431–440 of 513 posts
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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 don't think that would hold up in any court in the world. While sober, and in coordination with legal counsel, they made a plan to accept the terms and conditions. That's like a kid swinging their arms around on a playground while saying "I'm not touching you" levels.
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Are there any useful resources for finding devices that don't have surveillance apparatus built in? I'm still not purchasing a television. The last thing I need is more screen time in my life.
You'd be looking for what's now called a "dumb tv". But those are getting rare, because TVs that can't sell your watch data have to be more expensive to make up for that, and that doesn't sell. Commercial screens are an option, as are computer monitors. Or getting a smart tv and never connecting it to the internet. So far nobody has started shipping TVs with a mobile connection to exfiltrate data, as far as we know.…
There's too many dark patterns and bad behaviour from big corporations these days trying to wear you down and trick you into relinquishing your rights and letting them "get away with murder".
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If you want true, verifiable privacy and control, it's not an Apple TV that you need. Any old laptop or desktop computer can be used to stream content from the Internet using a Web browser or other "apps."
E.g. Netflix doesn't let you to stream 4k video in browser afaik. So no, it's not a good option.
Trifecta: Piracy + Local media server + Streaming device, either Apple TV/Android TV (without internet access).
No loss of quality, devices that could spy on you, don't, and those that would spy on you, can't. The only trade-off is some convenience.
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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.
If you can firewall your LAN - you can also firewall your WiFi.
> Features such as Automatic Content Recognition (ACR), voice recognition, and interest-based advertising are optional. These features are not enabled by default. Users can choose to enable these features and can manage or withdraw consent through TV settings. They may be optional features but I’m pretty sure when I set up my tv and got to the screen where you are required to agree to the various terms and privacy le…
Gamers Nexus paid a lawyer to read the contract and had one of their staff members try to read the entire thing on the TV. The lawyers conclusion is that a non-lawyer basically has no chance of correctly interpreting the contract and the TV auto-standby almost made it physically impossible for the staff member to even read it. The „happy path“ is the only path, for all practical purposes.
This sort of malicious compliance of using T&C to enable bad behaviour by corporations needs to be fixed with laws.
Reminds me of cookie banners, the dark pattern where they've decided to be deliberately verbose and annoying in order to get people to take the easy path and agree to let them continue doing their bad behaviour.
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I don't think that would hold up in any court in the world. While sober, and in coordination with legal counsel, they made a plan to accept the terms and conditions. That's like a kid swinging their arms around on a playground while saying "I'm not touching you" levels.
They were just bringing levity to an otherwise depressing topic.
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It seems conditions are such that the TV selling business is worthless (i.e. unprofitable) without collecting the data, and the TV data collection business can't work without selling TVs.
Or just sell the tv for a higher price rather than using it as a loss leader?
Edit: and that niche is business, of course
> "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." > LG went on to say that beyond the aforementioned instances, "the TVs do not collect or record ambient conversations." LG is contradicting themselves here. In order to detect a wake word then they mu…
> In order to detect a wake word then they must be collecting or recording ambient conversations. There's a risk here that we will talk-past one another while using different meanings of the same words, so let me offer a scenario: AcmeTV has an isolated component which taps microphone input, records to a 5-second ring buffer, and on "Wakey-Wakey" triggers an alert flag. Assume it works perfectly accurately. Would you…
This combines with two other dangers, one of unintended recordings when the wake word is triggered unintentionally, and one of intended recordings by third parties based on various other wake/watch words. They already have it in the T&C that they will share this data with law enforcement, so it's not that far fetched that these TVs and other appliances will spy on people in the home far more effectively than even the East German Stasi could have ever imagined.
LG'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…