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So this is why my TV walked into the bathroom while I was dropping a deuce. 🤔
If just using a Smart TV for a computer monitor, what is the easiest way to keep it from sending your information? Just keeping it away from WiFi? Would it be able to connect via your HDMI?
The other person said to never connect to wifi, but I'd say either put it on an isolated wifi (guest network) and lock it down to LAN-only access in your router, if at all possible.
The reason being that these devices are aggressive about getting a wifi signal, and even if they can't connect to yours, they'll apparently search for unprotected wifi networks and connect to those to send data and phone home. Locking it down to LAN only prevents this, and isolating to a guest network means no information about other devices on your network.
It's utterly insane we have to do this stuff. If you're willing to spend more, there are commercial signage displays you can buy that are essentially dumb TVs, and that is pretty much the only way to get a dumb TV today (and obviously, don't expect smart features from it).
Never connect to wifi. Don't agree to the ToS. It can't connect to your network via hdmi.
We have a PiHole running and the TV makes constant attempts to connect to home-base.
One way to get Congress to act on this would be to remind them of how Robert Bork's video rental history got released. They very quickly realized that they all had the same sleazy movies on their rental list and passed a law making it illegal to share them.
Call your Congressmen and tell them that their smart TV is sending screenshots of whatever they're watching back to home base, including stuff that's not streamed, and there might be swift action.
Better yet, hack Samsung and leak it to the press. That'll definitely light a fire under them.
I blocked my two TVs from phoning home via my pihole. They are the two noisiest devices on my network, by leaps and bounds.
On a day of heavy usage, my phone and desktop may get ~2000 blocked requests combined. That’s high, but not unheard of. It just means I did a lot of browsing, with a lot of blocked ad requests. My TVs average somewhere around 7500 blocked requests per day, on days that I haven’t even turned them on. That’s an attempt to phone home every ~12 seconds. And it is much worse on days that I actually use them.
I got a 42" 4k computer monitor instead
How many times the cost of a comparably-sized Trojan TV did that run you?
To be clear though, that's largely because it is just repeating the same request over and over as it times out and retries. They're a lot less noisy when they actually connect successfully, though it is still undesirable for them to do so.
Jesus dude, what brand TV do you have?
My LG issues a few hundred blocked requests throughout the day with heavy usage. I've never seen it wake up and phone home (my Nintendo Switch does it every hour for some stupid reason)
One is a Samsung, and the other is a Roku. The Roku is a little bit noisier, but not by much.
Maybe i'm stupid, but why would a TV even do that? All it's know is what you're watching today, right? How is that information useful? If you're living with other people, the TV couldn't even know who's watching, that would make the data useless.
Data mining. They know what you watch, when you don't and any other habits you have.
If you have a microphone on your remote or tv, then they also send that data over.
Knowing the distribution of what entire households watch is very useful. It's not about spying on you personally.
..seems rather personal to me.
And what other devices are on the network, and what they're chattering about
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I’m more than happy to buy a TV that uses post-purchase monetization, because I am never going to connect that fucker to the internet. It’s a display. I shall use it as a display. I do not care that it can replace my streaming box. I fully control my streaming box, and I will use that.
If I catch it doing any sketchy shit like trying to use unsecured/Comcast/etc WiFi to phone home, it’ll be time to pull out the screwdriver, though.
What happens when it no longer needs your WiFi and uses something like LoRa to phone home with your data and location? It may not know who you are exactly but it'll have a good guess.
Screwdriver.
on whom?
What's Lora?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoRa (Long Range)
It's a low power, large range connection technology, working a bit like a mesh network. It can achieve data rates between 0.3 kbit/s and 27 kbit/s and enables geolocation services. According to the LoRa Development Portal, the range provided by LoRa can be up to 3 miles (4.8 km) in urban areas, and up to 10 miles (16 km) or more in rural areas (line of sight).
As soon as your LoRa-Device is in range of another LoRa-Device, it will probably be able to phone home.
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Why do we continue to be ok with this? Where is the outrage and call for change?
Because it works and provides a use case. Most "simpletons" do not want to invest any more time in than putting some Account Data and start watching netflix or whatever. "We" (e.g. the people that care about data privacy and stuff) never have been okay with that shit...
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the overwhelming bulk of humanity cant be fucked to care about shit like this.. until it personally affects them.
Then they will wail like banshees about the great injustice of it all, and how could anyone let it happen to them.
It's there, but people forget about it when they can get a 4" bigger TV for 100 bucks less.
Fuckingcapitalists
Ahh yes, unlike all those non-capitalist modern nations with their complete lack of widespread insidious surveillance.
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They called me crazy.
can we just ban online features from tvs, cars, printers, light bulbs etc.
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this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2024
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