Terms of Service (TOS) Under Scrutiny - Part VI - TVs That Transmit Personal Data Everywhere, Sometimes by 'Accident'
TODAY'S somewhat belated part is still an easy and much earlier (than the 'meat') part. It's only preliminary and represents a warm-up, so it's good to see it coinciding with the blog post "The Present and Future of TV Surveillance" by Bruce Schneier, who says "Ars Technica has a good article on what’s happening in the world of television surveillance. More than even I realized."
Wow, what a timing!
Yesterday we published "Terms of Service (TOS) Under Scrutiny - Part V - Haunted Homes With Automatic Content Recognition (ACR), Cameras, and Microphones on Televisions" and, as promised, here are the lecture/presentation notes which accompany a more detailed breakdown with real-world examples:
TV List
The following TVs are included in the reference link to disable ACR.
Amazon Fire TV
Edition TVs
Android and Google TVs
LG TVs: Samsung TVs:
Smart televisions were transmitting data without user permission.
Roku TVs
Samsung TVs:
2018 - Bravia bug. This allowed anyone to connect to the same LAN and remotely access the television without any authentication.
Sony TVs:
Vizio TVs: 2017 caught collecting and SELLING data without asking permission from users! Fined by the FTC. Read and "watch" the Privacy Policy agreement.
Protect Your Privacy - from the Television
Smart TVs spying on you is an issue. By using a VPN or changing settings, you can protect your privacy.
In 2018, Sony Bravia TVs had a bug that allowed anyone to connect to the same local network and access the TV remotely without authentication. LG Smart TVs were found to be transmitting data without user permission as well.
Protect your privacy
Stopping your Smart TV from spying on you isn’t that challenging if you follow the methods listed below. This way, you can easily safeguard your online information against prying eyes.
VPN
Cyberghost
ExpressVPN
ExpressVPN: takes minutes to install, but does cost. Right now, there is a discount - not sure how long this deal will last.
https://expressvpn.com/go/vpn-software/vpn-smart-tv
Reference
How to Stop Your Smart TV From Spying on You — 5 Tried-And-Tested
Methods Stopping your Smart TV from spying on you isn’t that challenging if you follow the methods listed below
Of course one other option is to turn down (or return) any "smart" TV some company is trying to shoehorn into your home. We recently heard of and wrote about (also did a video on) such stories.
"Modern" does not always mean better; it tends to be better for advertisers and data brokers, sure, but their interests are orthogonal to others'.
We'll go into more pertinent TOS details later in the series. To better understand how states (or spy agencies) tap onto "smart" TVs see Vault 7 (CIA cracking tools). So really, the best solution to all this is to reject the entire class of appliances.
Old televisions still exist and many still work. Invidious project on an old laptop can also do the trick. There's no lack of "content" in Invidious (YouTube basically, without YouTube!). █
