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I’m Terrified of My New TV

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Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#151

Post by hell-ban-me »

diminoten wrote: post #94
tedks wrote: post #47

We need a Butlerian Jihad against surveillance. You know what will never stop this? Posts on hacker news. Letters to your congressman (LG can donate a fuqton more to his re-election campaign than you can). Voting with your dollar (people who know what a privacy policy is are few and far between). You know what will? Taking these TVs into the street, smashing and burning them. Mobs storming Best Buy and smashing the s…

I just don't understand why I'm not allowed to give away my privacy for convenience, in your eyes. I think you'd be surprised at a) how many people realize they're having their data collected and b) how few people care. Is it a risk? Yes. So is driving a car, but I'm not willing to put up with the inconvenience of not being able to drive somewhere.

The same reason you're not allowed to sell yourself into slavery.

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#152

Post by pmontra »

I have a 10 years old TV (still a CRT because they were better than LCDs back in 2004, but that's not important). It will stop working more sooner than later and I'll have to replace it with some sort of smart TV. Whatever I get inside it I decided what to do with it long ago: keep it off the Internet. Instead I'll hook it the the very same Raspberry PI with OpenELEC I'm using right now. If something breaks because it can't call home, I don't care. Obviously I'll be careful to buy one of the most dumbed down smart TVs on the market. All I need is the screen.

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#153

Post by harkyns_castle »

I'd guess they've done their market research on this and I'd also have to guess they figured it wouldn't hurt their sales.

Which seems odd to me. Having a TV with the ability to surveil me is a foul feature and one that'd instantly turn me off a purchase, no matter what protections they put in place. Internet-connected, closed as can be, with a possibly open mike and camera into your living room... fuck that.

Edit: s/that/they

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#154

Post by buro9 »

scdoshi wrote: post #134
kimburgess wrote: post #96

For those looking for a modern TV that doesn't have the 'smart' feature set have a look into into commercial grade panels. They are manufactured for digital signage and usage in meeting room / corporate environments. Generally they will not come with a on-board tuner but for those who can stand free to air programming this can be added with an external tuner for < $100.

Interesting idea. Any recommendations?

I liked the idea too so just looked around, the NECs seem particularly good, for example:

http://www.necdisplay.com/p/large--screen-displays/e464

A 46" display, for $769, 1080p and 3 x HDMI inputs and all of the necessary sound inputs and outputs. Additionally it's relatively low-power and doesn't actually look bad.

I can see me buying something like this in future, it fits with how I use TV anyway, feeding HDMI inputs into it and just considering it a display for other devices.

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#155

Post by downandout »

I wasn't particularly disturbed by this article until I got to the following passage regarding the "Voice Command" feature:

"Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party."

I don't think there is a prison horrible enough to send these people to. There is NO legitimate reason that an always-on audio feed from your home should be sent to third parties. People shouldn't even be allowed to opt-in to something like that. No one would EVER knowingly allow this, regardless of the functionality it enabled.

I cannot envision a circumstance in which this "feature" was not put in at the direct request of law enforcement. I am extremely disappointed that he did not name the manufacturer of this TV in the article (unless he made it all up to get clicks). If this is legitimate, he needs to post the manufacturer's name and they need be boycotted, immediately, forever. Consumers need to adopt a scorched earth strategy with companies like this.

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#156

Post by fulafel »

millstone wrote: post #129
pmoriarty wrote: post #68

The author is afraid of his smart TV, but probably doesn't think twice about carrying around a smartphone. Smartphones have virtually all of the capabilities that make the author fear his smart TV, only the smartphone is, if anything, even more dangerous because it is more ubiquitous. People carry their phones around everywhere, and the phones are usually constantly on and equally capable of monitoring your every wor…

Your point about a smartphone's capabilities is well taken. But the TV straight-up says that your personal information will be captured and transmitted to a third party. I value my privacy, and trust (hope?) that my phone isn't transmitting that sort of stuff. If it did, I think it would be discovered and made public very quickly, and I would switch phones! But since the TV straight out says that it transmits my pers…

Are you not counting Googhle or Apple as third parties?

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#157

Post by atmosx »

tmuir wrote: post #103
bruce511 wrote: post #19

I'm probably not normal, but frankly I would just leave it unplugged from the Internet. At the end of the day my current tv does what I need to do (ie act as a big monitor) without an internet connection. Given the number of devices already floating around here for browsing the web, I don't really need my tv to do that. For streaming I have Chromecast or whatever. I get that tv makers want to sell me something, but t…

I can't believe that people buy integrated media players with their TVs. They are usually multiple hundreds of dollars on top of the base TV model price, have terrible interfaces, and are crippleware, using apps with very few services. I suppose the economics aren't as straightforward, but I'm of the opinion that Chromecast, Roku, AppleTV, etc are the next layer of crippleware. A small form factor Windows box or a Ma…

Sorry but that comparison is flawed. You are comparing 35$ Chromecast to a 499$ mac mini. I can buy 3 Chromecasts, 1 for every TV in my house and still spare 400$...

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#158

Post by edandersen »

Samsung and co ship non-smart TVs with exactly the same panels for hundreds of dollars less than smart TVs of the same size. Just buy non-smart TVs and couple them with a decent AV amp and games console and you can replicate all the smart TV nonsense with other devices.

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#159

Post by userbinator »

click170 wrote: post #25

The only reason I feel comfortable connecting things like consumer network-connected cameras, TVs, Bluray players, game consoles, or anything else "Internet Ready" to my network is because I perform outbound filtering, and it's a big eye-opener to see first-hand what these devices are trying to connect to. Luckily most things use HTTP so you can actually filter based on the URL it's trying to access. For example, per…

Luckily most things use HTTP

The irony is that as people justifiably push for "more security", more and more of them are going to use HTTPS or other encrypted transports, making it impossible to determine what information they're transferring just from network inspection.

End-to-end encryption is a good thing only if you trust both endpoints and don't want MITMs to interfere. Otherwise, it's security being used against you.

When these smart device manufacturers "smarten up" and start encrypting everything (likely with no options to disable and/or e.g. install self-signed certificates - naturally, because of "security reasons"), it'll be all-or-nothing.

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#160

Post by huhtenberg »

rsync wrote: post #136
bruce511 wrote: post #19

I'm probably not normal, but frankly I would just leave it unplugged from the Internet. At the end of the day my current tv does what I need to do (ie act as a big monitor) without an internet connection. Given the number of devices already floating around here for browsing the web, I don't really need my tv to do that. For streaming I have Chromecast or whatever. I get that tv makers want to sell me something, but t…

Why not take it a step further and only buy monitors ? None of my tvs have anything but video inputs. I use dell monitors, and for my large screens, NEC commercial displays. They are as dumb as dumb can be.

A nice thing about "smart" TVs is that they come bundled with codecs and can play media off USB drives. This is really convenient, though you can of course get a monitor and something like WD TV box, but ultimately it'd be a wash.
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