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There's an absurd amount of technical knowledge that you are suggesting that every household in America should subscriber to. Also, if you have a SmartTV, you

There's an absurd amount of technical knowledge that you are suggesting that every household in America should subscriber to. Also, if you have a SmartTV, you probably need to allow it contact the internet, otherwise playing internet TV (Netflix, iPlayer, Hulu, etc) is not going to work. If it can access Netflix, it can probably phone home with your data.

prebrov 10y ago
Not much technical knowledge required. Basic parental control on my ASUS router denies access to the internet to Samsung TV and it can still play content from LAN via UPnP.
- brennen 10y ago
  In order to roughly scale how much technical knowledge this actually represents, remember that most humans, even most humans with home networks, do not know what routers and networks are.
  - pdkl95 10y ago
    For a much better sense of scale, it's important to remember that ~14% of adults in the US are illiterate[1]. This is why the medical community adopted the principle of requiring informed consent[2]. a much higher standard than "it was in the ToS" or "our business model assumes you weren't lucky enough to have the education necessary to understand why it is important to opt-out". Similar requirements need to be applied to data; if you aren't proactively informing users about precisely what will happen with their data, and making sure they understand, the user isn't making a properly informed decision. Pretending people will understand the consequences of data collection (with modern analysis methods) when there is a decent chance they can't even read the ToS/etc is what you tell yourself to alleviate conative dissonance. [1] https://nces.ed.gov/naal/kf_demographics.asp#2 https://nces.ed.gov/naal/kf_demographics.asp#2 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informed_consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informed_consent
voltagex_ 10y ago
There is a market opportunity for a router with some smarts that can do automatic VLANs and access control. e.g. lightbulbs can talk to *.lifx.com and local Android devices but nothing else, TV can talk to YouTube but not to the fridge, etc etc.
remir 10y ago
Don't connect your TV to the internet and use something like a Chromecast, Roku, Apple TV, instead.
- Arizhel 10y ago
  Yeah, but those spy on you too, so I don't see how they're any better. The main advantage with things like those is that you can more easily upgrade them later as technology changes.
ktta 10y ago
I agree with you on the amount of technical knowledge that's needed. I guess routers/home internet security might be ready for some shakeup if someone comes up with a layman-ready interface while being secure. But, the point of having a firewall is that you can find tune the outgoing IP addresses. Sure, it'll take some time to initially allow all IP addresses for a specific devices, but it shouldn't be undoable. There are lists out there which specify which service owns which IP. The sole point of a good firewall _is_ that it can only access Netflix and not any unwanted servers.
Arizhel 10y ago
We need to configure our routers to allow access to neflix.com, but disallow access to viziospyservice.com.

prebrov 10y ago

Not much technical knowledge required. Basic parental control on my ASUS router denies access to the internet to Samsung TV and it can still play content from LAN via UPnP.

brennen 10y ago
In order to roughly scale how much technical knowledge this actually represents, remember that most humans, even most humans with home networks, do not know what routers and networks are.
- pdkl95 10y ago
  For a much better sense of scale, it's important to remember that ~14% of adults in the US are illiterate[1]. This is why the medical community adopted the principle of requiring informed consent[2]. a much higher standard than "it was in the ToS" or "our business model assumes you weren't lucky enough to have the education necessary to understand why it is important to opt-out". Similar requirements need to be applied to data; if you aren't proactively informing users about precisely what will happen with their data, and making sure they understand, the user isn't making a properly informed decision. Pretending people will understand the consequences of data collection (with modern analysis methods) when there is a decent chance they can't even read the ToS/etc is what you tell yourself to alleviate conative dissonance. [1] https://nces.ed.gov/naal/kf_demographics.asp#2 https://nces.ed.gov/naal/kf_demographics.asp#2 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informed_consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informed_consent

voltagex_ 10y ago

There is a market opportunity for a router with some smarts that can do automatic VLANs and access control. e.g. lightbulbs can talk to *.lifx.com and local Android devices but nothing else, TV can talk to YouTube but not to the fridge, etc etc.

remir 10y ago

Don't connect your TV to the internet and use something like a Chromecast, Roku, Apple TV, instead.

Arizhel 10y ago
Yeah, but those spy on you too, so I don't see how they're any better. The main advantage with things like those is that you can more easily upgrade them later as technology changes.

ktta 10y ago

I agree with you on the amount of technical knowledge that's needed. I guess routers/home internet security might be ready for some shakeup if someone comes up with a layman-ready interface while being secure. But, the point of having a firewall is that you can find tune the outgoing IP addresses. Sure, it'll take some time to initially allow all IP addresses for a specific devices, but it shouldn't be undoable. There are lists out there which specify which service owns which IP. The sole point of a good firewall _is_ that it can only access Netflix and not any unwanted servers.

Arizhel 10y ago

We need to configure our routers to allow access to neflix.com, but disallow access to viziospyservice.com.