Comment on Smart TVs take snapshots of what you watch multiple times per second

Drunemeton@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

• dhork@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  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.

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  • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    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.

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    • grue@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      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!

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      • anonymouse2@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        The downvotes are because your “solution” is not based in the reality that the rest of us live in.

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      • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        Okay… Well I’m gonna continue protecting my data 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!

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  • archomrade@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    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.

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    • mumblerfish@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      I have noticed this too, I have to press the ‘back’ button on the remote to get the computer output.

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  • Elextra@literature.cafe ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Question, what separate device is best and most privacy focused? I just imagine getting a firestick, google Chromecast, etc would also give away data?

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    • tal@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      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.

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  • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Sometimes it requires Wi-Fi for setup. In that case, change the Wi-Fi password after you set it up.

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• roofuskit@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  No Internet for the device

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  • finitebanjo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    They have been known to connect automatically to nearby compatible devices or unsecured wifi.

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• nothing@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Use Pi-hole and block their domains

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  • lone_faerie@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    They’re getting smart to that and are starting to hard code server IPs, circumventing any DNS you have in place.

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    • flappy@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Joke’s on them. Their telemetry server is in another castle VLAN.

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      • xavier666@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        TV: mamma mia!

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  • haulyard@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Do you know where I can source the domains?

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    • burrito@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      blocklistproject.github.io/Lists/ the Smart TV list under their beta lists.

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      • Swarfega@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        I use nextdns on my network and there’s a filter there for smart tvs. Samsung seems to want to call home the most.

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    • 7U5K3N@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Pihole will log DNS requests. The requests come.from the TV. So when it pops up, Block it.

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• jordanlund@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Disable internet.

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  • finitebanjo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    You’ll have to insulate your home from any outside unsecured wifi and compatible devices to stop some of them from networking.

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• TachyonTele@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  You know that part of the manual that tells you to connect the TV to the Internet?

  Don’t do that.

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  • finitebanjo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    That sadly doesn’t work well enough. They will connect to things on their own.

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    • TachyonTele@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      That’s some underhanded bs. I didn’t know they started doing that. Damn.

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• peopleproblems@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  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

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  • finitebanjo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    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).

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    • peopleproblems@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      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.

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• KickMeElmo@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  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.

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  • Gerudo@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    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.

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    • KickMeElmo@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Yep, same. Works fine for me, I never wanted the features that disables.

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• pandapoo@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  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.

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• darklamer@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Okay. So how do we turn it off!?

  This is probably not the reply you want, but as someone who (in the past 40+ years) has never owned a TV, I simply can’t refrain from asking: Have you considered simply not owning a TV?

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  • pandapoo@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    “I keep overcooking my steak, any advice?”

    I haven’t had meat in 40 years, have you considered simply going vegetarian?

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  • TrickDacy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    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

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• finitebanjo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Its real tricky to get into and overwrite some of the SoC processors and/or ARM chips, but pretty earlyon the hacker crowd was turning Samsungs Smart TVs dumb.

  They’ve acrually got some great resistance to screen burn.

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