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Posted by tortilla 7 days ago

Texas is suing all of the big TV makers for spying on what you watch(www.theverge.com)
1258 points | 641 commentspage 4
saghm 3 days ago|
If I had been told I'd an article today with the phrase "Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton claims..." and asked to predict the remainder of the sentence, a reasonable pro-consumer stance would probably not have been in my top 20 guesses.
29athrowaway 4 days ago||
Disable Internet connection and just use them as a display.
indoordin0saur 5 days ago||
In Soviet Russia TV watches YOU!
DougN7 5 days ago||
It seems like there is a big business opportunity for someone to create a box you attach to your network to filter outgoing info, and incoming ads. Too much work for a tiny team to research what everything is talking to, and MITM your devices and watch DNS queries, etc, but if there was something dead simple to block a Samsung fridge from getting to its ad server, I have to think it would sell.
adolph 5 days ago||
A sibling comment says "just use Pi-hole" which kind of works and is also inadequate. A similar system is Ad Guard Home. These work at the DNS level with preset lists of bad domains. They aren't necessarily going to catch your TV calling out to notanadserver.samsung.com because that domain name is not recorded in the list of naughty domains. They are definitely not going to help if your device reaches out via IP.

Another approach is to disallow all DNS or only allow *.netflix.com for the TV. In my experience attempting to only allow certain domains is a game of whackamole where everyone in the house complains their stuff is broken because it needs undocumentedrandomdomain.com.

gruez 5 days ago||
>Another approach is to disallow all DNS or only allow *.netflix.com for the TV. In my experience attempting to only allow certain domains is a game of whackamole where everyone in the house complains their stuff is broken because it needs undocumentedrandomdomain.com.

...not to mention that apps have random third party SDKs that are required, and might not work if you block those domains. A/B testing/feature flags SDKs, and DRMs (for provisioning keys) come to mind.

sxates 5 days ago|||
That exists, it's called a pi-hole, and it's very popular. It will block the 'tv spy' apps.
jimt1234 5 days ago|||
I tried using a Pi-hole for this exact reason: prevent bullcrap TV ads. My Roku TV wouldn't stopped working. I had to whitelist so many roku-related domains that it basically became pointless.
travem 5 days ago||
I had the same issue, decided to remove Roku instead…

I used to have a Roku TV, plus a a few of the standalone Roku Ultras for my other (non-Roku) TVs. I got a full page advert when I started up the TV one day and started the process of replacing them all (I think it is when Roku were experimenting with that).

Over about a year I replaced them with Apple TVs* and the user experience is far better, plus the amount of tracking domains reported by Pi-hole dropped precipitously! The TVs don't have internet access at all, they are just driven via the HDMI port now.

* I replaced the Ultras first, and when the Roku TV eventually started acting laggy on the apps I replaced the Roku TV as well.

DougN7 4 days ago|||
I thought of pi-hole but I’m not sure it is dead simple. I’m thinking a box that your incoming internet connections connects to and an outgoing connection to your wifi router.

The market probably isn’t big enough yet, but I’ll bet it grows. I mean _Texas_ is bringing it up!

globular-toast 4 days ago||
Encryption works against you when the attacker is inside your network. The solution is to keep them out.
brewdad 5 days ago|||
Until Samsung builds a fridge that won't cool if it goes more than some period of time (a week?) without pinging their servers. They'd probably get away with it given the friction of getting a large appliance out of your home and back to the store. Bonus evil points for making this feature active only after the return/warranty period expires.
packetlost 5 days ago||
You probably overestimate the market for something like that. Most people don't know or care. Those that do are more likely to hang out on HN or adjacent places and know how to deal with it themselves anyways.
danielodievich 4 days ago||
It gives me distinct pleasure to see the little network cable plug from the cable coming from TV be sticking just so half-way out of the network switch enough so that I can easily plug it back in without hunting for it behind all the equipment, but also enough to know it can't talk to anything.
Cthulhu_ 4 days ago||
> accusing them of “secretly recording what consumers watch in their own homes.”

Secret? There's T's&C's that people agree to when starting up their TV that tells them.

That doesn't make it right of course and it shouldn't just be opt-in, it should be banned entirely. If you want to analyse my viewing behaviour, pay me.

moooo99 4 days ago||
I would be curious to see a comparison of the T&Cs in these TVs.

I generally agree that reading the T&C is on the user and you cannot blame the lack if transparency onto the company, IF the T&C are sufficiently comprehensible. Some T&Cs I‘ve read are written in obscure enough legalese that it might as well be considered hidden information

lodovic 4 days ago||
So you buy a new TV, unpack and install it, and then when the whole family is gathered around, you suddenly get this confirmation on the TV if you agree with their T&C. Are you supposed to reject them and return the TV at this point? T&C should be part of the purchase agreement, instead of being forced upon the user while using the product after purchase. Any one-sided change of T&C after purchase should be invalid and punishable.
rcMgD2BwE72F 4 days ago||
It's secret because they don't tell you exactly what they record and how. Can you?
sycren 4 days ago||
So what if a large TV is being used to cast business information in a meeting?

It's ironic that Sony as a media producer and TV maker could be streaming copyrighted images for an algorithm to use.

Could this be used as an example from AI companies on the use of copyrighted images for training data?

1yvino 5 days ago||
surprising to see that this lawsuit hasn't originated from CA given the privacy laws that was established such as CCPA.
dredmorbius 4 days ago|
California is friendlier to both advertising (Google, Facebook) and entertainment (Hollywood, generally), which might tip the balance.

But yes.

herodotus 4 days ago||
What bugs me is that it is impossible to buy a TV these days that is not "smart". (Of course I know I can just not connect it to the internet, and I don't, but I wish there was a company in the TV market which would make privacy a selling point).
he0001 4 days ago|
Isn’t this a thing for all providers? YouTube definitely spies on what you look at and Netflix knows as well. Or is this just because a TV actually doesn’t provide the content, just the view? And is there’s a difference if you have a streaming device like Roku?
lingrush4 4 days ago|
Content providers knowing when I watch their content is not concerning to me. They're on the other side of a transaction with me; they have as much a right to store the details of the transaction as I do. Even Blockbuster had that information.

What's concerning is when third parties start snooping on transactions that they are not involved in.

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