're not crazy. I'm also someone who actually reads terms documents, because I find that they're often the only thing that will be truthful about a company's intentions. And keeping it completely disconnected from the internet should be the default, in my opinion.

I never understood why any of the smartness had to be built into the TV in the first place. Sure, it's useful for the first year, and then the seriously underpowered hardware they installed into it will have trouble with just about anything. I bought a Philips Ambilight OLED TV probably over 8 years now. Brilliant tv, great quality, I still see no reason to replace it at all. But its built in AndroidTV is garbage.

> I never understood why any of the smartness had to be built into the TV in the first place.

Because technology got ever more complex. A TV of yore? That thing operated on (relatively) simple physics alone, at the cost of requiring an absurd amount of broadcast infrastructure to make sure a TV signal could be received across the country.

Modern TVs however... digital modulation schemes with a lot of signal processing wizardry allow TV reception with far less broadcast towers and far better quality. You got satellites and with these a myriad of control schemes (DiSEqC, Unicable, ...). You got Pay-TV that requires decryption. You got HDMI CEC to allow your TV to remote control your DVD player.

And all of that complexity requires firmware which means it can have bugs which means you need a firmware update capability and when you're at that point you can just go and slap something Linux on it and get all the apps for streaming services.

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