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I’m Terrified of My New TV

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Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#161

Post by SixSigma »

authatheist wrote: post #111
sounds wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually it's interesting to watch you take the contrary position on an internet forum, but without a concrete call to action. That was his point: what are you going to _do_? I work on a solution to this particular problem every day. I don't just write on the internet about it. Put up or shut up.

My "solution" is to wake people up to the fact that we should not have rulers at all. That's the only way to achieve a non-nightmarish future in the long term. People see tyranny creeping up all over the West, for example, but it doesn't occur to them that instead of asking our rulers to please not oppress us, we should stop believing in their authority altogether. You have your activism, and I have mine.

Having no "leaders" wouldn't stop the phenomena of corporate surveillance.

A world with unfettered unregulated markets sounds more nightmarish to me than what we have now.

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#162

Post by SixSigma »

rhizome wrote: post #133
authatheist wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My "solution" is to wake people up to the fact that we should not have rulers at all. That's the only way to achieve a non-nightmarish future in the long term. People see tyranny creeping up all over the West, for example, but it doesn't occur to them that instead of asking our rulers to please not oppress us, we should stop believing in their authority altogether. You have your activism, and I have mine.

What are some historical examples of "waking" people up to a "fact?" I'm not so sure lack of belief is enough to dissipate authority. As the old saying goes, you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you. Within my lifetime, the surest way to invite a tiny war into your life is act as if political and/or legal authority doesn't exist. Hell, just implying that authority should change was enough to get…

Somalia

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#163

Post by SixSigma »

rqebmm wrote: post #109
diminoten wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is true, but there's a bigger problem than the mere fact that a lot of data is being collected. It's how transparent companies are about the data that's collected, along with how long it's stored and who has access to it. One might be fine with having their TV scan their face, but does that mean they're okay with that scan being transported to someone else's servers? Who now owns that information? Can the manufa…

What do I know about the difference between my data being on a machine in the headquarters of Samsung or the headquarters of the Golden Lucky Data Brokers Pty?

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#164

Post by enobrev »

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…

> you don't need the manufacturer to strike deals with Netflix/HBO/Hulu, you just need a web browser.

In theory, the same could be said for Chromecast, since the casting server isn't something that Google sets up, but rather a feature the media company adds to their own app / service (which is relatively easy to do). For all intents and purposes, it's an app-driven web browser for your TV with the ability to stream video.

Personally, I'm a huge fan of using the actual netflix app to stream things to my television - same goes for youtube, pandora, class6ix, plex, and all the other apps I use to cast to my TVs and Stereos around the apt every day. I don't miss the wireless keyboard / mouse in the slightest.

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#165

Post by SixSigma »

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…

Manufacturers are adding these "features" to differentiate themselves in a marketwhere a dumb TV has lots of competition. The value is questionable but the user only really founds out when it's too late but they already got the actual tv part they wanted so they are not too disappointed.

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#166

Post by harkyns_castle »

chatmasta wrote: post #33
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…

If anyone wants to build it, I would love a website where you could look up any device/program and see a profile of what data it sends out of your house, or what it brings in. Pair it with an open source app to collect the profiles and upload them to the website (somewhat ironically).

Making the collected data machine readable so it could be sucked into snort/firewall rules/redirected etc might prove nice too.

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#168

Post by corford »

nl wrote: post #124
click170 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I say this I feel like a shill because I worked for them briefly, but Sophos has a Home version of their UTM firewall (0). It has pros and cons, but overall I think it's pretty good (even after working there). Some other options include Sonicwall and pfsense, and I encourage others to post their suggestions as well. I haven't used SonicWall, though I have used pfsense strictly as a firewall. (0) http://www…

Any hardware solution recommendations - or things that will run on a RPi/router? I don't like the idea of having to keep a desktop/laptop computer on 24/7.

https://www.pfsense.org/hardware/#pfsense-store

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#169

Post by enobrev »

downandout wrote: post #155

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…

Google led me to Samsung. Under the "Voice Recognition" section [1]

Voice Recognition

You can control your SmartTV, and use many of its features, with voice commands.

If you enable Voice Recognition, you can interact with your Smart TV using your voice. To provide you the Voice Recognition feature, some voice commands may be transmitted (along with information about your device, including device identifiers) to a third-party service that converts speech to text or to the extent necessary to provide the Voice Recognition features to you. In addition, Samsung may collect and your device may capture voice commands and associated texts so that we can provide you with Voice Recognition features and evaluate and improve the features. 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 through your use of Voice Recognition.

If you do not enable Voice Recognition, you will not be able to use interactive voice recognition features, although you may be able to control your TV using certain predefined voice commands. While Samsung will not collect your spoken word, Samsung may still collect associated texts and other usage data so that we can evaluate the performance of the feature and improve it.

You may disable Voice Recognition data collection at any time by visiting the “settings” menu. However, this may prevent you from using all of the Voice Recognition features."

1: http://www.samsung.com/hk_en/info/privacy-SmartTV.html

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#170

Post by squiggy22 »

In the same vein it's worth knowing the privacy policy of providers such as BSkyB

https://accessibility.sky.com/privacy-cookie-notice

Not many people know that an entire profile about what program's you watch on your sky box are linked with the websites you browse through their broadband service to build a profile about you. It's one of the reasons their tv + broadband deal here in the uk is so competitive. Personalised tv ads are then served.

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