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Why Does My Remote Control Need to Know My Location?

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Re: Why Does My Remote Control Need to Know My Location?

#91

Post by [deleted] »

conesus wrote: post #45
lultimouomo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi! You might be interested to know that the Turn Touch homepage starts playing audio as soon as it is opened. This was enough for me to close it and never come back, and I think this sentiment is reasonably widespread. I'm genuinely curios about the reason some people decide to add audio (or video for that matter, but audio is way worse) on autoplay. Do you enjoy when web pages you visit do it? Did you see from some…

Yikes! It's part of a hidden video that shouldn't play until you explicitly open it. What's your browser/OS? I tested on Chrome, Safari, and FF on mac as well as iOS. I also just added a muted attribute to the `video` tag so it should no longer do that even if I messed up the JS for some browser somewhere. I encourage you to try it once again to confirm.

[deleted]

Re: Why Does My Remote Control Need to Know My Location?

#92

Post by TuringNYC »

illegalsmile wrote: post #85
TuringNYC wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found Dropbox to be notorious with this. Their business plan used to be only $150/yr (Fine Print: you pay minimum 3 seats.) That magically changed to five seats at some point and now the $150/yr suddenly shows up as $750/yr auto-renewed and almost impossible to cancel.

Is there not an alternative to Dropbox that offers better service for the same if not lower cost? I understand that they could pull the same bait and switch on you but maybe there are providers who wouldn't do that or grandfather you in.

I eventually completely terminated the account and moved to Google Drive. I got lured into DropBox because I was an editor to a book that required DropBox to access manuscripts.

The way they were set up, I ended up having to upgrade to a business user given the shared file sizes I was editing (had something to do with the book publisher being on a business account as well.) I ended up paying more for DropBox than I even made as an editor. Brutal.

It felt like a mobile phone contract: seemingly inexpensive, sneaky, convoluted, and before you know you have a gigantic bill committed to for the year.

That is why i cut the cord on my cable tv. I dont understand how companies can accept the ill-will of bait-and-switch tactics -- is it really more profitable than an upfront deal where each party feels it was an honest deal? I mean, I dont mind paying...but I want know know what i'll be paying and decide accordingly. Cable TV is a virtual monopoly, but DropBox is not and I dont know how they can deal with ill-will from former customers, once bit twice shy.

Re: Why Does My Remote Control Need to Know My Location?

#93

Post by bbulkow »

seanalltogether wrote: post #82
codetrotter wrote: post #12

> Google, in its wisdom, has tied "Location" into things like BLE Scanning and WiFi scanning. The excuse is that you can use these things as a proxy for location. That is, if I know you are near access point X your location is probably near Y. It’s not an “excuse”, it’s a fact. If you allow an app to scan SSIDs you are allowing it to know your location. No amount of sarcasm on the part of OP is going to change that.

But this is a failure on Googles part to not have a streamlined api for detecting external devices, a feature which is becoming more and more popular with smart devices. Apple has protocols like WAC that you can conform to and be visible to an iOS user without anything special. Inside your app you hand off control to the user to identify and pair that device so that you as a developer don't need special permissions a…

This seems the classic 'ease of use' vs privacy. Google has done the right thing for privacy, because an app that can scan for ssid can determine location and report it if it has any outside connection. Good for google to equate the two, this was always a well known hole.

One suggestion- please update your blog, if this thread convinces you that Google did the right thing. Those posts hang around and impact product engineering.

What kind of api would you propose? The only one i can think of is one that says 'connect to x' instead of 'list all ssid', which still tells you about location but not a lot.

I occasionally think about g+ shutdown, and how Google engineered quite a bit for privacy, and removed things like games that leak location and quizzes, and forced people to create groups, which is the right thing but people liked the rich experience of facebook. Now that many are fleeibg from fb, they can't go to g+.

Sorry to thread-jack. Clearly i have a blog post pent up.

Re: Why Does My Remote Control Need to Know My Location?

#94

Post by duiker101 »

illegalsmile wrote: post #85
TuringNYC wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found Dropbox to be notorious with this. Their business plan used to be only $150/yr (Fine Print: you pay minimum 3 seats.) That magically changed to five seats at some point and now the $150/yr suddenly shows up as $750/yr auto-renewed and almost impossible to cancel.

Is there not an alternative to Dropbox that offers better service for the same if not lower cost? I understand that they could pull the same bait and switch on you but maybe there are providers who wouldn't do that or grandfather you in.

I use mega.nz, I don't know how it compares but I am very happy with it.

Re: Why Does My Remote Control Need to Know My Location?

#95

Post by MayeulC »

hedora wrote: post #78
derriz wrote: post #13

At least they acknowledged it, responded to the feedback and fixed it. Unfortunately I have a Sonos system which became effectively bricked unless I signed a new user agreement allowing the collection of data. There are no physical controls on Sonos so the system becomes useless without accepting. They used to sell dedicated controllers/remotes years ago but these were also bricked as part of an upgrade about a year…

Does anyone know of a good (from a privacy and usability perspective) alternative to Sonos? I plan to buy 5-6 of them sometime later this year, and for what that costs, they have no excuse to data-harvest me.

Well, there's snapcast that allows you to relatively simply build an alternative, but I don't know if anyone builds and sells ready-made products.

You can probably go by using a couple raspberry pis (or any ARM board with a jack output), a preconfigured SD card image, and some external speakers. I don't know the price of Sonos speakers, but I don't think it would be much higher. I guess someone could even create a business out of this, especially if tailoring the PCBs to the task.

Re: Why Does My Remote Control Need to Know My Location?

#96

Post by e40 »

conesus wrote: post #34
derriz wrote: post #13

At least they acknowledged it, responded to the feedback and fixed it. Unfortunately I have a Sonos system which became effectively bricked unless I signed a new user agreement allowing the collection of data. There are no physical controls on Sonos so the system becomes useless without accepting. They used to sell dedicated controllers/remotes years ago but these were also bricked as part of an upgrade about a year…

If you're interested, I sell a dedicated Sonos music controller (built out of wood no less). It's available at https://turntouch.com and it's entirely open source so you don't have to worry about me taking your data and selling it. Earning money based on the initial sale is all that I want out of my users. That and props.

Can I ask how it works to protect my data from Sonos? Don't they still get all the same data?

Re: Why Does My Remote Control Need to Know My Location?

#97

Post by conesus »

e40 wrote: post #96
conesus wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're interested, I sell a dedicated Sonos music controller (built out of wood no less). It's available at https://turntouch.com and it's entirely open source so you don't have to worry about me taking your data and selling it. Earning money based on the initial sale is all that I want out of my users. That and props.

Can I ask how it works to protect my data from Sonos? Don't they still get all the same data?

What you do with the remote is between you and what you control. I store anonymous metrics that I use to gauge usage levels but you can turn that off. Sonos undoubtedly takes your listening habits and profits off that data but Turn Touch does not, even though it has access to that data.

Re: Why Does My Remote Control Need to Know My Location?

#98

Post by bbeekley »

hedora wrote: post #78
derriz wrote: post #13

At least they acknowledged it, responded to the feedback and fixed it. Unfortunately I have a Sonos system which became effectively bricked unless I signed a new user agreement allowing the collection of data. There are no physical controls on Sonos so the system becomes useless without accepting. They used to sell dedicated controllers/remotes years ago but these were also bricked as part of an upgrade about a year…

Does anyone know of a good (from a privacy and usability perspective) alternative to Sonos? I plan to buy 5-6 of them sometime later this year, and for what that costs, they have no excuse to data-harvest me.

What were you looking to get out of a Sonos? If you just want something that can play music wirelessly from various devices, I'd recommend getting a pair of bookshelf speakers and plugging them into one of (Airport Express, Chromecast Audio, Raspberry Pi[1]). You won't be locked into Sonos and generally bookshelf speakers sound better than all-in-one units. I'd love to recommend some speakers if you're interested (e.g. [2]).

I have run a few Airport Expresses for the past 10 years and love them. Older models are cheap ([1] https://support.hifiberry.com/hc/en-us/articles/205699981-Ho...

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Micca-PB42X-Powered-Bookshelf-Speaker...

Re: Why Does My Remote Control Need to Know My Location?

#99

Post by leggomylibro »

lazyjones wrote: post #76
bunderbunder wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law could include a ban on firmware updates that subsequently introduce and require sensitive data collection post-purchase. That said, I'm not sure you can really pin this down. It's probably better to just assume that any device that requires a wi-fi connection to work is phoning home until proven otherwise. And you have to assume that any device that phones home is collecting data. It's not even a secret that…

> The law could include a ban on firmware updates that subsequently introduce and require sensitive data collection post-purchase. This is IMHO a broader issue with products that receive firmware or OTA updates, it's probably legally a breach of contract already to modify products after sale and change functionality to the disadvantage of the consumer.

Example off the top of my head: you have devices in the field which have not received an update since they were purchased 10 years ago.

A common crypto algorithm gets broken to a degree where it is phased out of use industry-wide to prevent leaking user data, MitM attacks, etc.

But once you flip the switch on that old crypto algorithm, your old devices can no longer be updated without a complex manual process (good luck getting the group of users who have never updated to do that,) and the devices will stop working with any secure online connectivity the users have been used to having (purchasing, downloading, etc.)

You have been trying to let users choose how they use their devices, but now they are upset that you broke their product, which they purchased in a working state. What do you do? This is a very small number of people and the years of accommodating them is getting very expensive, but you want to do right by them.

Re: Why Does My Remote Control Need to Know My Location?

#100

Post by PurpleBoxDragon »

ajmurmann wrote: post #75
derriz wrote: post #13

At least they acknowledged it, responded to the feedback and fixed it. Unfortunately I have a Sonos system which became effectively bricked unless I signed a new user agreement allowing the collection of data. There are no physical controls on Sonos so the system becomes useless without accepting. They used to sell dedicated controllers/remotes years ago but these were also bricked as part of an upgrade about a year…

Come to think of it, this is the real work rivaled of an API breaking change. It seems entirely reasonable to that we should have regulation that prohibits this kind of change after you've already purchased the product. But then again, in a sane system, you should either need to sign the user agreement for anything at purchase time or be allowed to return a device whenever you encounter a the (new) user agreement. Cu…

A sane system would consider the knowledge and power differences between the average individual and the corporate lawyers who wrote the agreement, along with the one sided nature of the agreement, and void any consent as not having been possible to give. Likely the agreement would be treated as one signed by a child, where the more powerful party is the only one bound by it.
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