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Smart TVs sending sensitive user data to Netflix and Facebook

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Re: Smart TVs sending sensitive user data to Netflix and Facebook

#421

Post by tjoff »

downtide wrote: post #403
Kaiyou wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you be sure it's offline? Possibly it has wireless capabilities that work without your consent..

We have a house without any Internet connection - that would require at least a mobile link.

Don't worry, in a few years they will have their own sim card and network.

This behavior is despicable and we must not accept it just because "I wouldn't connect the network cable/wifi anyway". Because one day that isn't an option and by then it is already too late.

Re: Smart TVs sending sensitive user data to Netflix and Facebook

#422

Post by pacman128 »

cortesoft wrote: post #144
LynxInLA wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is surprising. I've had my Kindles on airplane mode for up to a year and haven't received any notices like that.

Do you have the ad supported version?

My ad supported Kindle Paperwhite has never turned off airplane mode either. I only turn off airplane mode when I have a new book to download to it and turn it back on afterward.

Re: Smart TVs sending sensitive user data to Netflix and Facebook

#423

Post by sbarre »

obmelvin wrote: post #117
mikeryan wrote: post #50

This is a pretty open secret within the industry. Geographic data can be provided via setup (a lot of TV's ask for a zip code on setup) or usually simply via GeoIP lookup. Dig a bit deeper and you get into service provided by Samba TV and or Inscape and you can find that they're sending back frames of video in a lot of cases to track what you're watching. This data is becoming a huge mechanism for subsidizing TV sale…

Roku enabled TVs very clearly send back frames of what you are watching. I've been watching YouTube casted via chromecast plugged into HDMI (NOT the built in chromecast, I have verified multiple times) and the Roku will give me a full width toast saying to press `*` to watch the full movie or some similar contextual option I was pretty put off the first time this happened. That said, I don't even know if I looked thr…

This is a good reason for a pi-hole type of ad blocker on your network.

When I noticed my Roku TV was sending something to some remote analytics or tracking server every 30 seconds whenever it was turned on, I just blocked everything coming from it.

Eventually though I factory-reset it and didn't bother connecting it to the network at all. All the on-TV apps are junk and I'd rather just use an Apple TV (which sends it's own analytics, I know).

Re: Smart TVs sending sensitive user data to Netflix and Facebook

#425

Post by leni536 »

sjwright wrote: post #408
leni536 wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it's much less likely if the exposed antenna connector is properly terminated.

Or maybe grounding it? I bet if you mash a little ball of tinfoil into the connector, any residual chance of it working will evaporate.

Who knows? This could make a nice little experiment.

   1. Leave the antenna connected
   2. Unplug the antenna, leave the connector unterminated.
   3. Terminate the connector with ball of tinfoil.
   4. Use a proper impedance matched termination.
   5. Terminate with a proper impedance as close to the wifi chip as possible
   5./b Also cut the antenna trace on the PCB as close to the chip as possible
   Measure signal strength in all scenarios.

Re: Smart TVs sending sensitive user data to Netflix and Facebook

#426

Post by dTal »

zeta0134 wrote: post #377
chillydawg wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(UK) my new Virgin media cable box came with a hdmi cable that said "hdmi with ethernet" on the side. It's plugged into my TV (which has WiFi disabled) and as far as I can tell it's not leaking a gateway or anything but it could well be. Regardless: security nightmare.

The HDMI with ethernet thing is probably a lot more benign than you would think. Ethernet is simply one of the many protocols that HDMI can use for its communication across that wire, in addition to the video feed; as a result that ends up on the package. Very few television sets even support the feature in any capacity; it's generally more practical to just use wifi. Besides that, a cable company's set top box doesn…

>Besides that, a cable company's set top box doesn't need to use any fancy HDMI tricks to snoop on what you're watching at any given moment: the cable box does that for them.

I believe they were worried about the reverse - the (isolated, wifi-disabled) Smart TV using ethernet-over-HDMI to phone home.

Re: Smart TVs sending sensitive user data to Netflix and Facebook

#427

Post by amaccuish »

derefr wrote: post #121
arcticbull wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flight mode exists because the FAA applies unsafe-until-proven-safe methodology to everything flight related (as they should). If flight mode mattered at all planes would be falling out of the sky on the regular, many people just leave their phones on the whole trip. The only reason I turn my phone off is because it wastes a lot of battery as it tries to manage tower hopping the whole time. Planes are getting blasted…

IIRC there isn't a problem for most of the flight; but right as you're ascending/descending your phone can end up getting a very weak line-of-sight connection to a whole bunch of cell towers at once, which causes a few different problems, but all of which come down to "it makes both your phone, and all the towers, shout really loudly at one-another to try to achieve a circuit." Which, sure, means that there might be…

I think this is some psuedo-science/old wives tale...

Re: Smart TVs sending sensitive user data to Netflix and Facebook

#428

Post by petepete »

throw03172019 wrote: post #36

I disabled WiFi on my Samsung TV after they were injecting ads into the home screen. Spend $800 to get ads served in their shitty/slow UI.

I wrote a guide on blocking them via DNS, but installing a Pi-Hole is a good alternative that will save your whole network.

https://gist.github.com/peteryates/b44b70d19ccd52f62d66cdd4b...

Re: Smart TVs sending sensitive user data to Netflix and Facebook

#429

Post by Liquid_Fire »

jchrome wrote: post #239
Silhouette wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure about this? If the TV really is phoning home with whatever is on the screen, including anything personal the owner might happen to be displaying, that's a vast set of lawsuits waiting to happen. The GDPR fines alone could be staggering. I could easily imagine spyware logging whatever TV shows you're streaming and the like, but it's hard to imagine any business in this industry having lawyers dumb enough…

It’s called ACR data and it’s very common. And yes, TVs are phoning home with it. And GDPR only requires that you opt in. So when you sign into the TV for the first time, it gives you an opt in choice and many do it. The States is less regulated but will be soon.

GDPR can be quite strict on consent. See for example the UK's ICO guidelines. A sample of them:

> We don’t use pre-ticked boxes or any other type of default consent.

> We use clear, plain language that is easy to understand.

> We specify why we want the data and what we’re going to do with it.

> We give separate distinct (‘granular’) options to consent separately to different purposes and types of processing.

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protectio...

These are of course just guidelines, but if you don't explicitly inform your users that you will be sending images of what's on the screen over the Internet, you are likely to get in trouble. (And no, a giant EULA-type wall of text probably wouldn't be sufficient)

Re: Smart TVs sending sensitive user data to Netflix and Facebook

#430

Post by TeMPOraL »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #365
cyanbane wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do Doctor's that use TVs like this in meeting rooms get around HIPAA? or other places with PII, etc? With so much stuff being thrown to TVs now, a lot of times they are inheriently monitors, and there are very few people who think taking a screenshot of a monitor is not invasive.

I'm fairly sure there's a line of TVs for "industrial" purposes (e.g. the ones you see in airports) that are both hardened and lack any privacy invasive features - however, they come at a premium. Which is always the issue - people want a 65" TV, but they don't want to spend $6000 on it. But if they can have it for $2000 (for example) they're all over it, glossing over the mostly unobtrusive privacy invasion that goe…

And if there's a vendor that can sell that same TV without the privacy invasion for $4000, it can't even compete. This way, honest players are priced out of the market. This pattern is so predictable that I maintain advertising needs to be aggressively curtailed.
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