Ad-free doesn't necessarily mean they aren't tracking you, right? Viewership info is _still_ valuable, even if it's not being used right on the device.
Amazon's Smarthome stuff offers basically a bluetooth side-channel specifically for this purpose. It's called "Amazon Sidewalk", and they are already using it for Tile trackers, Ring Doorbell stuff (the doorbell even acts as a mesh point for this in some models)
Yep, eventually this technology will be worthwhile for folks with less scale to implement. Maybe Amazon will license access to Sidewalk. I believe Apple does a similar thing with their devices.
This is a separate issue-- article is about tv surveillance and these tvs you link only that happen not to show ads "on the TV's smart platform."
I'm going to rankly speculate that every smart tv does surveillance on the user on part of either the manufacturer or some third party that pays the manufacturer for the data. Otherwise why bother putting a damned wifi chip and browser in the thing at all? I'll take my tinfoil hat off if anyone can link me to an extant business model that includes all that smart business yet somehow doesn't leverage it to make money in our modern economy. But even then it had better be no data leakage by design (which, if it's connecting to the internet for whatever purpose I can't possibly see how that would work in practice)-- otherwise one update and you're back to square one.
Additionally, your link doesn't include the few tvs that happen to be good ole' non-smart tvs. Check out feature #9 on my Walmart special:
> USB – USB connects to USB flash drives for playing music and picture. The USB port is also used for updating the display’s firmware.
So good luck with your Smart TV Behavioral Modification Systems that may or may not shoot ads at your head, HN. Meanwhile, I'll be sitting in the privacy of my own home, sipping tea wile deciding which jpeg I'm going to play next.
It has its own wifi network it broadcasts - an internal wifi router that makes its own network. There's no option to disable it. You can stop it from connecting to your devices, but you can't stop it from broadcasting. You don't know what information it's collecting as your devices constantly query what wifi networks are around them. Even if the tv has no internet connection it still broadcasts a wifi network.
I imagine the same way google improved their location services by driving around and literally collecting wifi network information, vizio can see where any TV not connected to the internet physically is if they send someone to drive around and look for their own TVs wifi networks.
I still don’t understand. If you never ever connect your creepy TV to the Internet and never give it permission to say connect to your phone, how could it pass on all that collected data?
I have always used “Smart TV” this way and have been at peace thinking I don’t have a problem. Am I missing something here? A Vizio TV can create its own WiFi Network all it wants, but it ain’t connecting to my home Internet. Why Do I have to worry?
Your TV connects with your neighbors tv that has internet, now your tv effectively has internet. Maybe you dismiss this risk because you live in a rural area, but meanwhile the manufacturer of your router (or any device you’ve validly given internet access to) inks a deal with the manufacturer of your tv.
Amazon Sidewalk, public nets such as Spectrum Wifi, maybe even cellular like cars come with. There are so many ways a smart TV could surreptitiously pull a fast one, and those ways are increasing. Maybe even mesh networks consisting of other TVs. Yours might not be connected to your wifi, but maybe your neighbor’s has permission to theirs.
If I have to worry about WiFi war driving, I would have to worry about a lot of things at my home. I agree it’s a concern and I choose to deal with it last.
Mesh with neighbour’s TV network which has access to their internet is more plausible to me and concerning. Wouldn’t this be illegal and a waiting class action law suit? (Using Neighbor’s internet surreptitiously?) and an easy one to spot at that?
you don't have to "worry" about wifi war driving per se - you just have to know that google already does it and likely sells that information to other companies. No need to worry except to know its likely already occurring.
And in terms of legality - you likely give them permission to do whatever they want in the terms and services you agree to on first boot, or install an app on your phone, etc. And you have no control of the TV's wifi - unless you hack the encryption or get direct access to the firmware you might never be able to tell whats going on. That's definitely beyond my capabilities.
How would you spot that one? It would appear to them to be traffic coming from their TV, and you wouldn't see anything on your own net. Unless that's similar to how hotspotting works, where the TTL is different.
Also, isn't wifi sharing how many products work these days, such as various find my phone features and Amazon devices?
A simple Wifi scanner would give you a list of wifi signals around you. So, if a TV is surreptitiously creating a wifi hot spot, it would be on that list and someone would have spotted it by now... I have some digging to do this weekend.
WiFi host networks are frequently queried by all nearby devices to see what access points are available. Collecting device IDs that are scanning is useful information since for a long time and on most devices, the MAC address was not rotated so it acted to identify people and where they go with mobile devices.
All it takes is someone that downloads an app, then the app connects to the TV and sends the data via the smart-phone internet connection. Could be your neighbor or anyone in range. Better get a soldering pen and remove the antenna.
Aha I get it. If it's not connected to any network, there's not much harm in it collecting some data. But I see it'll be a problem for the common people.
Don't connect it to the network, ever, and it can't update.
You took actions that initiated the auto update mechanism (plugging in ethernet, typing in with password) that were the root cause of the issue you experienced.
A device you have already purchased acquiring new “features” is entirely the responsibility of the manufacturer. We’re going to need regulation on this behavior, it’s not solvable through technology.
Half of the Vizio home screen is a carousel promoting third-rate streaming services like Tubi and Crackle. At least it's not ads for prescription arthritis medicine, but it still looks pretty advertisingy.
I think you just have to wait for them to have enough data on their users so that they sell ads to companies with a clear profile of what their users want.
For the same movie, netflix is not showing the same poster for me or my kid. For "the dead don't die", it's Adam Driver for me, Selena Gomez for my kid.
Don’t connect it to the internet, use something like Nvidia Shield pointed at PiHole for streaming all the usual services. Not perfect, but much better than using a smart tv laden with Spyware and shitty apps.
This. I factory reset my Vizio a couple months ago because it was crashing a lot and I didn’t bother giving it any Internet access this time around. There are also no other WiFi networks nearby.
A Pi-Hole can also break your TV interface, like it does with Samsung TVs after the recent updates they expect the ads to load when they don’t things get messy.
It’s pretty much a TV + a set top box these days if you want to avoid ads in day to day use with most brands now.
I think out of the major brands only Sony hasn’t been pushing ads so far at least as far as their premium models go.
I have a 4k Vizio dumb tv. It was the only one I could find that didn't have some laggy android/web OS and it's been solid for 4+ years. Never once connected it to the internet though.
Can you please give more detail about what model this was and how the upgrade worked? Did you give it an internet connection? Did it find open wifi on its own? Did it use a cellular antenna?
I'm curious as an owner of a Vizio TV that I think is a dumb TV...
I have the P65-C1. I had it connected to the internet, because of the built-in Chromecast client. So I was imprecise in saying "OTA", because it was just an ordinary update.
Interestingly, the TV came with no remote, because it included a simple Android tablet, instead, which was supposed to be used as a streaming source and to run the remote control app. So in a sense, it was kind of like a smart TV, but with the brains externalized to the tablet. But when they decided to upgrade it to a proper smart TV, they also mailed me a regular remote.
But yeah, I was kind of irritated, given that I specifically bought it to be more of a dumb TV. I also took care to disable the screen scraping data collection.
https://www.rtings.com/tv/tests/ads-in-smart-tv
(They are the ones with "10" in the ad-free column)
The dominant brand for ad-free models is in fact... Vizio.