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The House That Spied on Me

gizmodo.com

31–40 of 73 posts

Re: The House That Spied on Me

#31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remove ghostery and install privacy badger instead https://www.eff.org/privacybadger

I rolled with the Badger for a while, but I've moved away from it and toward a more network wide approach. Can't install plugins on my devices, and I don't want thirteen different browsers on my tablet. And my Xbox is stuck with Internet Explo-- I mean Microsoft Edge -- so I need a more comprehensive solution. And this article only points out more reasons why that is becoming necessary. But my stack is ugly and kludg…

Maybe the pihole is for you, then? Certainly the price is right to try it.

https://pi-hole.net/

Re: The House That Spied on Me

#32
post #7
post #2

This was brilliant and disturbing. The legal implications are crazy---even if the owner of the house has agreed to the EULAs of all the devices, their visitors have not. Is their a legal obligation to notify visitors that data about them is being generated, collected, snooped through, and potentially sold? If people could be made more informed of what their devices are saying (and to whom) perhaps they'd be more relu…

> If people could be made more informed I'd really really really like to see some AR glasses that would somehow visualize all sorts of invisible things: radio traffic (incl. special indication of weak encryption and non-encrypted communications), ultrasound and infrared tags, location of detectable microphones and cameras - all sorts of things like this, whatever can be detected. Like, look at the smart TV and be awa…

Hmm, triangulation is what happened to give Strava user's home location away with privacy zones. I also read the other day how multiple mics ("smart speakers" etc) can help locate someone's movement throughout a house. There's also smartphones who have infrared cameras on them like the CAT S60. And there's research where Bluetooth and WiFi can be used to assess if someone's home, and where their WiFi devices are located. Finally, I saw this picture with regards to 5G [1]. None of this is about AR glasses but I still thought it was interesting. Because the AR glasses part -even though AR isn't widespread- builds upon all of the above examples as input data.

[1] http://ictvietnam.vn/files/tccntt/source_files/2017/01/27/06...

Re: The House That Spied on Me

#33
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The TV still works if it's not connected to the internet. Just buy a smart TV, never connect it to the internet, and get third party streaming sticks instead.

I wouldn’t be surprised if at some point, the first time you turn on your new TV, you’re prompted with an unskippable “Create your Vizio account” screen or some such nastiness.

Like Android.

Re: The House That Spied on Me

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need a concentrated effort to move solutions like Ghostery and Ad Block Plus up the chain, from the browser in to the router. And we need to make it user friendly and sexy. And for what it's worth, I don't like in Ghostery, a plugin I run to try and stem the tide of tracking, how many times it begs me to send usage data and create an account. That's literally the opposite of why I downloaded you, Ghostery.

Remove ghostery and install privacy badger instead https://www.eff.org/privacybadger

Try umatrix. https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix

Re: The House That Spied on Me

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet when I try to tell people why copyleft ala GPLv3 that prevents tivoization is so important I get shouted out of the room. I should have the ability to root and control the linux on my smarttv. Full stop. This is part of the problem. The same goes with things like phones. This is why both android and ios are NOT the mobile os of the future. They restrict the user from truly owning their device, and I'm fed up with…

> This is why both android and ios are NOT the mobile os of the future. I too would like a more open OS for mobiles, but you have to realize that the majority of users doesn't care about this. They are unconcerned about most privacy issues, don't need to ever tinker at a low level with their devices, and they are the ones ultimately deciding on what the future will be. What matters is the UI, and that the various fea…

> the majority of users doesn't care about this

Only because they don't know what is going on.

Re: The House That Spied on Me

#36
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with "smart" TVs is that infrequently there is no choice but to get those and try to minimize the damage. Despite all their advantages "dumb" TVs are getting less and less popular.

No, there's still plenty of them on the market; they're just marketed under the name "monitor" instead of "television".

Are monitors the size of large televisions comparable in price?

Re: The House That Spied on Me

#37

> Almost every TV on the market now is connected—because otherwise how do you Netflix and chill? If you buy a "smart" TV, refuse to connect it to the internet and just get an Apple TV/Chromecast/whatever.

I tried to do this and just use my PS4 for apps, but my wife thoughtlessly accepted the TOS on the tv within 2 days. We still don't use the apps on the tv though.

Disconnect it from your WiFi and change password. If you're not using the apps, there's no reason for it to be on your network, right?

Re: The House That Spied on Me

#38

these smart homes bring up ethical dilemas. I worked for a company and someone got a home automation kit. It monitored comings and goings. They looked at the logs and realized the dog walker one day did a really short walk. How do you broach this? Do you bother for an otherwise responsible walker. I worked for a power monitoring company that put a box in your house, monitored power use for each circuit breaker. The C…

> The CEO noticed that his house cleaners turned on lights in all the rooms and turned them off as they finished cleaning them.

That's pretty clever, actually.

Re: The House That Spied on Me

#39
post #28

these smart homes bring up ethical dilemas. I worked for a company and someone got a home automation kit. It monitored comings and goings. They looked at the logs and realized the dog walker one day did a really short walk. How do you broach this? Do you bother for an otherwise responsible walker. I worked for a power monitoring company that put a box in your house, monitored power use for each circuit breaker. The C…

When obama said we need a more 21st century efficient power grid, i thought that sounds great. i thought that meant better equipment and lines that doesnt waste as much electricity, nope. it meant 'smart meters' that can tell all sorts of things about us. they didnt want to save electricity, they wanted our data. The city wanted to install one of those smart meters in my home, i refused. but I was told that unless i…

Question: what does the smart meter tell them that monitoring your usage otherwise wouldn't?

Re: The House That Spied on Me

#40

Somewhat off topic, but anyone else think it's kinda weird that an article about data privacy has so many third party tracking scripts? I know it's sitewide on every article from the mothership, Gizmodo, but still...

The article is about the tradeoff. the website makes tradeoffs
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