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LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'

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Re: LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'

#321

Post by yakk0 »

ryandrake wrote: post #295
imoverclocked wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then what about all the cloud enabled spyware? How would that work? (/sarcasm) Truly though, smart-home stuff runs the whole gamut of privacy and device manufacturer relationships. eg: I have used three different smart/room AC units: - one requires its own cloud-enabled app for any remote connectivity, no HomeKit integration - one integrates with HomeKit but then leaves an upgrade hint that can only be done through a…

Manufacturers just need to realize that LANs exist and allow their devices to be used with the Internet turned off. When I'm sitting in my home and I want to turn off the AC unit in the other room or close my garage door, there's no reason I should have to do an IP roundtrip to the manufacturer's server. Both devices are on my LAN. They should just talk to each other. This has been a solved problem for decades.

I have a Vizio TV that was advertised as a Chromecast TV, and I got it because of that. It was HDMI and Chromecast only. A few years later they did a silent update that added apps and generally made the UI much slower. I mainly use it with an AppleTV or game consoles, but it still irks me that they completely changed what was in my mind a nearly perfect TV.

Re: LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'

#322

Post by qlte »

canucker2016 wrote: post #181
alt227 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was enabled when you accepted the terms and conditions when you first turned it on, or did a firmware update. LGs statment says this: > ACR is an optional feature that is turned off by default. To enable ACR, a user must accept LG’s Viewing Information Agreement, which describes how ACR works. Which I take to mean that when you agree to the terms, it enables the feature.

At 5:58 of the Gamers Nexus (GN) video about LG TV's spying, GN make a statement: Now, our lawyers have made the totally unrelated point uh that we cannot legally agree to contracts such as terms of service or conditions while incredibly innebriated. So they drank a lot of margaritas while video-recording the section concerning reading and accepting the Terms of Service for the TV. Take that LG legal dept. see https:…

I personally would not trust legal advice from YouTubers who make money from whatever "content" generates the most views. The more outrageous and controversial the better, making sense or being true a distant secondary priority. Even those who make a name for themselves as trustworthy tend to eventually succomb to the incentives of the algorithm if it's their day job.

Re: LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'

#323

Post by wat10000 »

ryandrake wrote: post #295
imoverclocked wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then what about all the cloud enabled spyware? How would that work? (/sarcasm) Truly though, smart-home stuff runs the whole gamut of privacy and device manufacturer relationships. eg: I have used three different smart/room AC units: - one requires its own cloud-enabled app for any remote connectivity, no HomeKit integration - one integrates with HomeKit but then leaves an upgrade hint that can only be done through a…

Manufacturers just need to realize that LANs exist and allow their devices to be used with the Internet turned off. When I'm sitting in my home and I want to turn off the AC unit in the other room or close my garage door, there's no reason I should have to do an IP roundtrip to the manufacturer's server. Both devices are on my LAN. They should just talk to each other. This has been a solved problem for decades.

They realize. They hate it and wish it would go away. LAN connectivity makes it really hard to spy on you, inject ads, require subscriptions, and brick perfectly functional devices so you have to buy new ones.

Re: LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'

#324

Post by stego-tech »

What astounds me most of all from all this research is how much ownership LG (and through similar legal means, most manufacturers out there) asserts over the device you might have just paid thousands of dollars for - including the physical goods inside. This isn't merely an issue of corporate overreach and mass surveillance, it's a complete and utter failure of policy to adapt to shifting markets or preserve consumer agency.

Maybe an answer is a stripped-down Linux distro for smart TV chipsets that let users clearly disable said features entirely? Since I doubt anyone is going to willingly "go back" to dumb displays when so much data and ad revenue is on the line.

Re: LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'

#325

Post by llm_nerd »

tredre3 wrote: post #245
llm_nerd wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because when people cry wolf, and then there is no wolf, it actually harms the consumer by lowering everyone's guard. Have people not learned this yet? Gamers Nexus discovered recently, through their "AMD blacklisting" bit (when some relatively minor mid-lifecycle refresh of a product they didn't get a demo unit, so it turned into some "we are the truthsayers!" bit), that doing the Louis Rossmann routine earns them l…

I agree with you that accusations need to be backed by proofs and the kneejerk reactions on HN are embarrassing to read and unhelpful. Big bad evil corp, every single time. I mean those reactions are all over social media, but I just expected a little bit less knee jerk from HN. > In the real world, the selling data bit, ACR, and so on, is absolutely tiny dollars business. TVs are cheap because massive factories are…

> Vizio's numbers are famously public due to its recent sale.

Vizio's numbers were public because they went public in 2021 and like every public corporation they have to report numbers. The sale to Walmart actually made their numbers private again because while they're a part of public company still, it's now thoroughly washed in such a mass of numbers it disappears in any quantifiable way.

> It doesn't prove that LG loses money on its TVs, but it's clearly not as clear cut as you make it out to be

How clear cut do you think I made it? You seem to be claiming my comment said something it didn't.

TVs are being subsidized by secondary businesses for some vendors, to some degree, but that isn't why TVs are cheap. If you completely removed that factor, some makers would be slightly more expensive...but not by that much at all.

Like people do a lot of clever positioning to grossly overstate how much they make from this. And it's worth noting that much if not most of the revenue people ascribe to "ads" or privacy invasion on Vizio, actually came from their Connected+ platform. Vizio had a platform, just like Apple does, and just like Apple they took a cut of every subscription signed up for, or piece of media purchased.

I remember back in the day when laptops had a bunch of pre-installed junk and stupid stickers all over them -- at least in the Windows world -- and people would claim this "subsidized" the laptop. That it made it much less expensive. Some people ran the numbers and it was utterly marginal, but they did it because the average person simply didn't care. If they just increased the price the tiny amount and removed that shit the product would be better, but if most people don't care and you can eek out a tiny bit more, they do it.

Re: LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'

#327

Post by [deleted] »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #306
ryandrake wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Manufacturers just need to realize that LANs exist and allow their devices to be used with the Internet turned off. When I'm sitting in my home and I want to turn off the AC unit in the other room or close my garage door, there's no reason I should have to do an IP roundtrip to the manufacturer's server. Both devices are on my LAN. They should just talk to each other. This has been a solved problem for decades.

I have been toying with the idea of building some kind of "home cloud" that hooks into all of your smart devices (at least all of the open devices that it can), allows photo backups from mobile devices, idk. Stuff like that. Something you can just scan a QR code with your phone and it hooks it into your backups so your "cloud backup" is sitting in your utility room at home instead of being "someone elses computer" Ob…

[deleted]

Re: LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'

#328

Post by gharper »

3eb7988a1663 wrote: post #284
dylan604 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TV shows are completed and in the can well before air date. It is entirely plausible that the interested party in having the content identifiable by Shazam like services submit whatever needs to be submitted for new content

I have also wondered about the possibility of media emitting some kind of hidden identifier. Can normal speakers emit noise outside of human hearing that could contain a unique id? Would not even need to be a lot of data that could be broadcast.

Honestly, it doesn’t even need to be outside the range of human hearing.

A quick search for “audio steganography” should answer your question (and be a fun rabbit hole if you find that sort of topic interesting)

Re: LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'

#329

Post by fhub »

“LG TVs process voice data only when the voice button on the remote control is pressed and held, or when a wake word such as 'Hi LG' is recognized after the user has activated the Far-Field voice recognition feature."

The definition of “process” is really important and is missing. LG could process all transcripts on their servers too and stay within a very wonky definition of “process” on the TV that excludes transcription and transmission.

Re: LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'

#330

Post by hdgvhicv »

okamiueru wrote: post #260
semiquaver wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I’ve come to believe that the video’s benefit from bringing awareness to the issue is outweighed by how misleading it is. Massive amounts of the video were “we hacked the TV and made it do [bad thing]” and was reported as “LG TVs do [bad thing]!”

Did we watch a different video? The point of hacking the TV, and making it do bad thing. Was to explain the privacy issues inherent with the hardware capabilites for video and audio recording, which combined with multiple known exploits to gain access. It's a long video, and they cover more than one issue. Please explain what, in particular, you found was misleading.

So a Linux computer with a microphone and network access can send that mocrohpine to the Internet or record it. That’s obvious. That it can scan for WiFi networks is implied by the fact it had WiFi chip, and even exposes that functionality via the front end is also obvious. That it participates in MdNS is known for the fact it’s an mdns target.

What would be worthwhile is what is actually sent. The breathless reporting on it suggests it scans your network, I’ve never seen anything in my router logs to show any kind of port scan or even arp scan.

The only thing that’s seem to be a problem is the ages old adtech which the tech industry tends to be quite happy with as it pts so much of the bills for so many companies

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