21 ms·
Smart TVs take snapshots of what you watch multiple times per second
- squiffsquiff 2y ago> Smart TVs from Samsung and LG take screenshots of what you are watching even when you are using them to display images from a connected laptop or video game console By Jeremy Hsu Unfortunately I wasn't able to find a non-paywalled link myself. This _appears_ to reproduce the article text: https://kbin.melroy.org/m/technology@lemmy.world/t/480211 https://kbin.melroy.org/m/technology@lemmy.world/t/480211
- tecleandor 2y agoAbout that, some previous information from a year or two ago shown that they took screenshots even when playing video files from a usb drive.
- card_zero 2y agoHere's the paper: https://arxiv.org/html/2409.06203v1 https://arxiv.org/html/2409.06203v1
- rlv-dan 2y ago> [...] in their automatic content recognition systems [...] Samsung TVs can take screenshots every 500 milliseconds and LG TVs every 10 milliseconds I wonder how much energy it take to analyze 4k images 10 times a second?
- kombookcha 2y agoI have to think that whatever they're using this for, it could be done at a much lower data resolution.
- tecleandor 2y agoThey do this to match what you're watching to a database. Think Shazam but with video. They find what movie, show or whatever you're watching and send it to advertisers with all your metadata, so they can match and track you from an ad impression to you visiting their site to get information and buy. There's a lot of metadata there to match. If you access their site, for example with your phone, from the same internet connection, they can probably match the information from the TV with one of the tracking cookies on your phone, and then keep tracking you in all the commercial "journey". This has been already discussed around here because this is one of the reasons smart tvs are so cheap right now, because they're being subsidized by advertisers. Some of the advertisers had in their sites information about their tracking capabilities. I'll try to find that link.
- rightbyte 2y ago10ms is 100Hz not 10Hz. A conservative assumption would be that they use all spare cpu time for spyware? Maybe 1-10W extra if small arm processors?
- reginald78 2y agoThe answer is: Who cares? The rube who bought the thing is paying for it.
- citboin 2y agoBest Buy sells the "DuraPro - Partial Sun Series 43" Class LED Outdoor Partial Sun 4K UHD TV (2023)" which is supposedly a "non-smart" TV. I just ran a search and don't know anything about it, personally. They could still be screenshotting AFAIK.
- idiotsecant 2y agoAll TVs are non-smart TVs if you don't give them internet.
- jannes 2y agoIs this even possible nowadays? Maybe they already have an embedded 5G radio? (subsidized by advertisers)
- idiotsecant 2y agoHave you ever seen such a thing? I haven't. I'm sure one exists but I could go to an electronics store right now and I doubt I would see a single one.
- davemp 2y agoThey will still take way too long to boot android on their underpowered MCU
- izacus 2y agoIs there a list of those models somewhere? The article is partially paywalled and hard to say which ones.
- 0xEF 2y agoI think, at this point, we can assume if it has a camera, microphone in the controller, connects to wifi, etc, it will be spying on you in some way. No list needed, just look for displays without those features. I get around it by using PC displays as televisions, usually hooked up to a thinclient or SBC that I've purpose for media delivery. So, when I shop for a display, any feature beyond an HDMI port becomes wholly unnecessary to me.
- izacus 2y agoThat's kind of bull though, because it's absolutely not true for Samsung or LG lines of TVs. If it's so "easy to assume", surely you can point at some exact models?
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y agoGiven that LG is happy to add ads to tvs, why do you think this one more step is so unbelievable? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41655225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41655225
- Sharlin 2y agoIf it has any smart features at all, you can be pretty sure that it's spying on you in all sorts of ways.
- izacus 2y agoWe're talking about TVs that take screenshots - which models do that?
- tecleandor 2y ago
- amelius 2y agoMost of these are still dumb: https://www.panelook.com/ https://www.panelook.com/
- kamikazechaser 2y agoAlphonso inc. develops the tech https://lgads.tv/site-privacy-policy/ https://lgads.tv/site-privacy-policy/. Looked into the LinkedIn of some of the employees and it looks like a huge operation.
- patwoz 2y agoJust never connect them to the internet. I just use them as a display for my apple tv.
- pmontra 2y agoMy TV is a Raspberry 3B+ with a TV Hat and TVHeadend on my Android phone and tablets. My disconnected LG smart TV sits in a corner connected to an old PlayStation. I can use it to watch movies with friends if I want to: I connect to it either my laptop or my tablet with a HDMI cable. BTW: why a smart TV? Because for only an extra 50 Euro I got a much better screen (subjective assessment) than the best dumb TV on sale when I went shopping for them years ago.
- doublerabbit 2y agoMeanwhile my 70 year old something mother wants to watch TV not having to rely on me for tech support when she does. For nerds, brilliant. I love such setups myself but for the household consumer it's an no-go.
- MavisBacon 2y agothe bane of my existence. I have some older family dealing with serious cognitive decline and when it comes to my parents or in-laws I'm "the guy" so they will ask for my help navigating the TV because they are still understandably clinging onto satellite/cable while being forced to learn streaming. I'm more than happy to help as this is an area of interest but man, what I would do to be able to set my father-in-law up with a TV, streamer, remote he can use consistently. When I bought an Apple TV I thought that would solve his problems when they housesat for us but his motor issues get in the way and he always forgets Siri. I raised this question of how do we better serve older adults a few times at an assistive tech conference and no one seems to have cracked the code yet.
- tedchs 2y agoFYI you can use a universal infrared remote with Apple TV, which might have larger buttons or a more familiar interface. I have mixed feelings myself about the "touchpad" in the apple remote.
- shiroiushi 2y agoSomeone needs to put a network sniffer on a bunch of different TVs and see exactly what traffic they're generating and how much. Sending 120 4k images per minute (or worse, 6000 for the LG) on a residential WiFi connection should be pretty obvious, and it should be fairly easy to block too.
- rightbyte 2y agoThey could be looking for watermarks or match some 'frame hash' versus a database. The spyware traffic could be measured in single digit bytes.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2y agoUse one of those perceptual hashing algorithms that work across noise and resolutions. Then you just need a tiny fingerprint sent per scan that can be aggregated across consumers.
- martinflack 2y agoYes. A sequence of consecutive hashes would match to a TV show or movie identifier in a local database; and that identifier is all that needs to be uploaded until there's a new TV show or movie identified.
- eimrine 2y agoWhat if any traffic is encrypted? Taking snapshots is not sending them in the meaning that software can delete similarly looking images by their own definition of similarness. And BTW that kind of testing is more needed for some industry critical equipment - processors with ME, routers, etc. TV is a brainrot thing for dumbs, nobody needs a TV which doesn't spy you.
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago> And BTW that kind of testing is more needed for some industry critical equipment - processors with ME, routers, etc. Yes, obviously testing should be ubiquitous. > TV is a brainrot thing for dumbs, nobody needs a TV which doesn't spy you. No, TV is nigh-universal and everyone deserves privacy.
- Kim_Bruning 2y agoThis makes these screens a bit of an issue when eg accessing your bank. And it should be made clear to people that you must not connect a corporate or government devices to these screens. (The fact that private citizens _should_ have the same security expectations notwithstanding, corporations and governments have more legal clout)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- nbbnbb 2y agoI wonder if this is a legal issue if they bypass HDCP and record or snapshot content from a privileged domain?
- repelsteeltje 2y agoEchoing from comments, most likely the image is scaled down and / or only fingerprints (think: Shazaam) are uploaded. While the latter allows remote party to gauge what you're looking at it most likely doesn't infringe copyrights. But, as you mention, it might very well violate some of the HDCP fine print.
- kleiba 2y agoIf you live in the EU, certainly you first have to give consent to that practice, right?
- tjansson 2y agoIf they process personal data without explicit user consent, in violation of a privacy policy that outlines the types of data collected and how it is handled, it could be a GDPR violation. For example, if I cast photos of my children via Chromecast or entered my email into a Netflix app, and they send those images or my email sent to a server without my consent, this might also constitute a GDPR violation. It would be great if Max Schrems or a similar privacy advocate took up such a case.
- luke-stanley 2y agoWe have a Samsung TV in the UK (where consent is still required too!) and I recall it nagging for consent very often when we got it. The default option from the TV controller is to give it quickly and easily, maybe it could happen by sitting on the controller. It's hard to see how this would be informed consent. I do wonder exactly how the EU and UK market models from the US and others, anyone got info?
- mrighele 2y agoThat's why these days even TVs have cookie banners. Most of them by default push you to accept and I guess that they are illegal under GDPR (the same happens on the web) but until we start seeing fine going down heavily the situation won't change.
- tecleandor 2y agoNow that I found some old links... This began to be more public since Vizio published their 2021 Q3 earning reports and it was made public that their profits from advertising and users data was more than double than what they made selling devices [0]. Roku themselves have said that they are in the Ad business, not in the tech business, and they were getting around $40 per user a month (also in [0]). All these ACR (automated content recognition) systems mix and match data from what they can see in your screen, with your IP address, with cookies you have on different devices... soy they can match different devices you own. For example, AudienceX says about ACR [1]: Second-Screen Experiences: Being able to synchronize content across connected devices is vital for successful advertising. ACR lets you do this by identifying the content that viewers engage with most on a primary screen (such as a smart TV) and delivering similar or the same content to secondary devices such as mobile phones or tablets. [...] Automatic content recognition relies on two main types of technologies—fingerprinting and watermarking—to identify and analyze content. However, ACR technology can be broadly categorized into three main types. These include: Audio Fingerprinting [...] Video Fingerprinting [...] Digital Watermarking. The Drum news site says [2]: Automatic content recognition (ACR) is a technology built into smart TVs that allow the set to see or hear what is being played on the television. [...] ACR gives advertisers the keys to go beyond impressions, to understand who is watching and when. When paired with digital ad libraries, advertisers can find exactly where their ads ran – the hour, on what network or streaming service – and understand the exact corresponding impressions for the specific occurrence of their ads. [...] You can even go as deep as zip code, reading further between the lines about the impact of advertising at a local level. Grapeseed Media, that works with agencies to provide technology and plans, says [3]: For example, let’s say your client is Nike, and you’re running a Connected TV campaign for Nike shoes. When a person sees your Nike ad on their CTV, you want to deliver a specific set of display banners to their mobile devices so that the next time they open up a browser on their phone, they see these banners. One of the ways to do this is with ACR. You would contact an ACR vendor and give them all of the details of your campaign, and the ACR vendor would use their software to create an audience segment of people who have been exposed to your Nike shoe ad on CTV [Connected TV]. Then, they would send you that audience segment so you can target it with banners. Think of this data like a file that can’t be opened — you can see the title, but you can’t dive in. You can only upload it and target whatever is inside. All of this happens in real-time... Mountain advertising software company say that they know all the devices in your household and will match your "Connected TV" ad impressions with your visits from others of your devices... [4] So this is what they're doing with your info. --- 0: https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/10/22773073/vizio-acr-advertising-inscape-data-privacy-q3-2021 1: https://audiencex.com/insights/automatic-content-recognition/ 2: https://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2023/05/08/acr-data-the-key-measuring-more-just-impressions-ctv 3: https://grapeseedmedia.com/blog/programmatic-ad-strategy/ 4: https://mountain.com/performance-tv/verified-visits/
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- KaiserPro 2y agoSounds like wholesale copyright theft to me.
- jannes 2y agoI think they are just generating fingerprints of the video data on the device. Then they send it to the cloud where they compare it with a huge database of TV shows, etc. Similar to what Shazam does for music.
- KaiserPro 2y agoYou raise a valid point! but if you read the https://www.disneyplus.com/en-gb/legal/disney-terms-of-use https://www.disneyplus.com/en-gb/legal/disney-terms-of-use terms of use (which you can't copy and paste easily): > you may download one copy of such Content to a single computer or mobile device (as applicable) for your personal, non-commercial home use only, provided that you (a) keep intact all copyright and other proprietary notices, (b) make no modifications to, and do not rent, lease, loan, sell, distribute, copy (except to create a single copy for your own back-up purposes), or create any derivative works based on a Site or the Content, in whole or in part, I would say thats commercial derivative works. I think shazam had to agree permissions to sample works for fingerprinting.
- flacebo 2y agoSmart TVs are a curse (from a consumer perspective). A separate smart device makes much more sense. People usually replaced their TVs when they broke, which could be 6-8+ years. Nowadays as their already slow hardware becomes even more obsolete, streaming apps are no longer updated and start to break, new ones are not released, etc. they go ahead and buy a new one. You also have to accept all kinds of crappy agreements, so you can be spied on and get served ADS (?!?!). Not to mention even the most expensive TVs come with baffingly slow hardware and software. $2k devices can take 10+ seconds to load the menu with 4 options, where you can modify picture settings. Incredible. A TV should be a display with inputs and nothing more IMO. Smart boxes are cheap and much faster than even the most expensive TVs, and they can be replaced inexpensively when eventually they become obsolete. For a long time I pulled the network cable from my TV after I got tired of getting bombarded with changed ToS agreements, firmware updates and home screen ads. Now I have it on the network again just because I wanted to control the source from my PC, but it's still blocked from the internet on the firewall. Go ahead and make snapshots you stupid little TV.
- rob74 2y agoWhile a separate smart device makes more sense from an ecological perspective, it won't save you from ads, tracking, screenshots etc., as long as the same OS that would be running on the TV is running on the device. And, if you want to install apps from streaming services, you need one of the supported OSs - AFAIK most smart devices use Android TV?
- flacebo 2y agoWith smart boxes you have much more options. I'm thinking a stipped down android TV box doesn't make screenshots and track you like most smart TVs do, they also don't serve random ads on the home page.
- _mlbt 2y agoApple TV is really your best option if you want privacy. Google is primarily an ad company that wants to learn as much about you as possible to target those ads.
- benterix 2y agoFrankly, I never understood why you'd ever want to connect your TV to any network rather than use an external device. Any convenience (?) you might get will be quickly offset by problems becoming inherent to your TV which doesn't make any sense to me.
- mavamaarten 2y agoFor me it's home automation. I turn down the lights or switch to a movie scene whenever the TV turns on. Oh, and my external subwoofer also gets its power turned on/off the same way.
- corysama 2y agoDo they transmit this information anywhere? A lot of this can be attributed to the anti-burn-in tech that dims your screen if the image is mostly-static for a long time.
- infecto 2y agoIts been known for years that some smart tvs do screen caps which is used for either ads or resold as data. So while I am sure there may be some use in anti-burn-in, we already know this is a revenue model for a number of the manufacturers.
- hosteur 2y agoThis should be illegal
- maximus-decimus 2y agoYou would really think spying inside somebody's home would already be illegal.
- ranger_danger 2y agoPretty sure they agreed to it. Whether or not that's actually enforceable will have to wait for a lawsuit and then a judge to decide. (You can't just say all EULA's are unenforceable)
- Someone1234 2y agoIt should, but Americans spent tons of energy fighting consumer protections and complaining about the EU requiring them from US companies. Hard to see this issue move forward, when the population considers corporate rights more important than personal privacy. Heck, tons of people appeared out of thw woodwork to complaining about Right-To-Repair, but now that several states have required it, everyone loves having the manuals/parts.
- mcherm 2y agoI'm in the market for a new TV. Is there any source that lists models that do NOT engage in this sort of spying? I am willing to pay a significant premium and forego convenience features, but I lack the expertise to review products myself.
- flacebo 2y agoJust don't connect it to your network and you're probably fine. Use a smart box for streaming services.
- maximus-decimus 2y agoHow do you know the smart box is not doing the same thing?
- orev 2y agoYou know that the smart box IS doing that, but you’re able to make the choice of which one to get. And it’s not coupled with the display so you can choose the best options in each category instead of being locked in to whatever OS is installed on better displays.
- Lucasoato 2y agoI think the safest option would be not to connect the TV to the internet and buy an OpenSource smart box for connections. If anybody has suggestions for smart boxes, please reply here!
- M95D 2y agoThe last LG I used had a nag popup about once a week.
- jdenning 2y agoThe best option I’ve found is to ditch the TV and use a projector
- 2y ago
- jgalt212 2y agoCapture everything, analyze little. Make Andy Jassy even richer. Snark aside, it's like today's data scientists never heard of statistical sampling.
- ChoHag 2y ago[dead]
- binary132 2y agoAmazingly evil abuse of consumer trust, but this kind of thing will continue to get worse, not better. I’m building a Faraday cage to live in.
- ortusdux 2y agoI just want a somewhat trustworthy organization to develop a "DUMB" certification. I will pay extra for a certified DUMB TV.
- yencabulator 2y agoDigital Universal Media Box.
- amelius 2y agoIt will only be a matter of time until Congress realizes that among all the user tracking adtech companies there are also Chinese companies, at which point all user tracking including smart TVs will be banned.
- usui 2y agoThat's... very optimistic. What evidence until now exists points to that outcome? You don't think they'll prefer the lazy route of targeting the Chinese companies themselves to avoid the real conversation?
- PenguinCoder 2y agoLook at digital signage monitors. Even with that classification they have HDMI and some have WiFi.
- krick 2y agoSo what should I buy instead?
- rcarmo 2y agoI’m still waiting for the EU to realize this is a privacy matter that needs to be heavily regulated.