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

There is a toggle showing the Wifi symbol and the bluetooth symbol, you toggle it means you want to turn it on or off, it doesnt show wifi connections glyph or bluetooth connections glyph, it shows the symbolic representation of that underlying larger function/mode of your phone. You expect when you turn it off it disconnects and stops trying to send that particular signal since you made a concrete choice (you thought) to turn it off. Same with Low Energy mode, if I toggle that it means I want it on until I toggle it off, not when battery is 80% or when phone is turned off and on again. You expect state persistance until you change it.

Its like saying when you try to unsubscribe from a service, ok you've disconnected from your subscription (but in fine print) it will be back next month or some other arbitrary merchant prescribed date. No, it will be back when I say I want it back and make the necessary active effort to reestablish or change that.

I want you to try this experiment:

1. Toggle WiFi and BlueTooth from your command centre thing 2. Go to > Settings 3. What information is shown for Wifi and for Blutooth?

It will likely say something "No connection". Phew, I guess it worked. Alright, lets call it a day.

But wait?

4. Tap each one and voila, both should show the green On toggle status. You have not turned off Wifi or Bluetooth, it has merely "disconnected" them, depending on your Wifi settings it will likely try to autojoin your known hotspot and they're back in business likely well before the automatic "tomorrow reconnect" comes that the toggle ostensibly sets in motion

Its not technically lying but the expectation when you turn off a toggle is it turns off that which you physically and intended to toggle. This abdicates that reasonable expectation and twists it ridiculously.

Its bad enough that theres no easy optionto actually turn it off short of automating it, its just sneaky and a clear conflict of interest

Same deal with Low Battery Mode or whatever, it always tries to get you off it, back to the Green battery icon at the top bar of your screen. Battery is 80% charged, thats enough for you, back to waste energy doing more of the stuff thats good for us and bad for your battery, Mac at least has always but its always trying to assert what is sufficent or enough for you even when there is a clear preference of the user, if it mattered to them that they were aligning with your preference and not working against you they could easily evaluate that but thats contrary to their interest

It is more effortful, more complex, and requires greater care to actually get Wifi and Bluetooth to the OFF state than ON, or ON+CONNECTED. Respectfully, that is backwards, it should be the easiest thing to turn something off.

Yet, here there is needless nuance added because there is a benefit to the company that the device is either chronically or as much as possible connected to the internet, connected to bluetooth, low battery mode is off, and if they cant have it connected to the internet and bluetooth, well, at least keep the beaconing on and sending out signals and at least meshing so advertisers and stores and their own Find/lost services are still able to benefit.

Thats not even getting into passive Fingerprinting and secondary furtive location tracking. I was surprised to learn that having bluetooth on identifies your device to stores and anyone else who can track bluetooth devices in range. Even when you toggled off bluetooth, you're still being profiled. I wonder if actually going into settings and turning off bluetooth or wifi even totally stops the device from continuing to signal in all ways, it would be unsurprising if thats another UI nicety that doesnt actually mean what it says or implies

If only they had a big interface to ask the user to push [AGREE] to consent to be spied upon. I would call it a RemoteVision and put the button in a wireless TeleControl so the user can easily agree every time they turn on the device.

We might not have the technological capabilities for this, but one can dream.

A bit more crazy that they are gambling on the likelihood of winning in case they are actually challenged, cementing a twisted precedent just to keep the next quarter on trend.