A hacker reverse-engineered his own Samsung TV and found alarming spying activity, including code that used connected devices’ microphones to listen to users.
Buy more shiny stuff, its so cool man! What do you mean CIA tools? Look at the shiny metal edge andnthr colors on the screen, man! It sends my conversations somewhere? Well yeah, whatever, its shiny man, and it has that logo that I can use to brag about how much money I’ve spent! I can use it to show off that I’m rich, man! Yeah yeah, I know, something about privacy, who xarea about that? You were born in 100% privacy, I was born in the age of monitoring, its cool cuz the devices are shiny man, they’re all shiney and so cool, buy another phone that will barely function anymore because its so riddled with spyware that the spyware has to check if its not innthr way of other spyware that will be spying on yhr spyware, but its cool bro, its just only your TV that spies on you, and your phone, but that is cool and of course the light bulbs are spying but they always did that, no? ITS SHINY MAN, AND SO CHEAP BUT SO SHINY THAT I CAN SHOW OFF MY RICHES, BRO!
I loathe this world, I hate what we’ve become, I despise what the world allows a few handfuls of narcissistic psychopaths to do to them…
1996: cameras, microphones, radios, in your appliances? You’re schizophrenic
2026: removing the cameras, microphones, and radios from the appliances we use to spy on you is illegal.
It is very irritating that ppl just accepted that. It wasn’t forced on us by law. We just… bought the stuff. It was so shiny! Now we have a mass surveilance apparatus that would make the Stasi blush.
Lots of us saw the terrible potential. But way more of us didn’t.
It was genius. Instead of installing surveillance systems in everyone’s homes, they marketed the surveillance systems as luxury products and let our consumerism do the work. Instead of forcing it on the general public, they made us want it to the point where they can cite consumer demand as the reason they don’t even offer products that don’t invade your privacy.
Someone who was 55 in 1996 lived through an era where you could start a new life by moving a part of the way across a state in the US and nobody would think to research, or it wasn’t uncommon for people to have two whole families that never knew about each other (bigamy). Who cares about security cameras because nobody has time to look through all the footage? Who cares what you got up to in your 20s1 when you’ve got a family and a job in town?
Then storage got cheap enough to store it all, and computers got fast enough to look through it all (but there’s still no time to figure out who egged your car over a weekend). All those old people don’t have to live in the world they built, either, AND the world is built so it can’t be undone. All that data will always have value to someone, and storage is only ever going to get cheaper in the long term.
[1] Old busybodies need to get off their high horse judging people. Data miners are already working their way backwards looking for something of value, and if you spent a nine month summer in Europe sometime in the late 50s then it’ll eventually come it if someone bothers to look.
This is why The X-Files doesn’t hold up as a TV show.
‘Agent Mulder, if this is correct, the government is tracing every phone call in the country’.
Not scary, we saw that on the news, that’s not a whackjob conspiracy theory that was on the front page of the Times’.
No what I’m shocked. Really they where caught using the mic or camera years ago. And I know Gamers Nexus has a hard on for LG but did anyone really think others where not doing similar.
Never connect your proprietary appliances to the internet. A TV is just a display, use another device to manage what it displays.
And also do your best to not live near unsecured wifi.
Just because you didn’t explicitly connect it…
RIP anybody in a NYC or Tokyo high rise with a few thousand neighbors in wifi range.
Or anyone that gets deliveries. Some vehicles have open wifi networks.
Is there any reason to think separate steaming boxes behave better?
Yes.
There is a lower volume of extraneous calls to advertising networks from an appletv box than from a Samsung or lg tv. Users see a lower volume of what they recognize as targeted ads (you gotta think about the confirmation bias here). The devices themselves can decode more complex stream types because they are spending less processing power taking screenshots and running image recognition models on them. A tv from a major manufacturer tends to cost more if it’s the “dumb” or digital signage variant, whereas a streaming box (that’s not like roku or whatever the bottom of the barrel option is) costs $100+.
I am pretty sure my Debian box that runs Kodi has fewer trackers than my TV.
I’m sure your experience using a remote to watch various streaming services and cable tv and pirated shows is all just totally simple and just works and the average person wouldn’t have an issue using it though, right? This is the crux of the issue.
Actually yes. Requested through Seerr, added automatically to Jellyfin, streamed to the Kodi box. Simpler interface than Netflix. Setting it up is though not simple, but if a toddler has learned to use the TV remote they’d be able to use it. And there’s about 30TB of content already so Seerr is rarely needed.
For context I’m spreads doing this I run Plex and jellyfin in tandem, but many times I’d rather not host the content if it’s already on my streaming services. Good luck having a good experience with those on these types of setups. That’s my gripe.
I got my setup because the experience on streaming services sucked but I get it if you still use those. In that case an Android box is the closest you’d get without compromising on ease of use (just don’t buy the no-name ones from AliExpress).
These events need to be crimes.
Samsung has been banned from my house.
It there any TV brand that we can still buy?
I’m not really sure how I will be able to setup TV or something that allows watching TV at this point.
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You can use androidtv with adb and universal android debloater next gen to get rid of telemetry. Hisense is a decent choice. It’s also possible to completely uninstall launchers with ads and replace them with flauncher which loads almost instantly
Dang, I want to upgrade my TV for christmas, and was thinking of a nice 65" OLED Samsung, as the “hospitality” TVs of the same size with OLED are like twice the price. I don’t have open WIFI, I use a computer and just the TV as a display, I thought I’d be OK. But I have a soundbar as well, so it’ll be listening to me regardless? Jesus fucking christ. The future we’ve built is terrible.
How do you use ai to record audio? I mean, recording audio is just procedural code. You can use ai to process the recording, of course.
That’s Apple’s (Watch 18) newest semantic shenanigans to get around privacy laws, and it’s being echoed by Amazon (Bee) and now Samsung, apparently. They argue that, if local AI processes an audio input stream, produces a transcript and does not store the audio as a file, that does not constitute a “recording”. I’m looking forward to the look on the judge’s face once this bullshit reasoning inevitably reaches their court…
I kind of need a tutorial how to use a samsung (or whatever brand) smart tv without them tracking us like that - but with still being able to stream netflix and stuff, I just wanna have both, streaming & privacy 😭
I’m sorry to break it to you but streaming services and privacy don’t mix. Your best bet is to sail the high seas.
Yup, ‘smart’ TVs should never get a live internet connection, ever. Don’t give it a WIFI password, if you have made that mistake change the password now. Attach a computer, preferably Linux, and use it as a monitor. Even if you then go ahead and use a streaming service (boo), at least you’re not just giving audio/video of your living room to Samsung as well.
This right here!
Ever read the ToS of a streaming service in detail? Even if you subscribe to the premium ad free plan you agree to let them profile your habits and sell those to others for advertising purposes, etc.
A service remembering how I used it is not the same problem as its app spying on my living room.
