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So, if I buy a so called Smart-TV (not because I like it but because traditional ones are getting harder to find) but don't set up it on my home network so it c
by squarefoot 6y ago
So, if I buy a so called Smart-TV (not because I like it but because traditional ones are getting harder to find) but don't set up it on my home network so it can't phone home, it could scan around anyway and find other open devices more than willing to participate in my personal data exfiltration?
If the Amazon project succeeds, I would expect in a few months most home devices manufacturers, to partner to implement it so they have a way to circumvent users choices.
- choeger 6y agoThis. That move is just one step further in removing control. They now have sealed devices that can have who knows what functions but are confined to the network. Next step is to have a concealed upstream. After that they will somehow get a legal mandate to force such devices on you (like the EU did with cars). Maybe they will use smoke detectors or "emergency" services. In the end, this is exactly like in 1984.
- bregma 6y agoLess 1984 and more Fahrenheit 451. There is no central authority imposing this to exert control on the masses: consumers are imposing it on themselves willingly and industry is just giving them what they want. Juvenal redux.
- WarOnPrivacy 6y ago> consumers are imposing it on themselves willingly Without reasonable alternative and without consent is like a LEO version of 'willing'.
- dopidopHN 6y agoI never own a tv, I don’t plan to own one ever.
- WarOnPrivacy 6y agoI tossed out my OTA TV in 1992. I've never had Cable TV.
- gruez 6y agoYou can buy commercial displays (ie. the ones used for signs). It's worse and more expensive, but it's still an alternative.
- ryukafalz 6y agoTVs without smart features used to be priced like TVs still are now; the one I'm still using cost me something like $300 several years ago. Those commercial displays are priced for businesses to afford. It's not something the average consumer is going to reasonably buy - especially not lower-income people. (As an aside, it's fucked that the cheaper devices that low-income people can afford are always the ones with the most surveillance.)
- ta988 6y agoThis is similar to saying, if you don't want to be filmed in the street move to a private island. Doesnt solve the problem for most people. Brands don't care about the few exceptions that know their dark side. What they care about is that tens of millions don't.
- fouric 6y agoThe existence of "reasonable alternatives" is largely irrelevant. Firefox is a reasonable alternative to Chrome, and yet very few of the people I tell about Chrome's tracking switch - they just don't care. Same for Protonmail/Gmail, iOS/Android, Linux/Windows (yeah, yeah, not everything runs on Windows - nobody I know will even attempt to dual-boot and do what they can on Linux), dumb/smart TVs (yes, reasonable dumb TVs exist - the Spectres, most notably). This is a willingness issue, not a lack of reasonable alternatives, in the majority (not all) of markets.
- rsfern 6y agoI don’t remember much backstory in 1984 for how the surveillance state came to be, but I think it’s totally plausible that a government could co-opt this self-imposed setup and use it for 1984-style control.
- GekkePrutser 6y agoIIRC there wasn't much backstory on how it came to be other than a war between continents.
- TchoBeer 6y agoIt's 1984 and we're the proles
- Clewza313 6y agoSo armed Amazon goons kicking down your door and bringing you to the dungeons of the Ministry of Customer Obsession to be tortured with fake cattle prod knockoffs?
- choeger 6y agoNope. Much more like this: You are legally obliged to install a smart meter, smart smoke detector and smart heating control in your home. If you rent, your landlord will install these things. If you own the authorities will inspect the presence and operation of these devices and fine you if you don't comply. All these devices will be offered by companies like amazon. Coincidentally, amazon lobbyists shape the laws that make these things mandatory.
- sofixa 6y ago> You are legally obliged to install a smart meter, smart smoke detector and smart heating control in your home If that's all they do, what's the problem here? All three have big and direct positives for everyone ( you, your home, your community) - a smart heating control saves energy ( climate catastrophe incoming, so could be useful), a smart smoke detector can alert the fire department if smoke is ongoing for more than X time, and a smart meter can be used to accurately predict, distribute, reduce and bill energy consumption. And if they all stay in their lane, there aren't many privacy downsides. Edit: I'd appreciate a response to go with the downvotes and tell me what i'm missing
- me_me_me 6y agoTime to invest in companies producing faraday's cages for houses.
- julianlam 6y agoYou jest, but all I'm thinking about is just how unpolluted the 2.4GHz spectrum would be if everybody's house had a built-in Faraday cage, and how nice that would be...
- BenjiWiebe 6y agoAnd as long as the faraday cage wasn't in interior walls, wifi would work really well on 2.4 inside your house, with such a nice low noise floor. You'd need it though, since cell service would be rather poor.
- qq4 6y agoCouldn't you have a cell antenna outside of the cage?
- vineyardmike 6y agoMy father used a foil as part of insulation and the wifi in that house is amazing.
- amyjess 6y agoThe fact that you can say this without being hauled off to Room 101 and tortured until you recant proves that this is in fact not exactly like 1984.
- walrus01 6y agoComing soon, YouTube video guides on how to locate the rf ICs on the motherboard of your smart tv, and take a Dremel cutting disk to the section of the PCB that has the copper traces for the antenna.
- Haemm0r 6y agoDon't forget to cut the HDMI Cable too :)
- WarOnPrivacy 6y agoDystopic cable cutting is weird
- adreamingsoul 6y agoMost have a dedicated WiFi board that is separate from everything else.
- PurpleFoxy 6y agoAnd then the tv bricks when it can’t access the network for 10 days.
- H1Supreme 6y agoIs this true? The GUI on my smart TV is so slow and laggy, that I planned on getting a Roku and disconnecting it from my network. Makes me want to sniff the traffic and see what kind of replies it's getting. Maybe just spoof it.
- devmor 6y agoThat's what I did with my newer Samsung smart TV. Really would like to just kill the network capabilities of it physically, though.
- bluesquared 6y agoI know you jest, but a simple x-acto knife will usually do the trick
- satori99 6y agoThere is nothing stopping TV manufacturers from putting a 3/4G modem in their products. The billing is likely insignificant compared to the value of the data they can exfiltrate.
- hsbauauvhabzb 6y agoWasn’t the entire point of 5G to reduce the cost so that this dystopian ‘internet of phone home day bypassing all your security controls’?
- satori99 6y agoI figure that this scenario is all but inevitable at this point. Most people just don't care -- and those that do can go live in Faraday cages like weirdos.
- Swenrekcah 6y agoOur only recourse at this point are very strict laws that require all devices that do this to periodically and very explicitly state they are doing so, also providing the option to turn the 'feature' off. The important part then is that failure to comply needs to result in personal liability for retailers, distributors and manufacturers. That second part is the one that will probably never come true but it is the only thing that would bring any sort of meaningful change.
- _Understated_ 6y agoI disagree... can you honestly tell me that you absolutely require to have an Amazon device? Or a smart TV? I can understand if they were putting microphones into the electrical sockets when your house was being built... you need to have electricity. The solution is don't fucking buy the items... when they see a drop in sales, even a few percent, they'll take notice. Or, god forbid, get your old TV repaired! Mandating that the government steps in is crazy... we're talking about governments that are paid, openly, by lobbyists from these organisations.
- amelius 6y agoUse tinfoil wallpaper.
- mikro2nd 6y agoNo need... the builder used tinfoil-based insulation when they built my house.
- Phurist 6y agoBut then give it a network.. just no public internet access :)
- hsbauauvhabzb 6y agoShhh the first rule of wifi black holes is that you don’t talk about wifi black holes.
- dismalpedigree 6y agoI tried that on my LG tv. The result was a 60 second timeout before I could use the tv when turning it on. I ended up figuring out how to factory reset it and then never set up the wifi. No firmware update, but I don’t care since I only want a dumb monitor.
- jk7tarYZAQNpTQa 6y agoMy advice: connect it to a restricted network, where it can successfully ping home and assert internet connectivity, but everything else (except maybe updates or whatever you want to allow) just fails. A better, more useful approach is to have a DNS server on the home network (something like a pi hole), where all analytics go nowhere, Youtube isn't capable of downloading ads, etc., but you can still use the smart TV features you want. IIRC some TVs have internal DNS servers and only use those, so an ARP spoofing may be also needed.
- vineyardmike 6y agoI thought most TVs overwrote the network dns settings?
- deergomoo 6y agofwiw you can often update the firmware via USB anyway—not sure about LG specifically but Samsung TVs support this. It's often worth updating the firmware as, like a lot of software these days, it sometimes ships half-broken.
- adreamingsoul 6y ago“Smart devices” have been trying to phone home for awhile now. I don’t have any stats or research to cite, but my own evidence from reverse-engineering TVs and other IOT devices. I suspect the business motivation by Amazon is to become the “middleman” between these devices and the manufacture.
- pb77 6y agoAmazon is known to sell the ring data, i suspect this could give amazon more data that they can sell and make more money. It is almost like a mesh tracking in a neighborhood if this is enabled.
- vineyardmike 6y agoI think amazon might be more focused on owning the middleware for smart home devices to improve the features available (compared to say zigbee) and improve the experience... and sell chips to device makers for $$
- austincheney 6y agoMy answer is a home projector. It’s not 4K but it’s cheap and puts out a great display. It’s also just a projector without any applications or network access.
- avh02 6y agoThis is the route i went (though admittedly mostly by accident), unfortunately do have a "smart AV receiver/amp" but the functionality there's too convenient for me to kill all networking. If i had to buy a TV now I'd avoid a smart one like the plague.
- polskibus 6y ago4K projectors are getting cheaper, although some reviews doubt the quality improvement.
- smackeyacky 6y agoYeah but the instant you plug in a chromecast to watch netflix or disney+ they got you. Blu rays are drying up at an alarming rate, at least it feels that way.
- austincheney 6y agoThat tracking is limited by account and/or access device. It is not bound to the display. I use a Roku and who knows what data they share with the channel providers, but at this time I doubt they are giving unfettered network access, outside of content request/response, to the channel providers.
- distances 6y agoI think I can accept the tracking Chromecast does when I stream Netflix through it. I have it behind a remote switch so that Chromecast only gets electricity while I'm watching something, then it just gets switched off again. Or am I underestimating the tracking Chromecast is doing?
- g00gler 6y agoI just got a 65” UHD sceptre brand TV with no smart features at Walmart for $329. It’s pretty great that such a desirable feature is at the bottom of the barrel
- Loughla 6y ago100%. We just got a sceptre from walmart. Stupid big for the price, great picture, and did I mention the low price. Oh, and not one smart feature; just television with various inputs. I haven't TV shopped in literal decades. It astounded me that there was (a) a market for more advertising on your television via smart features, and (b) seemingly low-end models are the only ones that are available as 'dumb'. Other manufacturers have regular tv's, but they are never available, and cost as much as the smart versions. The whole thing is weird.
- josefresco 6y agoLow end TVs also skimp on HDMI ports. I didn't think of this, purchased a cheap LG (with only 2) and then had to buy an HDMI hub. Obviously still cheaper than paying $2-400 more on the TV itself, but next I'm I'll count the ports.
- Loughla 6y agoFun fact - I got the sceptre because it listed 3 HDMI ports. Opened it up, and it has 4. No idea why the difference.
- foobarian 6y agoHow are they vs. LG OLED panels? Lack of dumb option is what's stopping me from getting a LG :(
- Loughla 6y agoCompared to any OLED, they're just as good. A bit bright, but everything else is solid. The speakers are what are often complained about, in that they're small and not that loud. Ours is loud enough that we keep it on 7 (out of like 50? I've never gone above 10) for a room that is 14'x28'. I'm sold on them for future purchases.
- vhanda 6y agoMaybe the future is having some kind of Faraday cage around your devices. Or maybe even around the house. This might be possible in apartments.
- lifeisstillgood 6y agoA faraday cage around a TV kind of defeats the point. Although it would improve some films a great deal :-) I think this has to get sorted out in the wash with regulation. If you collect data about someone, it needs to be treated at HIPPAA levels of paranoia. That just makes so much of this rubbish go away. It might increase the costs of TVs. Certainly there are many areas of global markets that have incredible deep tech that just are not seeing expected market pricing. (Off topic but eye-tests. In the UK there are branches dedicated to performing a medical test by post-graduate trained operators, for token cost, just so they can upsell me on expensive frames. I mean I would rather pay for the eye test and buy online.)
- ttul 6y agoPerhaps people will start covering their homes in copper mesh.
- mgr86 6y agoEdit: I was wrong. Please disregard this comment. Someone links the comment below. And the sub thread that I remember being removed appears to still be present. —— I commented the other week about enjoying my LG oled smart tv. Someone mentioned what about the evesdropping. (Which I’m aware of) and it started a small thread of people discussing that. These replies were removed about 24-48 hours later. I found it odd the comments about smart TVs evesdropping were removed. So I’m commenting to bookmark this, and see if this discussion is also removed.
- jagged-chisel 6y agoRemoved from HN? I have some doubts. It’s not impossible but I don’t think HN’s reputation would survive if they’re removing comments in service to … anyone else. Edit: this[1] looks like what you’re talking about. Has anything been removed (by HN) from this conversation? 1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26996739 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26996739
- mgr86 6y agoThank you! I am going to edit my original comment, but I was completely wrong. I see the conversation that I thought was deleted. My mistake.
- beshrkayali 6y agoI run pihole on my network. I monitored requests made from my tv and blocked the ones to LG one by one.
- mandelbrotwurst 6y agoThat’s a great move and I applaud you and also I wonder whether LG would start disabling TVs unable to get their requests through if they noticed a critical mass of them doing that. “We noticed you’re using an ad-blocker” ...
- GekkePrutser 6y ago
- ulzeraj 6y agoIMO. There should be a market for: - Dumb panels (not monitors). Perhaps stripped down recycled smart tvs. - Smart tvs but with user replaceable firmware. Think OpenWRT for TVs. Maybe the same guy who does the dumb panels could sell those but with a raspberry pi in place of the logic board. Of course a monitor solves these issues but these are normally smaller and more expensive.
- ff317 6y agoI've been buying "Sceptre" -brand LCD TVs for use around the house the past several years. They're "dumb" with just a basic remote and basic settings firmware like TVs from a decade or two ago, and they tend to be reasonably priced, and of reasonable quality. Plug a streaming stick or your RPi in the back for your choice of $Streaming_TV service. They now also make units with Android TV built in, but so far they're still making non-smart models as well!
- jmrm 6y agoI don't know about OLED and other fancy panels (like Micro LED, QLED, etc.), but for common LCD panels there are plenty of controller available to use them, even with 4K resolution [1]. And panels aren't difficult to find because they are used to repair other television. The problem here is to protect it about dust and dirt, also not having a convenient and easy to use user interface. IMO the best middle point is buying a LG Smart TV. They have Amazon Prime, Amazon Alexa, Netflix, and other platform installed, but IIRC you can uninstall this apps and you can't use them until you accept the terms and conditions. If you don't accept them you shouldn't worry about them. I haven't used Wireshark to know if that apps use the network even without using them, but at least isn't the same to some Samsung TV that insert ads in the menus when your TV is connected to the Internet. [1]: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33001887592.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33001887592.html
- danpalmer 6y ago"Dumb TVs" would cost more. It's hard to market something that costs more and has what most people would perceive to be fewer features. They would cost more because post-sale content sales and advertising generate revenue for TV manufacturers, which they use to subsidise the device sale price, because it's such a competitive, low-margin, market.
- tarkin2 6y agoI read the wikipedia page on shellcodes a few days ago. It said the first thing they do is find a way of phoning home.
- nemacol 6y agoI had assumed with was happening with Comcast's wifi option already. Manufacturers just have to have credentials and someone nearby to have a comcast network device.
- teekert 6y agoI am starting a startup which builds (stylish) Faraday cages for household appliances!
- bredren 6y agoI know Apple has rejected offering a TV panel, but to offer continuity of privacy into this domain I suspect they still may need to.
- pb77 6y agoI have a smart tv but never signed into my wifi from it, does it still have privacy issues. I use firestick to access netflix etc. I assume the next versions of the tvs internet connection may be mandatory for it to work.
- aasasd 6y agoI think I've already heard of TVs connecting to the available open wifi networks.
- vineyardmike 6y agoAny examples? I recall HN convos discussing this as an eventuality but no examples yet.
- justapassenger 6y agoIf data from TVs is so valuable, manufacturers will just include 5G modem and phone home directly. This isn’t tech problem. This is legal and regulatory issue.
- ilikepi 6y agoThis is totally plausible and I imagine some manufacturers will try it. Alternatively they can simply make the TV not work unless it has been connected to WiFi...I believe there may already be some sets that do this.
- neop1x 6y agoHave a look at big "business monitors" like NEC E657Q [1]. I was able to find some 55, 65, 75" 4K monitors without smart functions. It is probably not THAT bad after all... [1] https://www.nec-display.com/ap/en_display/e657q/index.html https://www.nec-display.com/ap/en_display/e657q/index.html