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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.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday November 11 2015, @04:00AM
Massive hosts files are extremely inefficient. It slows ALL DNS requests down.
And not all that effective when the software is programmed (like Windows 10) to use hard coded IP addresses with several dozen backup addresses coded in. No DNS hits = useless hosts file.
Also, as you well know:
Hosts files play no part in iptables.
Hosts simply map names to ip addresses.
IPtables can block subnets and individual IPs.
You need, as you mentioned, something to surf you monster hosts file, look up each, an load those all into iptables.
And you really can't run that in a standard router, so you have to install your own router package.
But a huge list of IP addresses in iptables isn't very efficient either, and you find that the puny processor in the router gets bogged down, and is slow.
Jeeze, that's a long way to go to keep your TV from feeding crap back to the manufacturer. Unplug the cat 5 from the TV. Problem solved.
Yes, if you are going to go this route, you definitely want it in your router, rather than each device.
But I maintain the cure is worse than the disease.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @10:15AM
Massive hosts files are extremely inefficient. It slows ALL DNS requests down.
That depends on the system and how it's implemented.