If it’s not true, why put the capability in there in the first place?
LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'
361–370 of 513 posts
Re: LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'
#362Earlier 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 assume that part was for entertainment, this wouldn't fly in court. But they also show the dark patterns used to make you consent to it, and how certain features seem unaffected by these choices or send one last request when revoking consent.
Re: LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'
#363Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it would be less time consuming to build one yourself.
Less time consuming than just ... not connecting a new TV to WiFi? It's pretty straightforward to get dumb behavior out of a modern smart TV as long as you're satisfied with the factory installed firmware version.
"…as long as you're satisfied with the factory installed firmware version."
Why wouldn't one be? Not that long ago 'dumb' TVs never even had firmware (and that was the situation throughout most of television history). Allowing a manufacturer to update TV firmware online is dangerous and foolhardy. (Same reasons why I never let any of my printers go anywhere near the internet—any driver software is always blocked by a firewall.)
Re: LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'
#364Earlier quoted context omitted.
To me, it's not even about why they're doing it (building an advertising profile). I don't want them doing it at all, for any reason. When I buy something from the store, my relationship is between me and the store, for the 30 seconds it takes for me to pay for it. I don't want an ongoing relationship with the device manufacturer. I don't want to be tethered in any way to the manufacturer. I don't want to have an acc…
> I don't want an ongoing relationship with the device manufacturer. I think it depends on the device. If I buy an iPhone, I have the expectation of installing apps on it after purchase, and that necessarily involves a relationship with the app store provider (ie. Apple), not the store I bought the phone from. With a TV, I suppose it depends on whether I want to install media apps like Prime Video or Netflix on it. I…
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Re: LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'
#365Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. It’s also horrible that they have microphones in your home listening to your conversations. LG knowing what I’m watching is awful, but it seems even worse for LG to listen in to the conversation I have with my loved ones about it after. I don’t want to be under surveillance in my own home.
Both are unacceptably egregious and done for zero benefit of the customer and a disproportionate and asymmetric benefit for the manufacturer. I've been trying to learn how to secure LG TVs, and saw that some people do seem to jailbreak them withan open version of webOS.
> I've been trying to learn how to secure LG TVs
It’d be wonderful if we had a grapheneos equivalent for tvs. They’re very capable Android devices. Such a pity “we don’t own the glass”.
Re: LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'
#366A quixotic legal dream: All consumer data-surveillance must take the form of an opt-in monthly payment plan, which either side can cancel. So the TV gets advertised as "$$$, but basically $$ if you sign up to be surveilled and get a $/month check back." If the company sets $/month too low--or is too creepy about what they collect--people just won't opt-in. But what happens if they promise big pay-backs but routinely…
More like "a capitalism fever dream"
Re: LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'
#367Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Assume it works perfectly accurately. Well this is a silly assumption. Wake word false positives happen all the time. (“No Siri, I wasn’t talking to you…”)
I wrote that in to deter kinda-bad-faith responses, where someone tries to play at being an evil-genie, inserting unreasonable flaws into the gaps, like: "But what if it triggered all the time? On purpose!? " The point is that ethical implementations do exist, and them working does not rely on anything close to perfection--so nitpicking that word isn't helpful.
Point taken. Let’s focus on the “ethical implementations do exist” part though. Let’s say a best possible implementation has 99% specificity. Then if it detects audio that has nothing to do with “LG” it mistakenly treats it as LG relevant 1% of the time. So if audio in my living room is 100x more likely to not be relevant for LG, then half of the audio data LG is receiving is not relevant. So what would an ethical specificity be? And what is actual state of the art?
Re: LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'
#368gamer's nexus responds to lg's response https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToP9xfLDSME
Re: LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'
#369LG's statement: > ACR uses audio fingerprinting technology using the TV’s internal audio processor (not a speaker) to identify content and does not collect screenshots, screen recordings, video recordings, voice recordings, or other audio recordings from the TV. So they are claiming that ACR is done entirely through audio processing, and no visual data from the screen itself is used? That...doesn't seem plausible. Th…
> We're going to have to get saavy in pulling apart the distinction between
We probably shouldn't: doing any of this horseshit is a good reason to return a product. We should start doing that en mass until they get the idea.
Re: LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'
#370Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every speaker can be used as a microphone if the circuitry is added to do so.
Many common SOC's MediaTek, Realtek, and Broadcom SOC's quite often used modern audio capable devices analog pins can be software defined either input or output. IIRC I saw already Bruce Schneider's blog some team proof of concept where they listened using laptop speakers what was spoken in that room. Audio quality wasn't perfect, but it making sense what was spoken was good enough.
"…I saw already Bruce Schneider's blog some team proof of concept where they listened using laptop speakers what was spoken in that room."
Users need to know the electrical features of their H/W and its limits. If a loudspeaker output stage is designed (hardware wired) so that it can never act as an input then no later firmware update can turn the speaker into a microphone.
This is why hardware authentication is becoming more and more important.
limits