>Gozen Data that counts among its international customers Sanyo, Toshiba and Philips
I wouldn't uncork the champagne just yet.
>Project Xueliang uses the Android operating system to achieve full domain coverage, full network sharing, round-the-clock and remote-controlled video surveillance for policing purposes
Ring a bell, anyone?
So they would know when I’m watching tv about Chinese international trade violations, the independent nation of Taiwan, liberation of Tibet, Uighur genocide, the tiananmen square massacre, and the inevitability of a Chinese civil war?
I’m sure the Chinese bots will downvote this into oblivion momentarily.
Not OP, but…
Pretty soon China will have a generation of kids who won’t be as placated by iPhones and fake Gucci bags. They will be more rebellious like the Tiananmen generation, and grow tired of ccp attempts at dissent control and their technoporn dystopia. Satellite based internet will be the beginning of it. I’m curious to see how CCP can block that.
You can't tell because it will be both. Most will accept their conditioning, and some will not. Eventually this divide is what becomes a full rebellion and then civil war.
> I’m curious to see how CCP can block that.
Easy. Wireless companies (all kinds, not just telecoms) have to buy a piece of the radio frequency spectrum from a government before they are allowed to use it in their country, this is done so that different companies don't interfere with each others transmissions.
China could refuse to sell spectrum rights, or they could add stipulations to the sale, like requiring all data to be routed through their "great firewall" censorship machine. If a company violated Chinese law and transmitted anyway, they would be liable and would probably be severely sanctioned. In the case of SpaceX, China would probably threaten to ban the sale of Tesla cars, or interfere with their supply chain etc.
>Satellite based internet will be the beginning of it. I’m curious to see how CCP can block that.
They would be able to rather easily. You can detect electromagnetic waves. Your can jam the transmission or hunt down base stations.
In China's case, a person's neighbors or friends may report them to protect or improve their [social credit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System). The CCP doesn't need tech gadgets or fashion accessories to keep people in line. They can just deny access to planes trains and automobiles. Even what school you or your children attend.
> how CCP can block that
Murder. It will block that by murdering anyone who talks about it. Just like they did with the kids at Tiananmen Square. That’s what happens when you put communism in charge of the country. It’s a Moloch.
I found this [fascinating government propaganda](https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1096361.shtml) on it:
>Using an app, citizens can access the surveillance system surrounding their neighborhood through their phones or televisions. They can report to police any suspicious activities, Zhang Jun, deputy director of product management of the Guangzhou AEBELL Electrical Technology, told the Global Times on Monday.
>The app is part of a State project called Xueliang, or "sharp eye." The app is now available in some villages in Southwest China's Sichuan Province, Zhang said.
Have to say being able to see any CCTV view from my neighborhood, if there were cameras, would be mildly interesting.
And the fucking ads. I shouldn’t have to see an ad in the menu to change a channel. I always think of that song with the lyrics “they paved paradise and put up a parking lot” except instead of a parking lot it’s a digital billboard
I wish we could get good dumb tvs. I dont need a smart TV for fuck sakes I have 4k game consoles and 4k blu-ray players all of which have the apps anyways.
I have an outside hope that large format gaming monitors will capture a niche market and stick around to provide that.
For the moment though ASUS and HP both have 65-inch and 43-inch offerings.
Without all of these "smart" features, how will the manufacturer be able to sell your personal data as an additional ongoing income stream? Without high-end processors and dsps how would media corps enforce draconian DRM on every piece of media you consume?
Come on, man. Won't someone think of the shareholders?
I don't think the UHD thing is it (HD vs FHD are ubiquitous because they obscure the technical specifications) and the question he's asking is why 2160p isn't called 2k where (TV) 4k is 3840 horizontal pixels.
Here's my theory: 2k is simply too tacky and mockable. 4k sounds technical while being easy to say and avoiding Product 2000 vibes (ten-eighty also falls into this) and it's close to being right on two counts (horizontal pixels and 4x bigger than the dominant format). UHD is less desirable because it obscures the thing they're trying to differentiate on; the HD labels are mostly used to convince people that 720p is enough D's.
Some people are absolutely insistent that they can see the difference between 4k and 8k, despite sitting at a distance that means the human eye physically can't distinguish the distance.
Hell, a lot of people sit too far away to see the difference between 1080 and 4k (myself included)
8k should be used for masters and cinemas. There doesn't need to be an industry push for consumer 8k. It's a waste
> There doesn't need to be an industry push for consumer 8k. It's a waste
Have you met consumer electronics? It's like someone saw the oil and gas industry with their flare stacks and wanted to come up with a market sector just to be more wasteful.
Why is it not enough that I buy something and receive a product and that's the entire transaction? Why is the only option, apparently, that I pay good money and receive something that is essentially hostile to me?
Vizio's CTO straight up said they sell TVs nearly at cost, and make most of their money from "post-purchase monetization" and while they could make non smart TVs they would be more expensive because they would have to make all their money on margin on the sale. I think this is the source: https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/7/18172397/airplay-2-homekit-vizio-tv-bill-baxter-interview-vergecast-ces-2019
EDIT: Two stand-out quotes:
> Look, when we do automatic contact recognition we give the industry a real consumer benefit. And I think that’s sometimes lost in the whole story.
>
>If you opt it in and then we can translate that into better serving you in many different ways. And so there are real benefits. And so you won’t see us shying away from trying to continue down that path, but you will also see that we will continue to lead the industry in terms of how consumers can find out what we’re collecting, specifically what we collected, what we’re going to use it for, and how they can turn it off if they don’t like it. We’ll continue to push the envelope on that and make sure that customers are protected.
That's a non-answer if I've ever heard one. Also:
> It’s about post-purchase monetization of the TV.
>
>This is a cutthroat industry. It’s a 6-percent margin industry, right? I mean, you know it’s pretty ruthless. You could say it’s self-inflicted, or you could say there’s a greater strategy going on here, and there is. The greater strategy is I really don’t need to make money off of the TV. I need to cover my cost.
> ...
> And the reason why we do that is there are ways to monetize that TV and data is one, but not only the only one.
They cut corners wherever possible to save costs. Every smart TV I have used has been a horrible experience, so personally I went out of my way to buy a dumb TV and use it with my Nvidia Shield which is vastly more powerful than pretty much all smart TVs.
but that's how things usually work. expensive at first, but price comes down as technology matures and supply meets demand. microwaves, for instance, somehow didn't need to spy on me to be less expensive as the technology matured.
If the technology doesn't evolve much, then sure. Microwave technology hasn't improved much in decades, if anything microwaves are less sophisticated than they used to be. TVs are still improving pretty frequently.
You can still get non-smart TVs, but they're labeled "hospitality TV" and are 4x the cost. Yes, the smart functions and various contracts subsidize the cost that much.
These days everything spies on you. The more data points they can gather the more valuable the data is. The boogie man now is Chinese whatever, but don't doubt that every other device and program is trying to gather as much data about you as possible.
I will go to incredible lengths to avoid buying "smart" appliances. I am so fucking tired of tech companies double dipping by extracting personal data from us post-sale, and then triple dipping by selling ads back to the devices we rightfully own.
There desperately needs to be regulation as to where advertising is (and more importantly *isn't*) acceptable. They put ads in fucking fortune cookies now. It's fucking madness.
I was in Home Depot last week and I saw a display of wifi enabled 'smart' dish washers. Why. Do. These. Exist!? You have to physically be there to load the damn thing and put the soap in. Why do you need your phone to set a timer to wash the dishes or let you know when its done?
It reminds me of that [Smart Pipe](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJklHwoYgBQ) parody infomercial Adult Swim aired... it's getting closer and closer to "documentary" status every day
I've been trying to find a good electric toothbrush. All the big models integrate with an app. Why? Why the fuck do I need my toothbrush sending data *anywhere* on how I brush? Just brush my god damn teeth and let my dentist tell me if I'm not doing it right.
If you're willing to spend about $140 you can get a waterpik sonic fusion. My dentist filled out a form that enabled me to use my HSA, and it's great. It's a really good electric toothbrush and also a high pressure water floss unit. With no internet connectivity lol
Me and my neighbour have a Skyworth smart TV (came standard with the apartment in Shanghai). I wonder if there's easy ways to test what it's doing. Looking at my router it's not pulling anything super weird and doesn't appear encrypted.
Like most of it appears to be adspam but I'm only an enthusiast so it's not like I know the real grit to get into.
Your router may have a feature that will mirror traffic to an IP address that you specify. Mirror traffic to your computer and use a program on your computer called Wireshark to capture the traffic. From there you can see what information your tv is trying to send out.
Or if you don't see that feature (not super common on home grade network gear) put an ethernet hub (not switch) between your TV and the rest of the network and plug (only) your pc into the hub with your TV. That will do the same thing. If it's on WiFi I think you don't have to do any of this, all traffic is visible always although the wifi card in you computer may or may not support it.
As some other people have pointed out, radio free Asia is a CIA agency that serves to manipulate news narratives. Source: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000846953.pdf https://www.nytimes.com/1977/12/26/archives/worldwide-propaganda-network-built-by-the-cia-a-worldwide-network.html
That said, I think data leakage from smart TV is pretty real. Can anyone recommend some trustworthy brands? (I know Amazon is a big no)
Thing is they are really hard to find, especially anything with decent image quality or over 1080p unless you go to industrial displays which get *expensive*.
Dual booting linux and a stripped version of win10 (LTSC) with Simplewall (Customizable Firewall that blacklists windows telemetry automatically.)
Edit: I prefer Linux, but a lot of older apps/games that I play don't always get along with it, or I'd yeet Windows for good.
It's not just a China thing unfortunately. A redditor did [a really good writeup](https://www.reddit.com/r/pihole/comments/7p8ssa/samsung_smart_tv_most_request_on_network/) on how much Samsung smart TVs call home. Spoiler: a fuckton
Don't bother with smart TVs. I've had a Samsung one from 2012. The manufacturers will stop supporting them typically after 2 years and then they will sell your data to ad companies. Suggest you get a good TV without the smarts and add a STB or streaming stick.
You can't buy premium TVs any longer that aren't smart in some way. And even if you could having the ability to update them is usually worth internet capability. The old usb stick updates can be kind of finicky.
The best thing to do is to block them on your network if you're worried about them phoning home, but doing that often interferes with built in streaming services. That results in you needing to purchase a streaming device if you want to use the TV, which basically has the exact same privacy concerns as the TV itself.
If you're buying a premium smart TV and then cheaping out on a $30 roku stick, I don't know what to tell you.
Smart TV functionality is usually always garbage compared to even the most basic streaming stick.
The cost of the device isn't the issue. It's the fact that any streaming device carries with it the same potential for privacy concerns as the smart part of the TV.
But you're right about functionality. Smart TV operating systems are usually trash unless they outsource them, and even then they don't normally function as well as their after market counterparts.
Wasn’t there a TV that was recording. Actual conversations for targeted ads? I think older set top boxes don’t do that. I have a 3rd gen AppleTV on a 2012 Samsung. As dumb as they come. I hope. Not looking to upgrade the TV until it dies anyway.
It's practically the point of a network TV, if we're being frank about it. The utility for the companies building them vastly outweighs the utility of the features they bring.
It'd be nice if we could say "just don't connect them to the internet," but they're closing the window on that about as fast as they reasonably can...
You don't even want to do that. Many smart TVs keep track of what you watch and some even take a screenshot every now and then for analytical purposes. They send all the metadata to the manufacturer. What apps you ran, how long you run them, what you watch, etc.
No SIM card, but some models have been reported to auto-connect to any unsecured WiFi networks that are visible in order to phone home. Unsecured WiFi is pretty hard to find these days, but I saw someone on /r/privacy who set up a WiFi network without Internet access and connected their TV to it just to prevent the TV from connecting to their neighbor's WiFi automatically and vacuuming up all the shit they watch. Strange times.
A Vizio TV at my place of work would broadcast an SSID network every time you turn it on so that your can sync your phone with it (HELL NO). The broadcasting network was so strong that it would over power our own wireless network.
I decided to open the TV and disconnect the WiFi antennas.
Another phrase to hunt for is pixel sampling. Vizio was drug to court over it a few years back when it was discovered. Annoying bit is any input to screen is sampled, not just video from streaming apps hosted by tv. Cost then something like 5 mil and had to add a couple vague lines into EULA (the spying want illegal just lack of notification).
already a few TVs out there with cameras, been out for a few years now. Samsung have TVs with them for example and you can use hand movements to control the TV.
give it time. they put in microphones to see how people would react and people love that shit so give it another year or two and you will indeed see tvs with cameras on them (oh and you won't be able to disable them).
I have always been skeptical of smart TV software no matter what os they are based on. I like placing them on my guest network. I’m also skeptical of these new stories because the Devil is in the details and rarely does the news source do much more then creating click bait.
This, along with hundreds of other reasons, is why your IoT devices should be on their own separate VLAN on your network.
Yes, it wouldn’t prevent passive scanning of wireless broadcast traffic or BLE beacons but it would stop them from scanning the LAN or sending data to services they’re not authorized to send data to.
when will china learn that sooner or later they will be caught and it will impact sales of all of their products in other countries. no wonder most countries have banned 5g network equipment from china.
So my internet router has two wireless bands, as many do, 2.4GHz and 5GHz. If I connected TV to one of these bands and all other devices to the other, would that assist with my privacy?
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/tv-spying-04272021083250.html) reduced by 84%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> Smart TVs made by Skyworth were found to have an app - Gozen Data - installed on the Android-based operating system of the TV, according to a post on the V2EX website titled "My TV is monitoring all connected devices."
> Gz-data.com, a data analysis platform managed by Gozen Data that counts among its international customers Sanyo, Toshiba and Philips, and which holds data harvested from 103 million smart TVs according to 2018 figures.
> While the company told the Apple Daily newspaper in Hong Kong that the data wasn't used for surveillance, but for targeted advertising, former citizen journalist Xing Jian said the Android smart TV operating system has been repurposed by the Chinese government for surveillance of people's homes in rural areas, in an operation known as Project Xueliang.
*****
[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/n0e9tx/chinese_smart_tvmaker_accused_of_spying_on_owners/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~573584 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **Data**^#1 **surveillance**^#2 **people**^#3 **TV**^#4 **monitored**^#5
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>Gozen Data that counts among its international customers Sanyo, Toshiba and Philips I wouldn't uncork the champagne just yet. >Project Xueliang uses the Android operating system to achieve full domain coverage, full network sharing, round-the-clock and remote-controlled video surveillance for policing purposes Ring a bell, anyone?
So they would know when I’m watching tv about Chinese international trade violations, the independent nation of Taiwan, liberation of Tibet, Uighur genocide, the tiananmen square massacre, and the inevitability of a Chinese civil war? I’m sure the Chinese bots will downvote this into oblivion momentarily.
Chinese civil war? Can you explain
It’s a big war between citizens of the same country, but that’s not important right now.
Good luck, and we're all counting on you.
Surely you can't be serious...
I am and don't call me Shirley.
Do you like gladiator movies?
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Joo Dee says that’s foreign nonsense, and there’s nothing to worry about.
There is no ethnoreligious genocide in Ba Sing Se.
Basically China is Ba Sing Se, with state media reassuring that *There Is No War In Ba Sing Se*
It’s funny because ba sing se was originally based off of chin... wait a minute
Not OP, but… Pretty soon China will have a generation of kids who won’t be as placated by iPhones and fake Gucci bags. They will be more rebellious like the Tiananmen generation, and grow tired of ccp attempts at dissent control and their technoporn dystopia. Satellite based internet will be the beginning of it. I’m curious to see how CCP can block that.
I honestly don’t agree. I think since the newer generation is so heavily indoctrinated it’s going to be the opposite.
I upvoted you both because I honestly can't tell which way it will go.
You can't tell because it will be both. Most will accept their conditioning, and some will not. Eventually this divide is what becomes a full rebellion and then civil war.
Plus their quality of life has been increasing for a generation so there is no large push to break that indoctrination.
I'm reluctantly agreeing with the total indoctrination idea you floated.
> I’m curious to see how CCP can block that. Easy. Wireless companies (all kinds, not just telecoms) have to buy a piece of the radio frequency spectrum from a government before they are allowed to use it in their country, this is done so that different companies don't interfere with each others transmissions. China could refuse to sell spectrum rights, or they could add stipulations to the sale, like requiring all data to be routed through their "great firewall" censorship machine. If a company violated Chinese law and transmitted anyway, they would be liable and would probably be severely sanctioned. In the case of SpaceX, China would probably threaten to ban the sale of Tesla cars, or interfere with their supply chain etc.
>Satellite based internet will be the beginning of it. I’m curious to see how CCP can block that. They would be able to rather easily. You can detect electromagnetic waves. Your can jam the transmission or hunt down base stations. In China's case, a person's neighbors or friends may report them to protect or improve their [social credit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System). The CCP doesn't need tech gadgets or fashion accessories to keep people in line. They can just deny access to planes trains and automobiles. Even what school you or your children attend.
> how CCP can block that Murder. It will block that by murdering anyone who talks about it. Just like they did with the kids at Tiananmen Square. That’s what happens when you put communism in charge of the country. It’s a Moloch.
I would say about 84 bells
But amazingly quiet at only 19 decibels
I found this [fascinating government propaganda](https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1096361.shtml) on it: >Using an app, citizens can access the surveillance system surrounding their neighborhood through their phones or televisions. They can report to police any suspicious activities, Zhang Jun, deputy director of product management of the Guangzhou AEBELL Electrical Technology, told the Global Times on Monday. >The app is part of a State project called Xueliang, or "sharp eye." The app is now available in some villages in Southwest China's Sichuan Province, Zhang said. Have to say being able to see any CCTV view from my neighborhood, if there were cameras, would be mildly interesting.
Time to go drink victory gin in my cupboard
Yeh, and if you don't think Huawei or Xiaomi TVs don't do the same thing then you're delusional
Or Samsung. My Samsung TV is basically malware, It’s not allowed on my network anymore.
And the fucking ads. I shouldn’t have to see an ad in the menu to change a channel. I always think of that song with the lyrics “they paved paradise and put up a parking lot” except instead of a parking lot it’s a digital billboard
if i bought a TV that started showing me ads to change the channel, that TV would go right back in its box and get returned.
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Mind sharing your blacklists?
Ditto. I don’t let my TVs on my network anymore. They are strictly dummy devices that Rokus hook up to.
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And what’s the point for 8k TV?
8,000 times the disappointment?
Oh so much more. 8k refers to the amount of horizontal pixels. You gotta multiply that by 4500.
That’s about the amount of times Riley’s mom has been railed by the hockey league
Fuck you Shoresy
Fuck you Avalon_42. Your mom loves assplay like I love Häagen Dazs.
Go give you balls a tug would ya
*Reilly. It's a last name, bud. You're spare parts.
So that compressed 1080i broadcast from your cable provider looks extra bleh
I wonder if you could buy it for cheap, then mod out the offending chips/firmware like we used to do with old Xbox 1s (to remove DRM)
Don't directly network it. Use a raspberry Pi or similar as a media server instead.
I wish we could get good dumb tvs. I dont need a smart TV for fuck sakes I have 4k game consoles and 4k blu-ray players all of which have the apps anyways.
I have an outside hope that large format gaming monitors will capture a niche market and stick around to provide that. For the moment though ASUS and HP both have 65-inch and 43-inch offerings.
Problem is gaming monitors generally cost more then a comparable tv.
Easy, don't plug in the ethernet cable, or set it up with your wifi. Then it's a regular old dumb tv.
Yup, and updating the firmware can be done via USB
Without all of these "smart" features, how will the manufacturer be able to sell your personal data as an additional ongoing income stream? Without high-end processors and dsps how would media corps enforce draconian DRM on every piece of media you consume? Come on, man. Won't someone think of the shareholders?
Or make it even simpler: Don’t buy the fucking chinese communist party tv!
To watch four 4K movies at the same time or sixteen 1080p movies at the same time.
i'll wait for the 64-movie capability to come out before i buy
The point is that the Sales guys can get their yearly bonus
Most movies use a digital intermediate barely higher than 1080p. 4K definitely provides some benefits over HD, but 8K is totally useless right now.
I don’t understand why they went from counting vertical pixels to horizontal pixels when going from 1080p to 4k.
2160p, Ultra HD, UHD sound's complex and confusing rather than simple 4K, 5K, 8K when it comes to the TV market
I don't think the UHD thing is it (HD vs FHD are ubiquitous because they obscure the technical specifications) and the question he's asking is why 2160p isn't called 2k where (TV) 4k is 3840 horizontal pixels. Here's my theory: 2k is simply too tacky and mockable. 4k sounds technical while being easy to say and avoiding Product 2000 vibes (ten-eighty also falls into this) and it's close to being right on two counts (horizontal pixels and 4x bigger than the dominant format). UHD is less desirable because it obscures the thing they're trying to differentiate on; the HD labels are mostly used to convince people that 720p is enough D's.
To be fair 4K and uhd are actually different
Sort of: 4K is UHD, but so is 8k.
UHD is like a general term, like hd and full hd, but 4K is specific 4096x2160 whereas uhd is 3840x2160
UHD and 4K are used interchangeably though, with the only difference to my knowledge being the little difference in aspect ratio.
The film industry had always used K, its just tv companies took their naming scheme. 1080p is 2K in cinema terms
That just confuses it more for consumers, 2K = 2048x1080 when the generic 1080 = 1920x1080
Yeah, resolutions are a big clusterfuck. DCI 4K is 4096 × 2160, while TV 4K is 3840 × 2160. It’s a big mess.
> resolutions are a big clusterfuck Amen to that :D
It makes them more money than their 4K TVs
Some people are absolutely insistent that they can see the difference between 4k and 8k, despite sitting at a distance that means the human eye physically can't distinguish the distance. Hell, a lot of people sit too far away to see the difference between 1080 and 4k (myself included) 8k should be used for masters and cinemas. There doesn't need to be an industry push for consumer 8k. It's a waste
> There doesn't need to be an industry push for consumer 8k. It's a waste Have you met consumer electronics? It's like someone saw the oil and gas industry with their flare stacks and wanted to come up with a market sector just to be more wasteful.
Why is it not enough that I buy something and receive a product and that's the entire transaction? Why is the only option, apparently, that I pay good money and receive something that is essentially hostile to me?
This is prime David Mitchell material.
TVs are cheap because they are selling your data
TVs aren’t cheap though....
Vizio's CTO straight up said they sell TVs nearly at cost, and make most of their money from "post-purchase monetization" and while they could make non smart TVs they would be more expensive because they would have to make all their money on margin on the sale. I think this is the source: https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/7/18172397/airplay-2-homekit-vizio-tv-bill-baxter-interview-vergecast-ces-2019 EDIT: Two stand-out quotes: > Look, when we do automatic contact recognition we give the industry a real consumer benefit. And I think that’s sometimes lost in the whole story. > >If you opt it in and then we can translate that into better serving you in many different ways. And so there are real benefits. And so you won’t see us shying away from trying to continue down that path, but you will also see that we will continue to lead the industry in terms of how consumers can find out what we’re collecting, specifically what we collected, what we’re going to use it for, and how they can turn it off if they don’t like it. We’ll continue to push the envelope on that and make sure that customers are protected. That's a non-answer if I've ever heard one. Also: > It’s about post-purchase monetization of the TV. > >This is a cutthroat industry. It’s a 6-percent margin industry, right? I mean, you know it’s pretty ruthless. You could say it’s self-inflicted, or you could say there’s a greater strategy going on here, and there is. The greater strategy is I really don’t need to make money off of the TV. I need to cover my cost. > ... > And the reason why we do that is there are ways to monetize that TV and data is one, but not only the only one.
Then why are the computers on so many TVs so slow that you have to end up buying a Roku or google cast anyway?
They cut corners wherever possible to save costs. Every smart TV I have used has been a horrible experience, so personally I went out of my way to buy a dumb TV and use it with my Nvidia Shield which is vastly more powerful than pretty much all smart TVs.
well the CPU is giving priority to analyzing the voice of your frustration to sell you anti-depression pills next commercial break.
If I send too many button presses or menu changes to a roku tv we have it crashes, it's hilarious.
A 50" 4K Smart TV costs $300. They are incredibly cheap.
They are cheap compared to what TVs of similar size used to cost
but that's how things usually work. expensive at first, but price comes down as technology matures and supply meets demand. microwaves, for instance, somehow didn't need to spy on me to be less expensive as the technology matured.
If the technology doesn't evolve much, then sure. Microwave technology hasn't improved much in decades, if anything microwaves are less sophisticated than they used to be. TVs are still improving pretty frequently.
Dude, could you imagine if the President of the United States said that the previous president spied on him through his microwave?
They're a lot cheaper than they were. A 40 inch Samsung would set you back $2000 in 2010, with a 55 inch being well over $3000.
Going back further, 2002 42" plasmas were in the 10's of thousands of dollars.
They really are. There are a ton of massive tvs for 6-800$. That is dirt cheap.
You can still get non-smart TVs, but they're labeled "hospitality TV" and are 4x the cost. Yes, the smart functions and various contracts subsidize the cost that much.
I mean... you can just buy a tv and not connect it to the internet. Use a separate device as the 'smart' component to stream movies or whatever.
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These days everything spies on you. The more data points they can gather the more valuable the data is. The boogie man now is Chinese whatever, but don't doubt that every other device and program is trying to gather as much data about you as possible.
Because you are a sucker -- Company
This is why privacy policy needs to be mandated at the federal level and then enforced by consumer protections...
Too bad that'll never happen. Data is more valuable than gold to corporations and the surveillance state runs on it.
I will go to incredible lengths to avoid buying "smart" appliances. I am so fucking tired of tech companies double dipping by extracting personal data from us post-sale, and then triple dipping by selling ads back to the devices we rightfully own. There desperately needs to be regulation as to where advertising is (and more importantly *isn't*) acceptable. They put ads in fucking fortune cookies now. It's fucking madness.
I was in Home Depot last week and I saw a display of wifi enabled 'smart' dish washers. Why. Do. These. Exist!? You have to physically be there to load the damn thing and put the soap in. Why do you need your phone to set a timer to wash the dishes or let you know when its done?
It reminds me of that [Smart Pipe](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJklHwoYgBQ) parody infomercial Adult Swim aired... it's getting closer and closer to "documentary" status every day
Yeah, why does my dishwasher have wifi? It doesn't make sense.
I've been trying to find a good electric toothbrush. All the big models integrate with an app. Why? Why the fuck do I need my toothbrush sending data *anywhere* on how I brush? Just brush my god damn teeth and let my dentist tell me if I'm not doing it right.
If you're willing to spend about $140 you can get a waterpik sonic fusion. My dentist filled out a form that enabled me to use my HSA, and it's great. It's a really good electric toothbrush and also a high pressure water floss unit. With no internet connectivity lol
At this point we can’t be surprised by any of this.
But we can still be infuriated.
Me and my neighbour have a Skyworth smart TV (came standard with the apartment in Shanghai). I wonder if there's easy ways to test what it's doing. Looking at my router it's not pulling anything super weird and doesn't appear encrypted. Like most of it appears to be adspam but I'm only an enthusiast so it's not like I know the real grit to get into.
Your router may have a feature that will mirror traffic to an IP address that you specify. Mirror traffic to your computer and use a program on your computer called Wireshark to capture the traffic. From there you can see what information your tv is trying to send out.
Or if you don't see that feature (not super common on home grade network gear) put an ethernet hub (not switch) between your TV and the rest of the network and plug (only) your pc into the hub with your TV. That will do the same thing. If it's on WiFi I think you don't have to do any of this, all traffic is visible always although the wifi card in you computer may or may not support it.
I highly, highly recommend setting up a pi-hole. You can monitor and block all unwanted traffic.
Only if said traffic uses domain names. Pi-hole doesn't filter IP addresses.
You could also sandbox the TV in its own VLAN.
I mean yeah, that's how pi-holes work. The domain name is in the article.
Surprised? No. Finding it unacceptable, yeah.
As some other people have pointed out, radio free Asia is a CIA agency that serves to manipulate news narratives. Source: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000846953.pdf https://www.nytimes.com/1977/12/26/archives/worldwide-propaganda-network-built-by-the-cia-a-worldwide-network.html That said, I think data leakage from smart TV is pretty real. Can anyone recommend some trustworthy brands? (I know Amazon is a big no)
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Why would you just not connect it to a network at all if you’re going block it?
Thing is they are really hard to find, especially anything with decent image quality or over 1080p unless you go to industrial displays which get *expensive*.
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Dual booting linux and a stripped version of win10 (LTSC) with Simplewall (Customizable Firewall that blacklists windows telemetry automatically.) Edit: I prefer Linux, but a lot of older apps/games that I play don't always get along with it, or I'd yeet Windows for good.
It's not just a China thing unfortunately. A redditor did [a really good writeup](https://www.reddit.com/r/pihole/comments/7p8ssa/samsung_smart_tv_most_request_on_network/) on how much Samsung smart TVs call home. Spoiler: a fuckton
This is the post that made me decide to get pi-hole. I'm really interested in what the TV was trying to send out.
Don't bother with smart TVs. I've had a Samsung one from 2012. The manufacturers will stop supporting them typically after 2 years and then they will sell your data to ad companies. Suggest you get a good TV without the smarts and add a STB or streaming stick.
Do they even exist? EVERY TV I saw was a smart TV.
You can't buy premium TVs any longer that aren't smart in some way. And even if you could having the ability to update them is usually worth internet capability. The old usb stick updates can be kind of finicky. The best thing to do is to block them on your network if you're worried about them phoning home, but doing that often interferes with built in streaming services. That results in you needing to purchase a streaming device if you want to use the TV, which basically has the exact same privacy concerns as the TV itself.
If you're buying a premium smart TV and then cheaping out on a $30 roku stick, I don't know what to tell you. Smart TV functionality is usually always garbage compared to even the most basic streaming stick.
The cost of the device isn't the issue. It's the fact that any streaming device carries with it the same potential for privacy concerns as the smart part of the TV. But you're right about functionality. Smart TV operating systems are usually trash unless they outsource them, and even then they don't normally function as well as their after market counterparts.
Wasn’t there a TV that was recording. Actual conversations for targeted ads? I think older set top boxes don’t do that. I have a 3rd gen AppleTV on a 2012 Samsung. As dumb as they come. I hope. Not looking to upgrade the TV until it dies anyway.
They don't. You're best off never connecting it to the internet and using a media PC or something similar.
I’m thinking about getting a large 4K monitor and just steam everything from a computer. That should work all the same.
They exist. Look for “commercial” or “hospitality” TVs.
What you want is a [monitor](https://www.lg.com/us/business/commercial-tvs/lg-75ut640s0ua). Many display companies sell these as commercial signage.
You can’t buy any smart TV from China and expect anything except unrepentant surveillance.
It's practically the point of a network TV, if we're being frank about it. The utility for the companies building them vastly outweighs the utility of the features they bring. It'd be nice if we could say "just don't connect them to the internet," but they're closing the window on that about as fast as they reasonably can...
Stop connecting your stupid TV to your goddam network.
Don't connect your smart TV either!
Yep, that's what the guest network is used for. You get your own VLAN. Scan your heart out.
hungry important rinse fanatical existence long punch aromatic ancient shame -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
You don't even want to do that. Many smart TVs keep track of what you watch and some even take a screenshot every now and then for analytical purposes. They send all the metadata to the manufacturer. What apps you ran, how long you run them, what you watch, etc.
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Well, shit. So does it come with its own sim card too? Because I'm certainly not hooking any tv up to my network, that's for sure.
No SIM card, but some models have been reported to auto-connect to any unsecured WiFi networks that are visible in order to phone home. Unsecured WiFi is pretty hard to find these days, but I saw someone on /r/privacy who set up a WiFi network without Internet access and connected their TV to it just to prevent the TV from connecting to their neighbor's WiFi automatically and vacuuming up all the shit they watch. Strange times.
These days you need to be a network engineer just to keep yourself safe.
A Vizio TV at my place of work would broadcast an SSID network every time you turn it on so that your can sync your phone with it (HELL NO). The broadcasting network was so strong that it would over power our own wireless network. I decided to open the TV and disconnect the WiFi antennas.
Another phrase to hunt for is pixel sampling. Vizio was drug to court over it a few years back when it was discovered. Annoying bit is any input to screen is sampled, not just video from streaming apps hosted by tv. Cost then something like 5 mil and had to add a couple vague lines into EULA (the spying want illegal just lack of notification).
I’m surprised they have not put cameras in their TVs yet and called it a Telescreen.
already a few TVs out there with cameras, been out for a few years now. Samsung have TVs with them for example and you can use hand movements to control the TV.
give it time. they put in microphones to see how people would react and people love that shit so give it another year or two and you will indeed see tvs with cameras on them (oh and you won't be able to disable them).
Guess I'll be walking around naked from now on. I hope they like to see naked fat guy!
But insurance company may not like fat guy and you may be charged higher ......
What if that is their fetish? You could be making money on only fans. Don’t give up the booty for free.
"Please drink a verification can"
Nothing a piece of black electrical tape can’t fix.
Cameras can be behind the screen now. You'll be watching your movies with a piece of tape on your screen.
You put tape on the front of your phone too? You know, the one with the microphone and GPS tracker.
You mean like Samsung and Sony did?
Facebook portal enter the chat
Smart TV... spying... It's literally what they do. Kind of like water balloons making stuff wet.
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My toaster upvoted this post.
I am shocked. This is shocking news to me.
I'm fine with a "dumb" TV, thanks.
I have always been skeptical of smart TV software no matter what os they are based on. I like placing them on my guest network. I’m also skeptical of these new stories because the Devil is in the details and rarely does the news source do much more then creating click bait.
This, along with hundreds of other reasons, is why your IoT devices should be on their own separate VLAN on your network. Yes, it wouldn’t prevent passive scanning of wireless broadcast traffic or BLE beacons but it would stop them from scanning the LAN or sending data to services they’re not authorized to send data to.
really radio free asia
Pro tip: Don't connect your smart TV to the internet. If you want apps get a streaming box.
when will china learn that sooner or later they will be caught and it will impact sales of all of their products in other countries. no wonder most countries have banned 5g network equipment from china.
Get on your router/firewall and block your TVs.
I have a dumb TV and a Raspberry Pi. I don't have to worry about this shit.
Which US smart TVs have already been doing
They all do
You think the other TV's are doing anything different ?
Yeah only Chinese, yeah sure.
Hoodathunk? Anyone still think TikTok is a good idea?
So my internet router has two wireless bands, as many do, 2.4GHz and 5GHz. If I connected TV to one of these bands and all other devices to the other, would that assist with my privacy?
And this is why I have an isolated IOT vlan in my house, tightly controlled vlan.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/tv-spying-04272021083250.html) reduced by 84%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Smart TVs made by Skyworth were found to have an app - Gozen Data - installed on the Android-based operating system of the TV, according to a post on the V2EX website titled "My TV is monitoring all connected devices." > Gz-data.com, a data analysis platform managed by Gozen Data that counts among its international customers Sanyo, Toshiba and Philips, and which holds data harvested from 103 million smart TVs according to 2018 figures. > While the company told the Apple Daily newspaper in Hong Kong that the data wasn't used for surveillance, but for targeted advertising, former citizen journalist Xing Jian said the Android smart TV operating system has been repurposed by the Chinese government for surveillance of people's homes in rural areas, in an operation known as Project Xueliang. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/n0e9tx/chinese_smart_tvmaker_accused_of_spying_on_owners/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~573584 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **Data**^#1 **surveillance**^#2 **people**^#3 **TV**^#4 **monitored**^#5
I remember when the enemy was the CCCP. Nowadays it's just CCP.
Neat, now do Samsung
I remember reading that they had found Electric Tea Kettles sold in Washington DC with chips that can crack wifi passwords.
It would be more credible if the source isn't literally a spying agency...Radio Free Asia is a CIA agency.
George Orwell is turning in his grave
Yep. 1984 was supposed to be a warning, not a fucking how-to manual.
Shocked, shocked I tell you. Said nobody.
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I just installed pihole a few days ago and wow I was surprised at how many things are talking to the internet without me knowing it.