Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by CoolHand on Tuesday November 10 2015, @11:54PM   Printer-friendly
from the watching-big-brother-watching-you dept.

Have a Vizio smart TV? You'll probably want to read this article over at net-security.org then:

Owners of Smart TVs manufactured by California-based consumer electronics company Vizio should be aware that their viewing habits are being tracked and that information sold to third parties ("partners").

And, what's more, with a recent change of the company's privacy policy, the company has started providing this data to companies that "may combine this information with other information about devices associated with that IP address."

"Beginning October 31, 2015, VIZIO will use Viewing Data together with your IP address and other Non-Personal Information in order to inform third party selection and delivery of targeted and re-targeted advertisements. These advertisements may be delivered to smartphones, tablets, PCs or other internet-connected devices that share an IP address or other identifier with your Smart TV," the privacy policy says.

Vizio's competitors Samsung and LG Electronics can also track users' viewing habits via their smart TV offerings, ProPublica's Julia Angwin pointed out, but the feature has to be explicitly turned on by the users.

Yep, glad I do all my TV watching on a computer monitor.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @12:35AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @12:35AM (#261507)

    > If you download from warez site or via bit-torrent you MIGHT not get tracked.

    A VPN is less than $40/yr. That's a good trade-off for all the pirated tv you can download with only a 0.0001% chance of being tracked, at least until the MAFIAA fully co-opts the NSA.

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +1  
       Informative=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Informative' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   1  
  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:01AM

    by frojack (1554) on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:01AM (#261551) Journal

    VPNs aren't that secret. Their only advantage is your other endpoint can be in a jurisdiction that has some protections, and is out of reach of big media. But using any VPN that terminates in the US seems risky to me, when people can serve warrants to obtain logs.

    VPNs are obviously able to track which connections are going to which users. And the level of detail available for that is easily enough to track large downloads to specific users. All it takes is ONE law to be passed (like in Australia and the UK) requiring VPN providers to keep deep laws.

    Its probably not precise enough to to track BotTorrents. (The mere act of trying to record all those connections for little packets from dozens of torrent servers would produce too much data).

    --
    No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:59AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:59AM (#261585)

      > All it takes is ONE law to be passed (like in Australia and the UK) requiring VPN providers to keep deep laws.

      Hasn't happened yet and as long as you aren't pirating pre-release $200M films, you don't have to worry about them coming after you with a warrant.

      > Its probably not precise enough to to track BotTorrents. (The mere act of trying to record all those connections for little packets from dozens of torrent servers would produce too much data).

      Sounds like you don't know how bittorrent works. But that's never stopped you from posting before. Torrent "servers" really known as trackers will gladly tell anyone who asks who they are talking to. That is exactly how the MAFIAA's minions have been going after torrent users for a decade now.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @09:31AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @09:31AM (#261668)

        Hasn't happened yet and as long as you aren't pirating pre-release $200M films, you don't have to worry about them coming after you with a warrant.

        You seem to be opposed to draconian copyright laws, so I am not sure why you would use corporate propaganda terms. [gnu.org]