A Defensive Computing Checklist    by Michael Horowitz
NOTE: I gave a presentation on Defensive Computing at the HOPE conference in July 2022
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TV WATCHES YOU

Good introduction to the topic: The Hidden Cost of Cheap TVs by Justin Pot for The Atlantic. January 3, 2023. Quoting: "the story of cheap TVs is not entirely just market forces doing their thing. Perhaps the biggest reason TVs have gotten so much cheaper than other products is that your TV is watching you and profiting off the data it collects ... Smart TVs are just like search engines, social networks, and email providers that give us a free service in exchange for monitoring us and then selling that info to advertisers leveraging our data ... The companies that manufacture televisions call this 'post-purchase monetization,' and it means they can sell TVs almost at cost and still make money over the long term by sharing viewing data."

Background: Smart TV Makers Will Soon Make More Money Off Your Viewing Habits Than The TV Itself by Karl Bode (May 2021). We can not buy a "dumb" TV that's just a display with HDMI ports because consumer data is so profitable.

Background: Reg reader returns Samsung TV after finding giant ads splattered everywhere by Gareth Corfield for The Register (Nov 2021). Note the excerpt at the end from the Samsung privacy policy: the manufacturer will collect "the networks, channels, websites visited, and programs viewed on your devices and the amount of time spent viewing them ".

Things are bad: You watch TV. Your TV watches back by Geoffrey Fowler for the Washington Post September 2019. No defense offered. Discusses ACR (automatic content recognition) on Smart TVs. Quote: "some TVs record and send out everything that crosses the pixels on your screen. It doesn’t matter whether the source is cable, an app, your DVD player or streaming box." They watched the data a TV transmits using IoT Inspector software from Princeton University.

DEFENDING YOUR PRIVACY (IN GENERAL)

DEFENDING YOUR PRIVACY ON ROKU

DEFENDING YOUR PRIVACY - NON ROKU

ARTICLES

FYI

One of the companies watching you is incscape.tv. See their sample of live data.

Samsung can remotely disable their TVs worldwide using TV Block by Sergiu Gatlan of Bleeping Computer (August 2021)

Audio: For many reasons, the audio on TV sets is poor such that it makes it hard to understand what people are saying. Some TVs have a feature to boost the dialog or reduce loud noises. On Samsung look for the Amplify feature. On LG, look for Clear Voice II. On Roku TVs look for Dialog Enhancement or Speech Clarity. If you can afford to, connect the TV to a stereo system or a sound bar that has a center speaker.

 

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