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from the "it-always-feels-like-somebody's-watching-me" dept.
https://www.ft.com/content/23ab2f68-d957-11e9-8f9b-77216ebe1f17
The smart TVs in our homes are leaking sensitive user data to companies including Netflix, Google and Facebook even when some devices are idle, according to two large-scale analyses. The data were being sent whether or not the user had a Netflix account. The researchers also found that other smart devices including speakers and cameras were sending user data to dozens of third parties including Spotify and Microsoft.
The findings are likely to heighten concerns about the privacy of user data on the internet just as smart devices, including televisions, are flooding homes.
In a separate study of smart TVs by Princeton University, researchers found that some apps supported by Roku and FireTV were sending data such as specific user identifiers to third parties including Google.
Roughly 68 per cent of US households had a connected TV device, including external hardware such as Roku and Apple TV, at the end of 2018, according to a Nielsen report from March. Tens of millions of these devices use content recognition technology that tracks everything you watch, to be able to target you better with TV advertising, which now accounts for about half of all digital ads.
The Northeastern University study, conducted on 81 different devices, both in the UK and the US, is the largest published experiment of its kind, and found “notable cases of information exposure”. Amazon, Google, Akamai and Microsoft were the most frequently contacted companies, partly because these companies provide cloud and networking services for smart devices to operate on, the researchers said.
[...] By analysing network traffic, the Northeastern team concluded that third parties receive, at the very least, information about the device people are using, their locations, and possibly even when they are interacting with it. “So they might know when you’re home and when you’re not,” said Professor Choffnes.
Because much of the data being sent out by device manufacturers was encrypted, the academics were not aware of exactly what additional data were being transmitted. “They can definitely see some [viewing] is taking place, but what they can exactly see depends on what the manufacturer is sending, which we have not made an attempt to re-engineer,” said Hamed Haddadi, computer scientist at Imperial College and another paper author.
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by acid andy on Thursday September 19 2019, @12:05AM (4 children)
I remember a world where this sort of thing didn't used to happen. Can we have it back now please?
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 19 2019, @12:30AM (1 child)
Yes, but only if you can convince people to stop buying every new shiny that is offered to them.
The "smart" part of "smart TV" doesn't have anything to do with features that the consumer might use. That "smart" describes the methods of datamining that the manufacturer offers to government and big industry.
(Score: 5, Funny) by jb on Thursday September 19 2019, @06:07AM
No, you've got the wrong meaning of "smart" altogether.
They're called "smart" devices because using any one of them always smarts, just like getting punched in the face.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 19 2019, @10:57AM (1 child)
Yes. But it starts by not buying smart TVs.
And, this does NOT mean buying a smart TV and not hooking it up to a network.
It means only buying a TV that is just a TV, with no smarts at all.
And if you [proverbial you] go into a store and they have no non-smart TV's, then buy no TV at all. Even better, tell the commissioned sales drone that you are not buying because there are no non-smart TV's, then actually walk out without buying.
A very short time after TV sales drop to zero, you will suddenly see non-smart TV's reappearing rapidly.
But as long as you buy one, the manufacturers and sellers think that is what you want. The only way to get non-smart TV's back is to drop TV sales to zero. About 2-3 weeks later, you will suddenly see non-smart TV's reappearing on the store shelves.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by acid andy on Thursday September 19 2019, @11:32AM
If a widespread consumer movement like that ever happens, I suspect there'll just be a rebranding exercise. "Smart" will become a dirty word, replaced with some other label. The requirement for wifi connectivity will be downplayed and perhaps the devices will ship with inbuilt SIM cards instead and slurp over the mobile networks (for free, of course). Or they'll silently build their own ad-hoc wifi networks with neighboring devices to phone home that way. So I suppose the backlash needs to be much more persistant and probably involve regulation as well to succeed.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?