1984 is Here, Samsung Smart TV is Monitoring You
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@Dashrender said:
You realize your phone is already doing this as well, right?
Probably, but I only have my data pack and GPS on when I need them (Sorry Microsoft).
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@scottalanmiller said:
I think that that is a level of paranoid that isn't reasonable. Apple has the largest fortune in human history on the line. If they got caught selling that kind of info the damage would be orders of magnitude greater than the value of selling it. It would cost Apple so much and have gained them appreciably nothing. It's not a reasonable fear unless they have stated that they are doing such.
When you need to fear it is when companies have either told you it is so (like Samsung) or you are dealing with a small company that does not rely on reputation who has "nothing to lose" and selling your data might be the bases of their income. Just corporate empathy is enough to see that Apple and Amazon are among the safest possible places for your data to be. They base their fortunes, which are huge, on people trusting them.
Unless someone "accidentally" found the key to the backdoor...
lol, sorry. I couldn't resist. I'll stop feeding into the paranoia now -
@scottalanmiller said:
And my phone goes to Apple, not a third party, even if I turned it on.
How do you know? And how do you know Apple doesn't turn around and sell info to 3rd parties?
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@thanksaj said:
@scottalanmiller said:
And my phone goes to Apple, not a third party, even if I turned it on.
How do you know? And how do you know Apple doesn't turn around and sell info to 3rd parties?
I think he may have answered that already....
@scottalanmiller said:
I think that that is a level of paranoid that isn't reasonable. Apple has the largest fortune in human history on the line. If they got caught selling that kind of info the damage would be orders of magnitude greater than the value of selling it. It would cost Apple so much and have gained them appreciably nothing. It's not a reasonable fear unless they have stated that they are doing such.
When you need to fear it is when companies have either told you it is so (like Samsung) or you are dealing with a small company that does not rely on reputation who has "nothing to lose" and selling your data might be the bases of their income. Just corporate empathy is enough to see that Apple and Amazon are among the safest possible places for your data to be. They base their fortunes, which are huge, on people trusting them.
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@thanksaj said:
@scottalanmiller said:
And my phone goes to Apple, not a third party, even if I turned it on.
How do you know? And how do you know Apple doesn't turn around and sell info to 3rd parties?
See my above response explaining that.
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Remember, any device with the capability to record you .... has the capability to record you. Every phone, every TV, every computer, etc. has the ability to do what we are worried about here. The fear of someone like Apple or Amazon who does NOT say that they are selling your data is a fear that they are doing something illegal. If that is the fear, they could be doing it already and none of this matters.
The thing about Samsung is not that they are doing it illegally but they are stating that it could (or will) happen. If your fear is that people will do something reckless and illegal then you've gone over the line where none of this matters and you need to eliminate all of the technology from your life. If you are not getting into tin foil hat territory, then Apple and Amazon and Microsoft are cleared of reasonable suspicion because they have too much on the line (more than most countries), nothing to gain and have no statements saying that they reserve the right to do this.
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Their latest fuckup is inserting ads into movies you are watching through Plex and other apps just streaming local content. Samsung is not just screwing the pooch, they're gangbanging it.
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@Nic That just makes me want to avoid buying Samsung products altogether.
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I'm more and more disinclined!
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No kidding.
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I wonder if Samsung is going to notice an appreciable drop in sales from all of this. If it is enough to cross a threshold for me for considering them to purchase, I imagine that many people also cross that threshold.
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Yeah they are off my list as well. I just don't need to talk to my TV... I'm ok using the remote.
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I prefer my TVs to be "dumb", just monitors. I want to hook devices to them. AppleTV, Roku, PS3, computer, whatever. I want to choose the technology, I like my display to just be a display.
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@scottalanmiller said:
I prefer my TVs to be "dumb", just monitors. I want to hook devices to them. AppleTV, Roku, PS3, computer, whatever. I want to choose the technology, I like my display to just be a display.
We bought a no name brand TV recently (Erickson I think? Not sure) It came with a Roku stick. It was dirt cheap for a 48" TV. No appreciable quality or build issues yet. I would much prefer that kind of integration then something being a "smart"-tv.
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The technology advances so quickly on the "smart" side and so slowly on the display side. It makes little sense to have it all integrated together. They push that because "smart" TVs age much faster and people are way more likely to replace them early and often making the manufacturers way more money.
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Good lord, it just keeps getting worse: http://slashdot.org/submission/4197957/samsung-what-is-my-smarttv-reporting-to-whom
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Finally, the TV can yell at me when I'm not working out correctly or hard enough. And also people are not looking at the other bright side: when you're alone it can automatically unlock specific programming
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It's funny, Steve Gibson talked about this on his Podcast Security Now! He basically said it's nothing to worry about because it's already happening everywhere else anyhow, and besides, they couldn't possibly be sending every single bit of recorded data back to the vendor (third party) they wouldn't have enough bandwidth...
Sadly Steve Gibson just lost some respect in my eyes today!
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@Dashrender Perhaps if the assumption is that it's unpacked, uncompressed high definition or something. You can send audio at like 16kbps quality and it's still fairly decent, and video not much higher. I don't know why he'd suggest that at all.
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@Nic said:
Good lord, it just keeps getting worse: http://slashdot.org/submission/4197957/samsung-what-is-my-smarttv-reporting-to-whom
The site said:
A wireshark capture shows that remote sites are trying to access my TV until I turn it on,
Wait, how's that possible? If the TV didn't send out any requests, how are requests getting back to his TV? He mentioned that he was behind a router.
