Smart TVs are like “a digital Trojan Horse” in people’s homes

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/10/streaming-industry-has-unprecedented-surveillance-manipulation-capabilities/

26 Comments

  1. Not really, I just said no to all their demands when I set the TV up. Now it works really well for casting from my laptop /s

  2. It’s simple. Do not allow the device to connect to the internet. Use a purpose built PC in a VPN to drive it as a monitor.

  3. One more attack vector for privacy. Aside from what we already have which most couldn’t/wouldn’t care less: smart phones.

  4. justbecause999 on

    Honestly, not that this is a big worry of mine it is also part of the reason I don’t hook my smart tv to the internet. It’s a monitor for me that is hooked up to a media receiver that feeds it a video signal only. I have other better devices that handle the content. I just want a nice big high quality monitor.

  5. Laughing_Zero on

    ‘Big brother’ has been replaced by ‘Electronic brother.’ Digital convenience has been replaced with digital surveillance and capitalism. Have to go out into what’s left of the wilderness to be ad free.

  6. Conveniently, most just obsolete themselves by virtue of apps no longer receiving updates and becoming unsupported by their provider (Ever saw someone get a new tv because netflix stopped working in their older, almost 1st gen smart tv?). Other than that, just disconnect them from the internet, delete all local data, and use them as a monitor.

    I miss old tvs.

  7. My Roku devices appear with incredible regularity in my pi-hole logs as they try to phone home.

    People, if you haven’t already, you need to set up a pi-hole at home. When you browse the web and use apps behind a pi-hole, you’ll wonder how you ever got by without one. If you have kids, it’s even more imperative. Kid apps are LOADED with garbage.

  8. I want nothing more than the latest display tech and THATS IT. My TV is just a fucking TV!!!

  9. I remember people telling me back in about 1988/90 that China had a technology to build TV sets that can spy on you. Of course, it was just smart TV technology. Knowing what you watch and when. Knowing how many people watched a particular film or such. Statistical.

    Well…..

  10. Pretty crappy Trojan Horse, what with all the Greeks hanging on the side and making rude noises and laughing at you rather than quietly staying inside ’til it’s time to attack…

  11. TLDR: The article basically just says that they are getting really good at ad targeting

  12. Who is actually dumb enough to connect their tv to the internet? Those people have no one to blame but themselves

  13. Personally, I look forward to my *two minutes of hate*.

    Yakov Smirnov: In capitalist America, TVs watch you!

  14. sonicgamingftw on

    The same people who cry about big government don’t seem to mind big tech spying on them due to neutered regulatory agencies just sitting back and allowing it.

  15. amithecrazyone69 on

    I never connect my tv to internet unless I do firmware update then I disconnect again. No legit reason to leave the tv connected

  16. MarkusKromlov34 on

    Gonna risk a slight anti-tech comment on a tech sub…

    I maintain an imperfect *mental* ad blocker. I really don’t watch ads.

    It doesn’t matter to me how targeted they are if the few ads I do see (rarely hear) are just annoying background “stuff”

    It’s like the Trojan horse breaks open and the city’s population laughs and ignores them.

  17. Who has a smart TV?

    I literally have a radio in my living room like its the 1950’s and use my computer and cell phone for my technology. – Which I’m giving up the smart phone for a “Barbie Flip” phone as soon as my contract is up.

    Technology of today just blows.

  18. Part of the problem is a lot of TVs aren’t actually turned off when you turn them off. They go into sleep mode. This is for convenience like turning it on remotely with your cell phone, voice commands after it’s “off”, and gallery/art mode. So they stay sit on your network for hours with access.

    **Configure your TV to actually lose all power when you turn it off.** It can’t do anything if there’s no power being fed to it.

  19. i never connect my tvs to the internet, I use hdmi devices for that.  i try to buy dumb tvs but thats pretty much impossible these days.  also for some reason some of the smart tvs have ir only remotes, that’s so annoying.