I’m Terrified of My New TV

I wasn&#x27;t particularly disturbed by this article until I got to the following passage regarding the &quot;Voice Command&quot; feature:<p><i>&quot;Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party.&quot;</i><p>I don&#x27;t think there is a prison horrible enough to send these people to. There is NO legitimate reason that an always-on audio feed from your home should be sent to third parties. People shouldn&#x27;t even be allowed to opt-in to something like that. No one would EVER knowingly allow this, regardless of the functionality it enabled.<p>I cannot envision a circumstance in which this &quot;feature&quot; was not put in at the direct request of law enforcement. I am extremely disappointed that he did not name the manufacturer of this TV in the article (unless he made it all up to get clicks). If this is legitimate, he needs to post the manufacturer&#x27;s name and they need be boycotted, immediately, forever. Consumers need to adopt a scorched earth strategy with companies like this.

The only reason I feel comfortable connecting things like consumer network-connected cameras, TVs, Bluray players, game consoles, or anything else &quot;Internet Ready&quot; to my network is because I perform outbound filtering, and it&#x27;s a big eye-opener to see first-hand what these devices are trying to connect to.<p>Luckily most things use HTTP so you can actually filter based on the URL it&#x27;s trying to access. For example, permitting software updates, but denying any kind of analytics reporting.<p>And with VPN on your phone (especially Always-On VPN) you can filter the requests from your phone with the same granularity, which is even more eye-opening.<p>Outbound filtering is incredibly useful if you value your security and privacy.

I&#x27;m probably not normal, but frankly I would just leave it unplugged from the Internet.<p>At the end of the day my current tv does what I need to do (ie act as a big monitor) without an internet connection. Given the number of devices already floating around here for browsing the web, I don&#x27;t really need my tv to do that. For streaming I have Chromecast or whatever.<p>I get that tv makers want to sell me something, but they&#x27;re really bad anyway at the convergence - so the best option for me is just to use it as a screen and get devices to do what I want.<p>The only real motivation to get a new tv is if the current one breaks. I replace all the other living room devices a lot more frequently than the tv.<p>But the point of bothering to read the terms is well worth knowing so I appreciate the article.

The author is afraid of his smart TV, but probably doesn&#x27;t think twice about carrying around a smartphone.<p>Smartphones have virtually all of the capabilities that make the author fear his smart TV, only the smartphone is, if anything, even more dangerous because it is more ubiquitous.<p>People carry their phones around everywhere, and the phones are usually constantly on and equally capable of monitoring your every word and action that you perform on them.<p>If you value privacy but own a smartphone, you&#x27;ve already lost.

Went through this recently at Best Buy. The salesperson said by next year they may no longer carry any &quot;dumb&quot; tvs. Currently, those options are almost gone. I didn&#x27;t see any dumb tvs over 40&quot; and there were no 4Ks without &quot;smart&quot; features.<p>I plan on just blocking it in my router, but who knows if the TV scans around for open hotspots. If I were a &quot;smart&quot; developer Id store everything locally if offline, then dump to the manufacturer if it ever does get a connection. Not my problem if the feds happen to be &quot;selecting&quot; for that dump somewhere upstream...really not my problem if they have a dragnet FISA warrant for the data.<p>Where is that noble hacker who&#x27;ll make a tutorials on how to destroy smart TV WiFI radios?!

I don&#x27;t even care that much about my personal privacy and yet I&#x27;m terrified of &quot;Smart TVs&quot; because I spent time working on many different models across various manufacturers and they are all horrible, horrible devices in their own ways (some far more horrible than others). I still have nightmares about the Insignia &#x27;Smart&#x27; TV we wrote some apps for while working at chumby, the Samsung and LG models were only mildly better.<p>My TV should not require a 30 second bootup time before it can do anything if powered on cold, my TV should not crash because it has been on too long and there is a memory leak in the YahooWidgets&#x2F;JavaScript engine it uses for apps, my TV should just focus on doing a really good job of displaying images from one or more sources of other boxes which are small and cheap enough to be upgraded every couple of years (unlike a TV which I upgrade far less).<p>Let me worry if those external boxes are invading my privacy or not, but my TV really needs to be stupid enough that it isn&#x27;t even possible, if only for practical reasons.

I was in the market for a new TV last year, and I found it difficult to find one that wasn&#x27;t loaded with &quot;smart&quot; features. I didn&#x27;t want the smart features since I already had a home theater PC, which I built myself. Plus from my limited prior experience with smart TVs, the UX on those is just awful. I didn&#x27;t even consider the privacy issues, although I should have considering the Snowden leaks had just hit the news. Lucky me, the TV I ended up with was one of the LG Smart TVs that was caught leaking file names from USB devices (HN thread: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6759426" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=6759426</a>).<p>Edit: It was also logging network folders. <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6778397" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=6778397</a>

Yep. This is reason #1 why I haven&#x27;t upgraded from my &#x27;dumb&#x27; LCD TV yet. Give me root access and open firmware drivers and then we can talk.

The solution to this lies in educating &amp; incentivizing the vast majority of lay consumers who either (a) don&#x27;t know what their devices are up to, or (b) don&#x27;t care.<p>But looking at the way people buy ACs and refrigerators, I think a &quot;privacy rating&quot; of some kind might work. So a &quot;smart TV&quot; that monitors &amp; reports everything you do ought to get a 1-star while another that zealously guards your privacy and uses explicit opt-ins may get 4- or 5-stars.

Something I&#x27;ve noticed about this however is most tech-literate people who actually care about their privacy tend to leave the wireless disconnected and simply attach the TV to their HTPC device which is from there connected to the internet.<p>Disconnecting it from the internet and possibly even sabotaging the wifi module will ensure that prying eyes will not have access to your information.

In the same vein it&#x27;s worth knowing the privacy policy of providers such as BSkyB<p><a href="https://accessibility.sky.com/privacy-cookie-notice" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;accessibility.sky.com&#x2F;privacy-cookie-notice</a><p>Not many people know that an entire profile about what program&#x27;s you watch on your sky box are linked with the websites you browse through their broadband service to build a profile about you. It&#x27;s one of the reasons their tv + broadband deal here in the uk is so competitive. Personalised tv ads are then served.

I was just at a conference where I had a nice conversation with a new, but already profitable company that builds face recognition for advertisers. Their customer base basically all wanted the same thing: to be able to target ads to the people walking past them, such as at bus stops (it&#x27;s live in Singapore, if you&#x27;re wondering).<p>They eventually admitted they were working on voice recognition after strong customer demand, because that was much more promising; the machine vision stuff could only detect things like age, gender and income level. Yes, that&#x27;s mining the content of conversations in the public space (like aforementioned bus stop) and generating ads on nearby real estate accordingly. Launching in Asia in 2015.<p>Also had a 1 hour conversation in a private meeting room at another conference a couple years ago with three sharp representatives from a certain Asian TV manufacturer that may or may not have been mentioned in this thread. I was stuck by how far they had already gone applying machine learning to their customer activity. They were multiplying their efforts and investments in the space and were very excited about the new generation of TVs that go beyond passively showing you content, because of all the data they would be able to get as a result...

&gt; In the meantime, I’ll be in the market for a new tinfoil hat and cone of silence.<p>I know this is meant as a pseudo-joke and I know there are going to be a ton of comments here on why the guy is overreacting, but is the tin foil hat really useful anymore? We have demonstrated proof that things like this have been exploited on purpose in the past few years.<p>Instead of the tin foil being representative of the crazy person - it now almost seems like common sense. Is that scary to anyone else?

Sounds like there would be a market for an openWRT-like firmware hack for these TVs!

&quot;Users may have the ability to disable data collection, but it comes at a cost. The device will not function properly or allow the use of its high-tech features.&quot;<p>In that case, the best thing to do is to return the TV to the retailer explaining exactly why you are returning it. If the result of disabling a possibly intrusive feature is as bad as this person suggests, it&#x27;s a broken TV anyway.

The german c&#x27;t magazine examined smart TVs and what data they send home (and how to stop them) earlier this year. Check out <a href="http://www.heise.de/security/meldung/Spion-im-Wohnzimmer-c-t-ertappt-schnueffelnde-Fernseher-2096578.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.heise.de&#x2F;security&#x2F;meldung&#x2F;Spion-im-Wohnzimmer-c-t...</a> if you speak german.

So what happens if you just don&#x27;t plug in the network cable or setup WiFi? How does it gather anything?

I don&#x27;t think we really understand the role or the utility of laws regarding this stuff yet. But, there are two things that I think need to proceed regardless. (1) One is user control. My android phone is running all sorts of stuff that I know about mostly because of battery use. There must be a better way. App permissions isn&#x27;t the end game. (2) The second is hysterical public outcry. Sometimes a cold headed analysis is the right way of going about things, but… A terrifying and unpredictable mob response has always been an important tool of societal immune systems.<p>Highlight. Names &amp; Shame. &quot;Samsung is recording your teenagers having sex!&quot;<p>I realize there isn&#x27;t one culprit. That doesn&#x27;t matter, pick one and deliver mob justice.

1984, 30 years later.

NBC News reported this in 2012.<p><a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/your-tv-watching-you-latest-models-raise-concerns-f483619" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nbcnews.com&#x2F;tech&#x2F;tech-news&#x2F;your-tv-watching-you-l...</a><p>Nothing happened.<p>Vizio has a much less intrusive system. Some of their TVs have &quot;Vizio apps&quot;, which can trigger popups on the screen based on the content being played. This can be completely turned off. They don&#x27;t have microphones or cameras, just remotes. Still, the TV does phone home to Vizio HQ.

I have one of the latest sony televisions. I think of the internet features as something for newbs. I would never even consider putting my tv on my network. It doesn&#x27;t have a camera for facial recognition or the mic for talk to use. It&#x27;s a really nice tv though and I can access all the functionality and settings without accessing the internet. This aricle is a bit overblown, but I get the point. There is a reason my xbox one&#x27;s kinnect will never see the light of day.

OK, I get the surveillance and all that aspect. But how is it a good idea to have voice controls and gesture controls for a TV? First of all, I&#x27;m far from the TV. So I&#x27;d have to yell to it? Not enough that I&#x27;d feel stupid talking to my TV, I should make myself looking as completely gone bananas? And instruct everybody in my home, including the dog, to be quiet around the TV lest it misunderstands and takes something as an &quot;erase all recorded shows&quot; command? But as that is not enough humiliation, I should also try to capture it&#x27;s attention by gesturing at it from my couch - and never again be able to scratch my knee or turn to the other side without TV switching a channel or making a permanent configuration to record everything Kardashian-related on every channel? How that is a useful feature, all surveillance aspects aside?<p>The article author complains if cameras and microphones in the TV are disabled, it would not function properly. I say, that&#x27;s the only way it would function properly! I&#x27;m ok with my remote, thank you very much, and I don&#x27;t want to converse with my TV or dance for it. I want it to entertain me, not the other way around.

You know, reading this and some of the comments, especially about run-away authority with the “cops making stops to take money” make me think. I recoil as I’m sure many do about the increasing ubiquity of potential surveillance technology such as this. I think about the slippery slopes that we have evidence of (see: patriot act). But then another part of me thinks back to the “dirty cop” comment. It seems like cops carrying cameras is a strong mitigation to such behavior. The counter argument that such recordings might “going missing” when convenient for the officer comes up then. The sentiment I read often is the solution to that problem is citizens with cameras as well. And that brought me back to the notion of “ubiquity” again. If and when these things are everywhere, then they aren’t just in “normal citizen’s” homes, they are in NSA agent’s homes too, uploading details to the same manufacturer’s servers, carrying the same vulnerabilities. Of course, there are loopholes and restrictions authorities can implement, but can they get them all? A good chunk of my job is penetration testing, and my experience definitely makes me think not.

For those looking for a modern TV that doesn&#x27;t have the &#x27;smart&#x27; feature set have a look into into commercial grade panels. They are manufactured for digital signage and usage in meeting room &#x2F; corporate environments. Generally they will not come with a on-board tuner but for those who can stand free to air programming this can be added with an external tuner for &lt; $100.

It&#x27;s important to remember that these privacy violations are not only building a profile of each and everyone of us.<p>&#x2F;rant mode on It&#x27;s likely that it&#x27;s all about controlling us, and using our profiles to adjust not only our spending habits but also our lives. Just imagine how companies like Google, who have almost unlimited access to our data could show you progressively more left or right-leaning websites in response to your queries. Your Netflix, Amazon, Youtube suggestions are keeping you in a bubble of thinks and ideas you already know and like. And if you always go with these suggestions it will be extremely easy to adjust them slightly every time to push you in a direction that corporations and governments prefer.<p>We know that the filter bubble already exists, but do they adjust that bubble to their needs? If you&#x27;re quick to say that this is unlikely, just think about advertisement. Isn&#x27;t making us want to buy or do something main goal of advertisement?<p>Of course I don&#x27;t think that there is some kind of conspiracy to convert everyone to be a tree-hugging left-wing fanatic, but if we have corporations with as much power over our lives as Google, Facebook or Apple it will be easy for them to slightly push us in a direction that benefits their bottom lines. Any company that has power to control our reading and viewing habits has in fact control over us. Now when they know more about our health and location, when they can automatically listen to and analyze everything we say what else is left?<p>Yes, privacy outside of our homes is gone forever. We will never be able to get it back under control. But what we do, read, watch and listen to, what we talk about in our homes should stay private.<p>So next time you think that the conveniences of having a website or a movie suggested to you, think if that suggestion is not making you an obedient, gadget buying drone.

Perhaps we can all just start being someone else. Make up a few aliases and use those for different accounts. Some mass schizophrenia might really do wonders. We could make it a &quot;thing&quot; with young people and a rally cry for the disenfranchised. We could even get grandma in on the act in the name of &quot;online security&quot;.

If you&#x27;re looking for a &quot;dumb&quot; TV, projectors may be one of your last options.<p>I just got a great Sony projector and 92&quot; screen for less than an equivalent quality large TV would cost. The only other consideration is the size of the room and ability to limit ambient light entering the room.

Put a black sticker on it&#x27;s camera and it&#x27;s mic (make sure voice commands no longer work) and problem solved. I don&#x27;t see any use of facial and voice recognition anyway. they can send and analyze black screen and silence all they want.

Realistically the only thing that will ever change the evolving IOT industry (which is what is breeding the surveillance) is people actively choosing to buy privacy-enhancing or privacy protective products. Do we really need internet connected TV&#x27;s? Does this author ever plan on using these features or is he just keeping up with the Jones? More importantly -- what does the average user think? Would they ever even bother to find the privacy policy (if you can even call it that at 46 pages) let alone read it?<p>To the author: if you have a problem with your TV, especially if you are actually &#x27;terrified&#x27; of it, perhaps consider returning it and buying a normal one?

I have a 10 years old TV (still a CRT because they were better than LCDs back in 2004, but that&#x27;s not important). It will stop working more sooner than later and I&#x27;ll have to replace it with some sort of smart TV. Whatever I get inside it I decided what to do with it long ago: keep it off the Internet. Instead I&#x27;ll hook it the the very same Raspberry PI with OpenELEC I&#x27;m using right now. If something breaks because it can&#x27;t call home, I don&#x27;t care. Obviously I&#x27;ll be careful to buy one of the most dumbed down smart TVs on the market. All I need is the screen.

Perhaps I missed something in the article where the television has its own LTE (or other data connection) to call home without the owners knowledge.<p>My &quot;smart tv&quot; stays disconnected from the WIFI. Problem solved.

I think the always watching&#x2F;listening thing is the major hurdle a lot of these devices are going to have to overcome before a lot of people feel comfortable inviting them into their homes.

TV manufactures should stay in the TV business, not the advertising, or data business.<p>Who&#x27;s for starting a company that adheres to the moral obligation to not treat our customers, as our product?

In communist state, TV watches you.

One more opportunity for my crusade to make the sci-fi webcomic about the future, the internet and the privacy &quot;Private Eye&quot; popular among HN crowd.<p><a href="http://panelsyndicate.com/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;panelsyndicate.com&#x2F;</a> It is a pay what you want directly from the author business-model.<p>I won&#x27;t tell why this story is so relevant to the story because that would be a huge spoiler. But go read it. It is worthy!<p>PS: I am not affiliated, just a fan.

I&#x27;d guess they&#x27;ve done their market research on this and I&#x27;d also have to guess they figured it wouldn&#x27;t hurt their sales.<p>Which seems odd to me. Having a TV with the ability to surveil me is a foul feature and one that&#x27;d instantly turn me off a purchase, no matter what protections they put in place. Internet-connected, closed as can be, with a possibly open mike and camera into your living room... fuck that.<p>Edit: s&#x2F;that&#x2F;they

We need a Butlerian Jihad against surveillance.<p>You know what will never stop this? Posts on hacker news. Letters to your congressman (LG can donate a fuqton more to his re-election campaign than you can). Voting with your dollar (people who know what a privacy policy is are few and far between).<p>You know what will? Taking these TVs into the street, smashing and burning them. Mobs storming Best Buy and smashing the surveillance cameras built into these telescreens. Bricks through the window of every mercenary selling your privacy, selling a live feed right to your living room, to the NSA&#x2F;FBI&#x2F;creepy internet hackers.<p>It&#x27;s really hard to get people to commit to <i>sustained</i>, <i>long-term</i> action -- that&#x27;s why boycotts are not effective and why this trend has continued. But people are actually angry about this and that anger can be fueled into displays of acute disapproval. Like burning a pile of spy TVs in the street and then flipping the cop car that comes to defend the surveillance state and burning that too.<p>Pretty sure this will get downvoted because anything outside the blandly acceptable boring-as-fuck politics always gets downvoted. But just keep in mind that you need to break a few eggs to make an omelet, and the power structures of the world pretty much only respond to Arab Spring-esque events now. We need to make every digital dictator afraid of becoming the next Gaddafi.

TV watching is only one way to consume video. What about YouTube, Netflix, Hulu? They log all of what the author is talking about. That hasn&#x27;t deterred people from spending millions of hours on it each day.<p>You just don&#x27;t expect a device like TV to track your viewing habits where as you are not surprised that various websites and apps will do it. I&#x27;m sure you can disable tracking on TV if you have concerns.

Whole technology setup from a technical perspective seems like; as if best in the industry got together and wrapped 1984 in a sci-fi story.

This is the reason why I buy the &quot;Dumb&quot; TV version, and its cheaper too. No reason my tv needs to be hooked up to the internet, have apps, or a camera&#x2F;microphone! I just need it to display images, I don&#x27;t even need it to output any sound! If I could pay less for no speakers that would be awesome!

a lot of these are inherent on the laptop you wrote this with coupled with using the internet in general.

Samsung and co ship non-smart TVs with exactly the same panels for hundreds of dollars less than smart TVs of the same size. Just buy non-smart TVs and couple them with a decent AV amp and games console and you can replicate all the smart TV nonsense with other devices.

My only question is why, knowing all that, he still bought that particular TV? Because when I bought my set I saw all that crap and got the dumbest one I could fine.<p>Even if none to be found, I&#x27;d totally pay for a large format display instead of a TV just to save the headaches.

You know you can buy a TV without ethernet or wifi right?<p>If you think your TV is bad, try powering on a windows phone for the first time and go through the dozen privacy waivers and turn off all the defaults of all the data it sends to Microsoft and Nokia. Pages and pages worth.

This is why 40% of people who buy a smart TV never connect it to the internet, and over 80% don&#x27;t connect after trying it once for the novelty after unpacking.<p>(These numbers were stats collected internally by a minor TV manufacturer)

What if its not connected to the internet (ever) and you build a Faraday cage around it? Safe then, right?<p>I&#x27;m going to get a projector anyway. Of course, they keep getting &quot;smarter&quot; too.

This is why I want all my devices running a full Free Software stack, and give up functionality for being able to run free(-er) software whenever possible.

&quot;Stop listening&quot;<p>Or some other key phrase to turn off and on voice control with a visible notification light could help solve some of the problem.

This demonstrates the need for router firmware to be designed so that it keeps your private data in as well as keeping nasty people oit.!

Display projectors are more flexible, easier to secure and it&#x27;s possible to upgrade the separate media&#x2F;compute component.

I&#x27;m beginning to feel like they should put privacy policies in clear text on the box, like cigarette warnings.

Wow, I&#x27;d be scared too. Like Mr. Finch used to say, “only the paranoid survive”.

I wouldn&#x27;t trust anyone at Comcast to walk my dog, much less spy on me.

Hope it has a very wide viewing angle, or I will have to get creative when watching porn.

No mention of which TV?

When I am terrified of something I just bought, I return it.

This if a fluff piece.<p>They write an entire article on why we should be terrified but then they don&#x27;t even mention the make or manufacturer of this scary new TV, so we can&#x27;t check the details of the TOS. It&#x27;s the hypothetical smart TV that everyone owns.<p>They also neglected to mention you could just not connect it to the internet - you know, like the ancient TV he just turned in?

&gt; I just bought a new TV...The only problem is that I’m now afraid to use it. You would be too — if you read through the 46-page privacy policy.<p>Wish I had the money to drop hundreds of dollars on a product, and figure out what it does afterward...