You can get a large monitor with no smart tv features and just use it like a tv, however those are also starting to disappear and be replaced by “smart monitors”
I became fully aware of this when a few months ago, my Xiaomi smart TV turned on by itself and displayed an AD to subscribe to Netflix (I did have the Netflix app installed because I had an account a while ago, but I had already unsubscribed, I simply forgot to uninstall the app).
Needless to say, from that moment onwards, no wifi and no ethernet for the TV. I got an Xbox with Kodi connected to it. I am not saying the Xbox is immune to data harvesting (probably they collect a fair bit), but feels less intrusive and obnoxious than the whole package of the smart TV.
What they're attempting to do seems fundamentally impossible to me. Personalization requires there is a specific person tied to the output. With phones and PCs, that's a fairly reasonable assumption. With a television, it quite often isn't. Services allow you to create individual "who is watching" profiles, but the reality at least for my family is no one uses those. We all watch from the same account and same profile. We also watch together, in which case there is no answer to a question that assumes only one person can watch at a time. Sometimes, no one is watching and the stream is simply left on while everyone is sleeping or out of the house and autoplay is streaming to an empty room. Sometimes, we leave things on intentionally for the cats. My wife has ADHD and puts something on only to walk away two minutes later, but it's still on.
In some extremely dystopian future that I'm sure is coming quickly, a television may be equipped with video surveillance capability that can identify eyeballs in real time and decide exactly what animal is viewing what part of the screen and estimate from bloodflow in the face and pupil dilation the extent to which they care and are paying attention, but we're definitely not there yet.
Right now, this is still just snake oil they're selling to ad buyers. Why I get almost all fast food, beer, and insurance ads, even though I don't drink, haven't eaten fast food since 2002, and haven't changed insurance providers since 2008.
The title and subject sound like they are about smart TVs, but the example problems sound like they are about streaming in general, which might be streamed from my cable box, or on my computer monitor. Are the streaming issues really limited to the smart TVs?
I think everything spies these days, I don’t know why the government is not just cutting all of that off with privacy laws. They’re attacking the heads but this stuff is like a hydra. Just pass a comprehensive law against data harvesting and pro-privacy.
The linked report has a lot to say specifically about smart TVs as well as specific streaming services and platforms. Smart TVs are a major part of the problem, but far from the only thing to be concerned about.
There isn't any way to allow certain streaming services via a firewall whitelist, but block all the extraneous connections a TV might make is there? (As the TV manufacturer might use the same CDNs/IP ranges as legitimate services?), ideally without hacking about with the TV itself.
Or would it be best just to never connect the TV to a network and use a computer to access streaming services.
Yes, generally that concept is possible. I don't know of software that makes a whitelist firewall easy to use. You also run into problems when your streaming provider updates ip addresses or cdn DNS names, which can be frequent. The other issue with this is that the streaming provider that you pay might also be adversarial. You may want to allow some of their traffic but not other. So you end up maintaining some kind of list that can break your streaming experience if you don't maintain it.
As content providers consolidate on shared infrastructure (AWS, gcp, etc) the chances of good and bad actors using the same IP increases. This decreases the effectiveness of firewalls that operate on ip:port matching. Most firewalls do this.
Realistically, what you probably want as a tech savvy consumer is home network level DNS blacklist. It is not a firewall and it doesn't technically block traffic. It does prevent traffic from leaving the device if the DNS the device wants to send to is blacklisted. This exists (pihole) and can be added to a network fairly quickly. Bad actors could bypass your DNS or use known ips directly. Whitelisting dns would also work with the caveat that you'll need to update the list frequently and I don't think pihole was designed for this.
All of that is fairly complicated. A wireless keyboard and mouse and HDMI cable are cheap and laptops are plentiful. You will have the same adversarial content provider issues with a laptop, though. Scriptsafe and ublock can help. Laptops actually shut down when you tell them to. Your tv is probably on even when the screen is off.
I made this decision recently when I inherited a Sony TV with a house. It has not been connected to a network and I use a laptop to stream. I also run pihole, scriptsafe, ublock, and I pay for most of my streaming providers. They're still getting data on me, but less than most people.
The cool thing is when you buy it and the manufacturer decides to assault you months down the line with software updates against your will that add malicious advertising and bullshit to your TV.
Love that predatory bullshit, and it keeps on happening with every TV platform.
486sx33|1 year ago
EVERYTHING is a damn smart tv now
20after4|1 year ago
sickofparadox|1 year ago
[1]https://www.sceptre.com/TV/4K-UHD-TV-category1category73.htm...
gruez|1 year ago
mgh2|1 year ago
goalonetwo|1 year ago
abcd_f|1 year ago
krunck|1 year ago
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/02/samsung_telev...
Any "Smart" TV that has a camera to see who is watching (to customize content and ads) does just that...
Scotch3297|1 year ago
Needless to say, from that moment onwards, no wifi and no ethernet for the TV. I got an Xbox with Kodi connected to it. I am not saying the Xbox is immune to data harvesting (probably they collect a fair bit), but feels less intrusive and obnoxious than the whole package of the smart TV.
nonameiguess|1 year ago
In some extremely dystopian future that I'm sure is coming quickly, a television may be equipped with video surveillance capability that can identify eyeballs in real time and decide exactly what animal is viewing what part of the screen and estimate from bloodflow in the face and pupil dilation the extent to which they care and are paying attention, but we're definitely not there yet.
Right now, this is still just snake oil they're selling to ad buyers. Why I get almost all fast food, beer, and insurance ads, even though I don't drink, haven't eaten fast food since 2002, and haven't changed insurance providers since 2008.
quantified|1 year ago
ok_dad|1 year ago
autoexec|1 year ago
add-sub-mul-div|1 year ago
anfractuosity|1 year ago
Or would it be best just to never connect the TV to a network and use a computer to access streaming services.
tmerc|1 year ago
As content providers consolidate on shared infrastructure (AWS, gcp, etc) the chances of good and bad actors using the same IP increases. This decreases the effectiveness of firewalls that operate on ip:port matching. Most firewalls do this.
Realistically, what you probably want as a tech savvy consumer is home network level DNS blacklist. It is not a firewall and it doesn't technically block traffic. It does prevent traffic from leaving the device if the DNS the device wants to send to is blacklisted. This exists (pihole) and can be added to a network fairly quickly. Bad actors could bypass your DNS or use known ips directly. Whitelisting dns would also work with the caveat that you'll need to update the list frequently and I don't think pihole was designed for this.
All of that is fairly complicated. A wireless keyboard and mouse and HDMI cable are cheap and laptops are plentiful. You will have the same adversarial content provider issues with a laptop, though. Scriptsafe and ublock can help. Laptops actually shut down when you tell them to. Your tv is probably on even when the screen is off.
I made this decision recently when I inherited a Sony TV with a house. It has not been connected to a network and I use a laptop to stream. I also run pihole, scriptsafe, ublock, and I pay for most of my streaming providers. They're still getting data on me, but less than most people.
a-french-anon|1 year ago
trod123|1 year ago
kotaKat|1 year ago
Love that predatory bullshit, and it keeps on happening with every TV platform.
schainks|1 year ago