Smart TVs take snapshots of what you watch multiple times per second
By Jeremy Hsu on September 24, 2024
Popular smart TV models made by Samsung and LG can take multiple snapshots of what you are watching every second – even when they are being used as external displays for your laptop or video game console.
Smart TV manufacturers use these frequent screenshots, as well as audio recordings, in their automatic content recognition systems, which track viewing habits in order to target people with specific advertising. But researchers showed this tracking by some of the world’s most popular smart TV brands – Samsung TVs can take screenshots every 500 milliseconds and LG TVs every 10 milliseconds – can occur when people least expect it.
“When a user connects their laptop via HDMI just to browse stuff on their laptop on a bigger screen by using the TV as a ‘dumb’ display, they are unsuspecting of their activity being screenshotted,” says Yash Vekaria at the University of California, Davis. Samsung and LG did not respond to a request for comment.
Vekaria and his colleagues connected smart TVs from Samsung and LG to their own computer server. Their server, which was equipped with software for analysing network traffic, acted as a middleman to see what visual snapshots or audio data the TVs were uploading.
They found the smart TVs did not appear to upload any screenshots or audio data when streaming from Netflix or other third-party apps, mirroring YouTube content streamed on a separate phone or laptop or when sitting idle. But the smart TVs did upload snapshots when showing broadcasts from the TV antenna or content from an HDMI-connected device.
The researchers also discovered country-specific differences when users streamed the free ad-supported TV channel provided by Samsung or LG platforms. Such user activities were uploaded when the TV was operating in the US but not in the UK.
By recording user activity even when it’s coming from connected laptops, smart TVs might capture sensitive data, says Vekaria. For example, it might record if people are browsing for baby products or other personal items.
Customers can opt out of such tracking for Samsung and LG TVs. But the process requires customers to either enable or disable between six and 11 different options in the TV settings.
“This is the sort of privacy-intrusive technology that should require people to opt into sharing their data with clear language explaining exactly what they’re agreeing to, not baked into initial setup agreements that people tend to speed through,” says Thorin Klosowski at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital privacy non-profit based in California.
One issue that has come up recently in discussions on here is that it's hard to get dumb TVs or computer monitors in large format in 2024.
Not impossible, but surprisingly difficult. I went looking for a large computer monitor for some user who wanted a large one. I eventually found an older one on Amazon still for sale, but it's not that easy to get large computer monitors, which I think is part of what drives people to use smart TVs as computer monitors.
You can get projectors, but that's not what everyone's after.
A smart tv without an internet connection is usually close enough to a dumb TV. It's not like your TV needs regular security updates so leaving it off your home network is fine.
I do not know how true it is, but I've heard that some of them will create a mesh network if your neighbor has the same brand and it's connected to the internet.
I've always meant to look into it but I have big dumb TVs that work for now.
Open the tv and rip out the antenna. Y'all already forgot the classic secret agent trope of checking the hotel room for bugs? Now we all get to play that game!
Nowadays the antenna is often embedded into the pcb, so no way to rip it out other than scraping off the traces
Google part numbers (if they aren't scratched off/lasered off/ epoxied). Once you've found the ethernet controller, you can short out the pins, or yeet it off the board.
"mechanical malfunction, please contact support" as a big red warning that you cannot dismiss
Would love to know how true this is as I wouldn't put it past manufacturers
There's another reply further down that goes into specifics. I ain't the one because I didn't come with receipts and I'm just a drunk.
It's called wardriving, a practise Samsung TVs are infamous for.
I never put that together with wardriving but that's exactly what it is. Thank you for that.
Unrelated story: ~20 years ago I was in the military and broke as hell. I went wardriving in my neighborhood looking for open wifi and found a business not too far away that had it. So I built an antenna out of a coffee can, mounted it up just outside my window, and got free wifi for months.
To me, Wardriving is back in the day when you used to drive around town with a laptop and a program that catalogues all the open wifi networks in range.
I will not give them the satisfaction.
Smart TVs are only smart when they are connected to the internet.
As mentioned by others, they sometimes network with nearby devices such as your neigbor's TV or an unsecured wifi.
Which should be telling them that not only does no one want it, but maybe just maybe we already paid for your fucking TV. Either raise the price or stop being so fucking goddamn greedy to the point that you force us to make the government force you to stop.
Of course the bought and paid for US government won't, but hopefully EU governments will.
If they raise the price, then they only get money once. If they sell your data, now they have an income stream.
These are criminal violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Jail the motherfucking felon CEOs!
But the supreme court ruled to save the conviction for the election.
Worse than that, they
havegave free speech to corporations, and now that includes doing nearly anything involving communication or spending money.I’ll believe corporations are people the moment Texas executes ones.
On politics itself no less.
You know what's really fucked up? The concept of "corporate personhood" that Citizens United depends upon was invented wholesale by a goddamn clerk! The Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co. decision itself didn't actually address the issue; the clerk just wrote a headnote "assuming" that the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment applied to corporations for ~reasons~ and subsequent courts treated as if it were gospel.
So LG and Samsung likely have tons of illegal (copyright) content on their servers then? Ownership is 9/10ths of the law so they say. That’s gotta be exabytes
Most likely yes.. And other privacy sensitive information like banking details, passwords and more.
Well, then you should sue them.
awful ethics aside what a disgusting waste of processing power. software already barely runs
Screenshotting every 500ms is insane.
Even a 0.30$ ch32v003 could handle this tiny amount of data. It's not a resource limit
I was curious enough to check and with 2KB SRAM that thing doesn't have anywhere enough memory to process a 320x200 RGB image much less 1080p or 4K.
Further you definitelly don't want to send 2 images per-second down to a server in uncompressed format (even 1080p RGB with an encoding that loses a bit of color fidelity to just use two bytes per pixel, adds up to 4MB uncompressed per image), so its either using something with hardware compression or its using processing cycles for that.
My expectation is that it's not the snapshoting itself that would eat CPU cycles, it's the compression.
That said, I think you make a good point, just with the wrong example - I would've gone with: a thing capable of handling video decoding at 50 fps - i.e. one frame per 20ms - (even if it's actually using hardware video decoding) can probably handle compressing and sending over the network two frames per second, though performance might suffer if they're using a chip without hardware compression support and are using complex compression methods like JPEG instead of something simpler like LZW or similar.
Why think of it as a compression problem? Isn't the spy device already getting compressed video form some source? That makes it a filtering problem. You would set it to grab and ship key frames (or equivalent term) if you wanted a human to be able to see the intel. But for content matching, maybe count some interval of key frames and then grab the smallest difference frame between the next two key frames. Gives a nice, premade small data chunk. A few of those in sequence starts looking like a hash function (on a dark foggy night).
Would want some way to sync up the frames that the spy device grabs and the ones grabbed when building the db to match against. Maybe resetting the key frame interval counter when some set of simple frames come through would be enough. Like anything with a uniform color across the whole image or something similar.
Just spitballing here. I like your impulse to math this.
We're talking about fingerprinting stuff coming in via HDMI, not stuff being played by the "smart" part of the TV itself from some source.
You would probably not need to actually sample images if it's the TV's processor that's playing something from a source, because there are probably smarter approaches for most sources (for example, for a TV channel you probably just need to know the setting of the tuner, location and the local time and then get the data from available Program Guide info (called EPG, if I remember it correctly).
The problem is that anything might be coming over HDMI and it's not compressed, so if they want to figure out what that is, it's a much bigger problem.
Your approach does sound like it would work if the Smart TV was playing some compressed video file, though.
Mind you, I too am just "thinking out loud" rather that actually knowing what they do (or what I'm talking about ;))
I assumed HDMI had some form of encoding, thanks for the correction. Looks like v 2.1 does.
I think the syncing idea between the spy device and db is still useful. The video itself has stuff to use for reducing the search space by making sure they puck the same instants to fingerprint and exfiltrate.
I don't think they will compress the screenshot and send them but run content in a tensorflow lite model or even just hash a few of the pixels to try for an ID match
Well that makes sense but might even be more processor intensive unless they're using an SOC that includes an NFU or similar.
I doubt it's a straight forward hash because a hash database for video which includes all manner of small clips and has to somehow be able to match something missing over 90% of frames (if indeed the thing is sampling it at 2 fps, then it only sees 2 frames out of every 25) would be huge.
A rough calculation for a system of hashes for groups of 13 frames in a row (so that at least one would be hit if sampling at 2 fps on a 25 fps system) storing just one block of 13 frame hashes per minute in a 5 byte value (so large enough to have 5 trillion distinctive values) would in 1GB store enough hashes for 136k 2h movies in hashes alone so it would be maybe feasible if the system had 2GB+ of main memory, though even then I'm not so sure the CPU speed would be enough to search it every 500ms (though if the hashes are ordered by value in a long array and there's a matching array of clip IDs, it might be doable since there are some pretty good algorithms for that).
I would sample a few dozens equally space pixels out of the frame, then drop similar value frames, and send that with timestamp. In the cloud, you runs those few pixels in a content recognition model.
It doesn't have to be especially accurate or know any niche content, the point is to make a psychomarketing profile of the customer like "car guy, watches tool reviews".
TVs I've come across are such displeasure to use, it's incredible
Would be nice if we could have some technological privacy laws written in this century.
We need all the boomers in Capitol Senior Care Home to vacate first
You have it backwards. You have to EVICT them.
They already tried Jan 6 ! The old geezers won't go.
Nope. Those bootlickers were on the side of the corporate/billionaire enshitifiers, trying to make the enshitification MUCH worse.
Does it really matter who does the evicting ? After it's done it's anybody's guess what will fill the power vacuum. All we know is they will wear black boots and carry guns.
Yes.
And this is exactly why. In order to effect lasting, positive changes, it's important to have builders, not to mention critical mass with the populace. "Ends-justify-the-means" thinking and ascribing friendship the the enemy of one's enemy don't lend themselves to establishing resilient and non-despotic results.
Until then just desolder the antennas good luck sending data with no way to connect to the internet.
Don't mind baby products and dildos or whatever.
They could see bank activity and even login credentials when someone is temporarily displaying their own passwords.
This basically ignores all security measures regarding everything. Sensitive communication, company secrets and so on.
That's fucking seriously huge. What the fuck?!
I'm so tired
Moi aussi. I am le tired.
Well, have a nap
THEN FIRE ZE SAMSUNG & LG CEOS!
Bout that time eh chaps?
... right-o.
Zen have a nap
Ich auch
Actual paper here.
https://arxiv.org/html/2409.06203v1
It is not sending full screenshots as anybody technical would already have guessed. It's a few KB over an hour, so it's content recognition hashes.
Opt out anyway. Their study shows the opt out option does indeed opt you out of it.
THIS is piracy. Along with all the other personal data selling.
Imagine the amount of bandwidth and energy saved, if they didn’t do any of this bullshit.
They are essentially using someone else’s money to get themselves more money. Fuck these people!
You hear that? It's a whisper.... It's a multinational multibillion dollar class action lawsuit coming after Samsung and LG. WTF!
Okay. So how do we turn it off!? I’ve read nothing in my Samsung manuals about this “feature” and here no instructions for turning it off.
Just don't hook it up to your wifi. Don't use any of its included apps. If you must stream get a separate device to do it.
This is the correct answer. I actually disabled LG's version of it when I first heard about it. A few months later it had been reactivated in an update, so I just factory reset it and connected an old laptop.
You can't trust anyone — corporation or government — to protect or respect your privacy. Ever. If it's not open source and E2EE, assume that a criminal is going to view and process it for profit.
No it is not the correct answer! The correct answer is to put the CEOs who perpetrate this criminal shit in prison for millions of counts of hacking and stalking!
Merely shrugging and implementing a technological workaround is not an appropriate response to someone perpetrating a felony against you!
Okay... Though I agree the system is run by criminals, I'm gonna continue protecting my data as best I can, and recommending everyone do the same, while you live in a magical fantasy land where we don't live in capitalist plutocracies and the rule of law applies to everyone, equally!
The downvotes are because your "solution" is not based in the reality that the rest of us live in.
There are no downvotes, so I'm not sure what point you think you're making.
I have a Samsung smart TV that is not connected to any networks, and every few days it will display a 'detecting device' loading screen when switching to my input that fails after 30 seconds or until I cancel it (canceling does not seem to impact its functioning)
I have no evidence but I strongly suspect this to be related to attempting to record and send device data to a remote server.
I have noticed this too, I have to press the 'back' button on the remote to get the computer output.
Question, what separate device is best and most privacy focused? I just imagine getting a firestick, google Chromecast, etc would also give away data?
There are some open-source systems for media PCs.
Kodi seems to me to be popular, though I don't use a media PC myself.
You'll need to have the technical knowledge to install it yourself.
Again your media PC (or HTPC) is still connected to a smart TV. And the problem is with the TV recording HDMI data. In fact, if you read correctly, the Smart TV does no record data from the built-in apps like Netflix.
It still can connect to untrusted wifi access point (without password protection). So also try to go to: Settings Menu -> General & Privacy -> Terms & Privacy -> And there is a whole list of privacy setting. Try to find the option to: Do not agree with all. Or you need to manually disallow each privacy option.. Good luck!
Sometimes it requires Wi-Fi for setup. In that case, change the Wi-Fi password after you set it up.
No Internet for the device
They have been known to connect automatically to nearby compatible devices or unsecured wifi.
Use Pi-hole and block their domains
They're getting smart to that and are starting to hard code server IPs, circumventing any DNS you have in place.
Joke's on them. Their telemetry server is in another
castleVLAN.TV: mamma mia!
Do you know where I can source the domains?
https://blocklistproject.github.io/Lists/ the Smart TV list under their beta lists.
I use nextdns on my network and there’s a filter there for smart tvs. Samsung seems to want to call home the most.
Pihole will log DNS requests. The requests come.from the TV. So when it pops up, Block it.
Disable internet.
You'll have to insulate your home from any outside unsecured wifi and compatible devices to stop some of them from networking.
Since it can also connect to untrusted wifi access point (eg. without password). You need to live in a Faraday cage ..
You know that part of the manual that tells you to connect the TV to the Internet?
Don't do that.
That sadly doesn't work well enough. They will connect to things on their own.
That's some underhanded bs. I didn't know they started doing that. Damn.
I got an LG because despite how it looks, you can just refuse to agree to a bunch of their privacy agreements and be fine. It's not perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than it would be otherwise, and miles ahead of Samsung's lack of options.
I have come to realize this and have declined all the T&Cs except for like 3 that you just have to accept to make it function.
Yep, same. Works fine for me, I never wanted the features that disables.
If there are open wifi networks near your TV that you can't lockdown, you'll want to confirm it your make/model is known to automatically connect to those, and then take whatever mitigation steps are justified for your own use case.
For example, if you have multiple TVs, maybe you can swap models around based on their capabilities and location, or look up the schematic for the TV and see if it's easy to block it's internal antennas.
Or maybe that seems like too much of a hassle and you just say fuck it, and don't worry about it. Which is always an option, because given how much data already gets sucked up by surveillance capitalism, my evening TV viewing habits have to be some of the lowest value data points, as I already block ads and avoid all ad supported services.
I love my Samsung because I never gave it the wifi credentials.
Dumb TV is better. My PS5 can do everything I want and I already give all my metrics to them just playing it
Hello 8th person I've had to explain this to: they still connect to stuff. Even if you disable WiFi on the Samsung TV they can mesh network with other TVs in your neighborhood or with your phone (Samsung is particularly pushy about wanting you to install and connect your phone).
Ok I'll look into this. I have not witnessed any evidence of this behavior. What frequency would this be meshed on? Any 2.4GHz and 5Ghz I would have already seen.
Its real tricky to get into and overwrite some of the SoC processors and ARM chipsets, but pretty earlyon the hacker crowd was turning Samsungs Smart TVs dumb.
They've acrually got some great resistance to screen burn.
You can go to Settings Menu -> General & Privacy -> Terms & Privacy -> And there is a whole list of privacy setting you automatically agreed with (which you didn't). However, you should find an option for: Do not agree with all. Or you need to manually disallow each privacy option.. Good luck!
Edit: FYI the key to cooking a good steak is salt, butter, and to flip it every 30 secs, until you've reached your preferred level of doneness. If you're really trying to impress, and don't care about a heart attack, you can also baste with butter in between each flip.
Now, learning how much time it takes for each different type of cut and the variations within, that mostly comes with experience.
Movies and television shows can be an excellent form of entertainment and a great source of educational materials. And this is the golden age of television. Sorry you've been missing out on that
Yeah. My Samsung claws my firewall like a squirrel trapped in a box. It intensifies on certain hours of the day. I'm quite sure it also tries to send what devices are connected and what filenames are in attached memory sticks. Maybe also some media file checksums.
Do your firewall rules allow you to block your tv's telemetry, while allowing you to still use the internet on it? If so, would you mind sharing how you did it?
You should look into PiHole, if you're half-savvy with computers. They should be able to block all the destinations smart TVs are trying to connect to
Sinkholes can be negated by manufacturers using static, hardcoded dns addresses. Be careful and check traffic regularly.
And those can be blocked and even redirected at the router level. Though not as simple as spinning up a pihole.
Actually simpler, if you have an Asus router. Just remember to disable its telemetry stuff...
... Sending telemetry to Asus about the TV sending telemetry to LG? Wtf is this timeline?
We are on the "let's see how back corporate greed can get" simulation server.
Blocking telemetry would not include blocking 8.8.8.8 though.
And they do. My Philips TV didn't even ask for DNS until hardcoded IPs for Netflix et al. timed out. And when it did, it asked Google, not my router.
This is why you need to do DNS hijacking to handle hardcoded DNS requests.
Pi hole won't help.
Very easy to circumvent
This is why our "smart" TV is not allowed to be connected to the internet.
But can you really be sure that it doesn't connect to another network? i have to check again but if i recall correctly there are TVs that try to connect to other open networks or even look for other TVs from the same manufacturer and connect through those to the internet. I have to double check this again, so take this with a grain of salt
There is such a thing called HDMI Ethernet. If you connect some sort of Android box to your TV it might establish an Ethernet connection with it and thus connect to the internet.
A smart TV is not allowed on my property.
I am a bit puzzled about the "even when your laptop is connected" part.
I have a small android box connected to it and am not using apps on the TV so it should have no chance of sending screenshot out even if it takes them.
The TV itself is not connected
what kind of Android box do you have? anything you recommend? (looking to have some sort of streaming client)
Nvidia Shield. The bigger one.
Yes, it's a couple of years old at this point, but it's still the best device of its kind.
Not to mention the remote is FANTASTIC.
It's a Chinese one that I used at first for retro gaming with emuelec. Now it is dual boot and I have kodi and newpipe on it too.
the google tv with chromecast dongle is quite decent, good price/performance ratio
Sorry for being paranoid but can the TV piggyback the connection used by the the streaming device/android box to send data back to the TV OEM?
Not yet but it is clear in the future most devices will be able to do that, we will have ubiquitous low grade internet access everywhere. Your neighbours devices will let your electronics snitch on you even if you seal up your own internet
Good point. We can have a honeypot wifi. Check my other comment in the thread.
Okay, so for the new folks with networking, how do you set up a honeypot wifi? Have a (second) router powered on with no connection? Or is it something you can set up with one router?
Many routers have a functionality to create a guest wifi. These usually run on a separate VLAN so that it can't access other devices on the network. After creating this guest wifi, you have manually disable internet access on this but keep the wifi on.
Unfortunately the process varies between router to router.
The only connection the TV has is hdmi. I do not think that back and forth communication is possible there.
If the TV has wifi, it can do its thing but that would also be easy to disable.
I think for the TVs internal wifi, it's better to create a honeypot Wi-Fi exclusively for it, or a VLAN. It will constantly try to send data and fail. If we don't let it connect to anything, the TV might start sniffing for other open networks.
But if you connect your phone to the android box then the TV could use the phone to send the screenshots.
TV->android box->phone->internet.
Something doesn't add up. How can a TV take 100 Screenshots of 4k content per second? No wifi has that bandwidth. No embedded processor has that capacity.
It doesn't need a 4K screenshot. It needs enough data/metrics from any given single frame to run it through analytics and an algorithm to tailor ads. Backend surveillance like this isn't interested in fidelity to the human viewing experience. It needs identifying data. That can be had through a combination of low quality data scrapes done numerous times.
"Screenshot" is more like a metaphor here. Sort of like how your Apple or Google photos are "private," but the data and analytics taken from them you've given away. It's like if you told me I could look at all the photos on your phone and take as many notes and subject them to as much analysis as I wanted, but I promised not to actually physically keep your phone/photos. Probably makes you feel like your photos are securely still in your possession, but I got what I wanted. Your data is technically private, but my data about your data is mine.
Totally agree. It sounds like something was lost in translation here by the final edit of potentially some run though a llm for proof reading to dumb it down enough to either just make it more consumable, more clickbait or realistic both.
My guess is the actual research reported that it was 100s of packets per second (not screenshots) which is still a lot more than you would expect even for spyware. Either way it’s been well known that smart tvs are spyware ridden, I don’t need a paywalled service to tell me that.
I'm the OP, but not the author of this article posted.
After I dove deep into the study, the study said it records data at 500ms. And then it batches the data together, and only sent data once per minute back to Samsung. Between 8kB and 9kB of data per minute. So definitely not 4K screenshots.
it doesn't necessarily take full resolution images
just because it can capture images a few hundred milliseconds apart doesn't mean it's continuously capturing images. It could be several in short bursts with a delay between groups of images.
You know when people say "I've only talked about this once, never searched for it, and then I got ads a few days later"?
What if it hasn't been phones that were listening (despite Siri/Google Assistant/Alexa mis-identifying something as a wake-word being the most sensible explanation), but TVs?
Why not both
Being around someone who did search for something is enough (location, same wifi).
I'm pretty familiar with how one particular brand of TV works, and you're right, it's absolutely not screenshots. It's a handful of single pixels across the screen. By matching these pixels against known content it's possible to identify what was being watched. Not too different than how Shazam can identify a song.
That's not to say all TV manufacturers work that way.
I agree. I'm the OP, but not the author of this article. I do believe this author doesn't know what he is talking about. After looking at the study, it seems it does record data at 500ms interval. However, only in intervals of 1 time per minute 8kB of data is sent back, meaning its only some kind of meta data.
Plenty of embedded processors have that capacity, but I generally agree about the bandwidth.
360p is probably enough. And that's "up to" per second, average is probably far far far less.
Probably a data snapshot, not an actual screenshot.
It may be snapping multiple in a small period of time, everyonce in a while. Compressing them in the background then trickling them back out.
It doesn't say the screenshot must be full resolution and it doesn't say the screenshot is immediately uploaded. A couple seconds to downscale and compress would work the same as far as content identification is concerned
Yea I don't believe it, that's some processor intensive streaming. My security camera feeds can't even do that. 100fps is crazy for streaming. Are we sure these "screenshots" aren't just anonymous metric gatherings like video codecs and resolution?
Not mentioning taking 100 screenshots each second with what - 25 frames per second? - is kinda overkill...
I’ve jokingly said this before, but just wait until manufacturers start adding 4G/5G to TVs explicitly for ads and telemetry…
Just like modern cars... I wish there was some kind legislation that would limit phone-home telemetry to emergency service telecommunication frequencies, and be opt-in only. That way any OEM operating under commercial cellular frequencies would thus be unlicensed, and subject to FCC violations and import bans. Like what OnStar was originally pitched as; only auto dialing to 911, and 911 only, if you were unresponsive after airbags deployed. OEM couldn't use the telecommunication frequencies for anything other than networking with emergency service endpoints on the same VLAN.
Anything recorded by the vehicle would be required to stay on the vehicle due privacy regulations, like the black box recorder for warranted forensic investigations. OTA updates could also be distributed offline for users to download and flash via USB, like any motherboard bios, so transactions would be write only.
No matter how much they ask
Do not connect your Smart TVs to network people, seriously. Just a bad idea. Use a media center PC or some other device that allows you to stream content, and make sure the TV itself is just a big monitor, nothing more.
Theoretically I could display highly illegal stuff and they would distribute it making them complicit?
Can the API be hacked to flood their servers with petabytes of cat pictures?
What is happening with the data? Where are the data savers?
Friendly reminder that gaming console monitors, computer monitors, projectors, dumb TVs, and commercial displays exist.
Yes, I could hack a smart TV to disable its networking capabilities. (Merely withholding my wifi password is not reliable.) But that would still be showing the manufacturers that I find spyware TVs acceptable, and supporting the production of those models.
Also, this would be a good time to pressure our legislators into criminalizing this nonsense.
Only one company makes Dumb TVs anymore, Sceptre, and the quality is very hit or miss due to the way they acquire their screens.
It's also harder to find them in larger sizes any more, even for the few for which sell them at all, so if you want a larger one, you may not have much by way of options.
https://assetbasedlife.com/dumb-tvs-are-a-dying-breed/
This lists Insignia, which is a Best Buy store brand.
This has a couple, at least as of last year:
https://www.tomsguide.com/features/dumb-tvs-heres-why-you-cant-find-them-anymore
It's also possible to buy a used TV, but obviously, as with getting used cars to avoid monitoring stuff in newer cars, the pool of those will only be around for so long, and you can't take advantage of any technological advances subsequent to them.
Plenty of companies make display TVs that only display commercial content. You see them all the time displaying menus in fast food restaurants.
These can also have all smart tech turned off because some companies also use them as digital whiteboards to display proprietary or confidential information.
Those typically come at commercial pricing, which is insane.
I would hardly consider that pricing insane. Consumer TVs are massively subsidized by the smart tech built into them, in some cases by up to 60%. Plus, they are often fragile with cheaper components because they are expected to be mounted in “safe” places away from unusual conditions or extreme temperatures.
Considering the more robust construction (for commercial use) and lack of subsidization, I would consider those prices to be spot-on and rather reasonable.
Those commercial displays are nothing but heavily stripped down TVs with anything unnecessary to being a advertising display removed. and maybe a tiny, grossly overpriced and heavily cut down computer built into it to run the slideshows/menus/whatever.
also, TVs in a certain size range are generally cheap because manufacturing has gotten to the point that each mother can produce a ton of screens for it. and the reason that cheap range size has gone up over the years is because improvements in the printing technology and the size of the mother glass.
Why is withholding the WiFi password not enough? Could they somehow piggyback off a different device or something?
I've heard that some of them will connect to any wifi available. So if your neighbor does not have a password on their network. The tv will connect and upload the data.
Yes. It could talk to another smart device and ask it to send its packages. You could be careful and connect none of the smart crap in your house to your network, but the smart fridge in your upstairs neighbor's kitchen could still be helping with smuggling your data out. Or your devices could be connected to some unsecured network around.
In any case, the only surefire way to stop your data from getting smuggled out is to physically kill all the wireless connectivity capabilities of the device. Disconnect antennae, desolder chips, scrape out pcb traces. Otherwise you're just hoping the firmware is not doing anything funny. Fortunately I think these are all hypotheticals that have not (yet) been observed in real smart home products.
I can understand that if you have a Samsung TV and a Samsung fridge, they can talk with each other. But will it work if you have a fridge from a different OEM? (I'm assuming the OEMs haven't formed a cartel for illegal data smuggling)
Good question. Please see my follow-up comment.
Not putting your WiFi password in would absolutely be reliable. I’d love to hear your ideas on how they’d remotely break into your WiFi Network
Remember how Comcast routers made that ghost mesh network?
And Amazon sidewalk.
Any link to news? This is my first time heard of this.
I don't have a link but Comcast offered a get WiFi anywhere option for their customers where they could use anyone's combination modem/router from Comcast to get online with their company credentials. This was (is?) impossible to disable.
Sounds standard for Comcast or whoever they are now. Couldn't find anything though. Curious
No, it would not.
They wouldn't, of course, nor did I say they would.
(But since you brought it up, we have already seen internet providers quietly using their CPE to create special-purpose wireless networks surrounding customers' homes. These could obviously be made available to any company that paid the ISP for access, just as cellular networks have been made available to companies like OnStar. So a TV could do this with a business deal rather than breaking in to your normal WiFi.)
However, your network is not the only network in the world, and WiFi is not the only kind of link. Neighbors exist. Open guest networks exist. Drive-by and fly-by networks exist. Mesh networks exist (and are already created by devices like Amazon Echo). Power line networking exists. Bluetooth, LoRa, cellular, etc. etc. etc. Maybe you live on an isolated mountain top where these things are unlikely to reach you (at least until satellite links become a little smaller and cheaper) but even that is not absolute, and most of us don't.
Unless you disassemble your TV and examine all the components within, and know what they do, it could have any number of these capabilities.
Also, partly due to how prevalent multi-network support is becoming in electronics integration, it is not unusual for related functionality to be dormant at first yet possible to activate later.
I'd love for you not to be adversarial, and to learn more about a topic before making bold claims about it in absolute terms.
To add to this, often, even if you turn off Bluetooth, your devices can still communicate via Bluetooth Low Energy, something that's separate from classic Bluetooth and typically (to my knowledge) cannot be turned off. As an example, I've heard that Google uses it to send ad targeting info between devices.
If you have a samsung phone in the house, it can connect to the TV and give it a hotspot of sorts. This is a hypothetical, not real (yet!)
Btw, is there a firmware hacking/flashing scene for smart TVs?
So what do we do when smart TVs force us to connect to the Internet, and refuse to work until we do?
This is exhausting. We're speeding towards a horrible, privacy-less future.
We own a few TVs but nobody actually watches them. If we're all out in the living room there's four phones out with four people watching four different things.
Dystopian
Is it? I mean, 100 years ago you might all be reading different things, with either a record on or possibly the radio. Why is it terrible that now you're all... reading different things together in one room?
Interwebs are too addicting. It’s like we are all in one room and are snorting coke by ourselves.
It’s one thing to read a newspaper or a book, different one to scroll social media stuck in an infinite loop of dopamine. Our lives may be longer than ever but in practice they are shorter than ever
That's a easy solution, here are the steps:
Step 1: Do not purchase a smart TV
Step 2: Yay, you did it! You did all the steps. 🥳
Edit: People are missing the point. This is a joke.
Here's another joke: It's a pity that a TV is a necessary item to live.
Have you bought a TV in the last 5 years?
CRT is the way baby!
i would LOVE a crt but my dad really loves smart tvs :| any model recs? i have some free space in my room
Oh man, I haven't actually had a CRT in a long time but I did like the Sony Trinitron. Damn things just weighed a ton
No. Did you read step one?
That's getting harder to find by the day
The question now is, even if I don’t connect the TV to Internet, what TV brand should I buy? Currently I have LG, but no way I’m supporting that even without Internet connection.
They collect all this data and then still cancel the most watched/best shows.
Morons.
"They found the smart TVs did not appear to upload any screenshots or audio data when streaming from Netflix or other third-party apps, mirroring YouTube content streamed on a separate phone or laptop or when sitting idle. But the smart TVs did upload snapshots when showing broadcasts from the TV antenna or content from an HDMI-connected device."
The world is owned by a big club, and you're not in it.
The only sensible way to operate these TVs is with no internet connection. We run our entertainment through an AppleTV. If that ever starts showing ads at rest, I’ll replace it with a Mac mini or a NUC. Fuck these companies and their race to the bottom.
So they are allowed to pirate content actually? Even if it’s not Netflix or YouTube they take screenshots of potentially copyrighted content
Use a pihole people, don't go barebacking the internet
Don't let your TV connect to the internet. I have mine on my wifi so I can control them using Home Assistant, but they're on an isolated VLAN with no internet access.
Edit: Of course, this only works if you use an external box for streaming, like an Nvidia Shield, Apple TV, Google Chromecast TV or whatever they call it now, etc.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, corporations treat you like a product. Whether you buy something from them or not. People are becoming the product that they sell.
I usually don't care very much until it starts to affect pricing for stuff based on some algorithms impression of how desperate you are. That algorithm started with travel (airlines, online booking fees for hotels and stuff) and has expanded.
If I need a new computer because mine isn't working, I don't really care that advertisers come at me with ads for their computer products. I need one, they want me to buy one, it's marketing. No worries.
If I need a new computer and suddenly all the prices for new systems goes up by $100 because it thinks I'm desperate enough to pay that, now I have a problem.
I still don't like them selling my data, and I'll do what I can to avoid it, but marketing is going to do marketing things.
I run a pi hole and it blocks 1000 attempts per minute from a single Samsung TV, then it outright denies requests from the tv. Duck those douches.
DNS sinks can often cause elevated traffic numbers because the client is constantly failing and retrying.
I bet if you enabled it to test the numbers would drop dramatically.
Causing the smart TV become even slower hahaha
Those are just dns lookups.
It's not just DNS. I have this rule in my firewall:
udp dport 15600 counter drop comment "Block Samsung TV shenanigans"So far, it has blocked 20575 packets (constituting 1304695 bytes) in 6 days and 20 hours.
I also see it with Wireshark on my network using the
udp.port == 15600filter.It could also be the f*king soundbar?? https://github.com/home-assistant/core/issues/34810#issuecomment-621507325
Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) called Boot Server Discovery Protocol (BSDP), which is displayed in the data package section (version 0.1?).
Related? https://eu.community.samsung.com/t5/tv/samsung-qled-qe55q8dn-spamming-udp-packets-on-port-15600-to/td-p/5794185
So I guess they learned nothing from the last class action lawsuit https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/lawsuit-news/lg-samsung-sony-class-action-alleges-smart-tv-privacy-violations/. Also reminded me of this past gem from LG: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/11/lg-smart-tv-snooping-extends-to-home-networks-second-blogger-says/.
Never connect your tv to the internet.
It automatically connects to unprotected wifi access points.
Is there evidence of this happening?
And if so, I think I would just plug it into an old router via ethernet with no external connectivity.
You could also setup a virtual LAN. And disallow internet on that VLAN. Or go to the Privacy & Terms menu in the TV and disallow all privacy settings (opt-out).
Well no.. but I can't rule it out either.
The amount of effort i had to put into buying a dumb tv the last time it was new tv time is positively infuriating.
No wonder these things operate slow as shit!
Buy a computer monitor, a projector or a commercial display instead, they tend to be dumb.
Alternatively, don't connect your TV to the internet (bear in mind some are wireless). Unplug it from the wall when not in use.
As if Microsoft's Recall wasn't enough...
My pi-hole blocks SO MUCH traffic from my Rokus. Never buying another Roku again.
wtf?
Mine isn't connected to the internet. Too bad so sad greedy fucks
Sceptre still sells dumb TVs'. If you are in the US, Walmart sells them. I have one and it's pretty good. No frills.
Not if you never connect your smart TV to the internet to complete the setup and instead use it as a dumb display (I hope)
i genuinely do not understand how TVs are so corrupt and greedy. You just display pixels, that's it! The entire purpose is to convert 1s and 0s to pretty color
That's both disturbing and completely expected. I've generally always preferred monitors over TVs tbh, this is just another reason for it lol
But if you never connected the TV to the internet, it's not able to upload anything right?
Correct
Thing is, it's getting pretty cheap to build radios into devices, and companies are doing that and bridging them to whatever Internet connectivity they can reach, not just your own. You don't necessarily have to personally plug something into an Ethernet socket to make a device Internet-connected.
From back when Amazon Sidewalk was rolling out:
https://www.statuscake.com/blog/what-is-amazon-mesh/
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jun/01/amazon-us-customers-given-one-week-to-opt-out-of-mass-wireless-sharing
When you have companies creating their own radio networks, they can use someone else's Internet connection to move data.
For expensive devices, like cars, it also makes economic sense to have a dedicated cell modem and service phoning data home. But it's not the only route.
Point is, you don't have a monopoly over granting your devices Internet access any more.
Cellular modems with lifetime contracts from a telco are also increasingly common.
SDRs like the Hackrf Portapack are, as well.
Well. That’s it. Get the flamethrowers. Time to burn down the Amazon.
No. Not the one that’s already burning. The other one.
Yeah I remember when they rolled that out… it does not give me hope for the future of privacy.
Canada needs to really ramp up our privacy laws, I’m not crazy about GDPR specifically, but there needs to be something more substantial here.
I'm not really gung-ho about mandatory approaches either, like with licensing, but for an optional approach:
I have to be able to assess a device and its drawbacks with a reasonable amount of knowledge and time spent researching it.
There has to be at least one option on the market that does what I want.
For cars, at least, we're really getting to the point where it's not practical to get a new car without a cell data link that phones home.
And trying to stay atop of the privacy issues for all classes of device out there can't be a full-time job, or it's not reasonable to expect people to make informed purchasing decisions. Like, I should just be able to say that I don't want a device that broadcasts any persistent unique IDs in plaintext over a radio, not have to research whether the current crop of smart automobile tire pressure valves has a protocol that exposes that information or not..
I'd like to avoid Europe's prescription-heavy regulatory route, but the way things are now in the US isn't my ideal either.
My hot air station has a reeeealllly long cable.
So long. It's the best. Unlike my..
They're eating the dogs. 😊
I hope they enjoy my 25 million screenshots of Buffy, Angel, and Stargate.
Did you go beyond the headline?
So an HDMI connected device that is streaming Netflix is getting screenshot?
I mean, even if it wasn't a streaming service, but let's say, video game content, or a blu ray, that is still a violation, and of course, if I'm playing content I made, then it's violating my copyright.
Does it means that it broadcast my chrome browser if connected through HDMI? If I check for a password in the password manager in chrome, it fucking sends my password to Samsung?
Yes and no. Supposedly the resolution is not in 4K or even 1080p, but something much lower that is still enough to identify content, like shows, movies and ads, but not enough to make out minute detail.
so? we aren't allowed to take netflix screenshots at all
Says who?
You are allowed to take screenshots of Netflix, even under the DMCA on DRM protected material. You are not allowed to use it commercially though. Personal use only.
Because your laptop cannot have Netflix, or a DRM enabled browser?
It may be them either not trespassing their territory (as a part of a deal or as a precaution) or TV apps sharing\telegraphing that info without the need of screen cap analysis as they work on TV itself and may as well be special modified apks. At least, they differed
Laptop sends only it's video and audio outputs, apps' code executes at it's hardware, so TV needs a workaround to know what you are watching. And as it's incapable of such analysis itself, it channels that data to it's real owner.
No, the point here is that if you use the "smart" features, which includes running apps from their appstore, like Netflix or Disney+, it will not send the data. But if you connect your laptop via HDMI and then play Netflix in your browser, it will, because it's not smart enough to recognize and differentiafe video and audio data coming in through that port. I don't think it matters if it's a DRM enabled browser or not. It should be acting as a second monitor only in those cases, nothing more.
No... they only record on HDMI.
this is why you get a separate apple tv/android box and not connect your tv to the internet
Connect it to a Linux PC for optimal privacy.
Again, Samsung and LG is sniffing the HDMI port.. So especially if you use another device like an Apple TV or Android or HTPC running Linux, only then Samsung & LG will record this data and sent back to HQ.
If you use a PC, there is no need to connect the TV to your WiFi, which means it won't send any data.
Correct. Assuming your TV doesn't connect to open wifi access points.
And assuming you never want to use any of the smart features or apps.
Yup, which you don't because that's what the PC is for.
Like those things aren't capable of the same shit?
anythings capable of it, but the companies behind the (premium) boxes have less of an incentive. While theyre all capable, its a matter if you have trust in them. At least for the Shield TV for example, go download a shield tv rom if you really don't trust Nvidia. If you are paranoid that they all can do it, than any smart device can do it because its connected to the internet.
I'd rather pay for pretty much all products up-front with money at purchase time rather than pay with my data.
Not gonna tell other people what to do, but for myself, whether it's my car or television or search engine or whatever, I'd rather just pay the bill rather than having the manufacturer or service provider go data-mining my data to figure out how they can make money from it.
I think that YouTube is a great service. YouTube Premium, though, is ad-free. What I want isn't no-ad stuff, but no-log policies. And there aren't a lot of manufacturers selling privacy. And it's hard to compare services and products based on that.
I'll go one more step. I don't want to go read through privacy policies and figure out what the latest clever loophole is. We had to deal with that kind of legal stuff back prior to standardization around a few open-source licenses, and it sucked.
And I don't want to deal with privacy policies that change and maybe don't do what I want.
What I want to do is look for a privacy certification, and let the certification agency deal with that.
2000 dollar/euro premium price for Samsung S95D isn't high enough?? No.. we already pay up-front with money. This is just a very nasty trick by Samsung & LG.
I’m happy to see this, my wife and I were about to buy a smart TV. Now I’ll just get the dumb variant.
These don't really exist on a consumer level anymore. What you're looking for is called a commercial display, which is what's used in businesses and hospitals.
No, they still exist.
Ah, I stand corrected.
Luckily they exist in smaller sizes still. I’m just getting a small tv for occasional use.
Time should have stopped to 1999.
So much more goatse and bathtube girl pictures along with porn are now gonna be on my tv
I wish I could go back in time to warn myself not to read this. The memory of receiving those (and other awful shit) is indelibly marked in my brain.
lol yeah! My friend where dicks and would set that to our screen savers or if we left our laptops open would go to meatspin.com and then lock your laptop. You got quite the surprise when you unlocked your computer lol
What the fuck are you talking about? Lol
Man wants to watch some kinky shit.
I guess so
Don't Google it. Just be happy you missed Liveleak and r/watchpeopledie.
And ebaum's world. And rotten. And something awful.
Ah gotcha. Yeah I'm happy to be ignorent of this subject then. Thank you
Earlier this month I finally disconnected the wifi for my 7 year old Roku TV. I miss being able to turn it on w/ voice activation but I'll trade that in for my privacy
So how do you all guys watch content on these "dumb TVs"?
If you connect e.g. android box, how is it any different than connecting the TV itself? Do you think producers of android boxes aren't such pricks? This bugs my mind.
best way is a mini pc you can put an open source OS on
then you totally control it. they can be found cheap used and are usually upgradable
they are thrown out by schools and buisnesses all the time. it does not have to be very powerful by pc standards
it can also be your first home server if youre interested
But that is terrible to use. I can't imagine my kids or wife to use this with TV...
no, not true you can put whatever you want on it. ours boots into a nice tv like ui and they open stremio with a remote and thats it
its up to you to make it nice and easy
the user experience is not radically different from a corporate experience except its faster and without ads or spying
OTA antennae for sports.
For streaming, I usually watch it on my laptop so that I can have easier options to skip and replay.
My desktop is connected via HDMI so I have that as an option but I rarely take advantage of it.
I live by myself so I don't have as much pushback as you likely would FYI
I never own a smart tv, but can you flash custom firmwares into it?
Ig it's time to buy a regular tv then
Do they do that in EU too?
Installed pi-hole this week. Number one blocked domain with 1600 queries.... Scribe.logs.roku.com.
If you have a smart device, someone is doing this with it. Best options to reduce their ability to access your devices: smart TV's - don't connect them to the internet unless you're updating the firmware. Use a streaming stick for streaming services, and then your privacy violations are minimized to the streaming stick that doesn't have a mic, or camera. Some controllers do have a mic, it's only a problem with who is making the tech. Other smart devices like fridge, microwave, oven, washer, etc, just never connect them to the internet, they likely will work fine their entire life without a network connection. Personal smart devices such as smart phones, remove google, and apple. Neither can truly be trusted, however apple does have a track record of keeping their snooping to themselves for what that's worth. For robots, they will likely need a network connection, I recommend supporting home automation projects that will allow us to replace the OS on our robot vacuums, and food delivery devices with one that connects to a home based server that doesn't need an internet connection. But never, ever, trust a smart device that is within hearing, seeing, or is touching you. It is a monitoring device, and it is being used that way by anyone with enough power.
/song note emoji/I always feel like/end song note emoji/
Projectors > *
mine would be getting only choppy static more than anything. where i live there is only sattelite available and it costs more than cable
I had to update my LG recently and it had to get approval for all sorts of weird shit. Oddly enough, it let me continue using just about everything even after I denied all the very invasive checkboxes. I guess even they can't deny use of your own tv if you reject the agreement lol
For future reference, you can update LG TVs via USB so you can avoid connecting it to a network.
my tv can barely play Netflix I doubt it's taking pictures every second lol
Don't buy them, they are excessively expensive and tt's a better idea to separate the smart functionality into an HDMI device of your choice anyway.
Smart devices stupid people.
If I just use a projector, do i still have to worry about the maker of the tablet that connects to the projector doing the same thing?
Yes, but for different reasons. They are much less popular, and have way lower market share as a result.
Lots of lower-end chinese projectors are also running Android (linux), with multi-core CPUs..
Jokes on them tho, they lack common understanding.
I watch a video about someone modding a shitbox and they think i can afford this new spyker sports car or any other 80k e car.
Obviously that shit is a swing and a miss. You want to give me advertising that suits me? Start by advertising stickers about cars because that's something i could afford...not something i would buy tho.
Hmmm
"how to diy replace stolen catalytic converter"
"96 Ford esprit strange smell and noise in roof"
Youtube: buy this $90 grand all terrain thingy on credit!
I got a nice LG C3 on an open box deal, I connected it to run updates and fiddle for a few, then deleted the apps and took it offline.
Hahah my friends made fun of me for buying some cheap as fuck "smart" TV instead of an expensive LG one like them, my TV can barely run a web browser, no chance in hell that things spying on me.