Your Smart TV Knows What You’re Watching
Your Smart TV Knows What You’re Watching
Here’s how to turn off “automated content recognition,” the Shazam-like software on smart TVs that tracks what you’re watching
These TVs can capture and identify 7,200 images per hour, or approximately two every second. The data is then used for content recommendations and ad targeting, which is a huge business; advertisers spent an estimated $18.6 billion on smart TV ads in 2022, according to market research firm eMarketer.
![[EN] Your Smart TV Knows What You’re Watching – The Markup](https://szmer.info/pictrs/image/6b4dd83d-5ab8-4c44-a256-b4dc6dad867f.jpeg?format=webp&thumbnail=196)
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... but it isn't able to tell anyone, as it is not connected to the Internet. Poor smart TV.
If there are any unsecured networks in your vicinity it might be telling on you without you knowing.
Pull one of your old routers from the back of closet, and use it to make a completely new network just for your TV. If you don’t connect the router to the rest of the internet, your TV is happy to connect to something, and you get to keep your privacy a little bit longer.
Not everyone has an old router. I do, but not everyone.
Why do I keep an old router?
If you have a nice enough router you could connect your TV to it and block its Mac address maybe.
Or maybe configure the firewall to block/allow only very specific things. It’s a bit more technical than just plugging in an Ethernet cable though…
Cause it still works, doesn't take up much space, and doesn't really eat a whole lot just siting there.
Also, 2 is one, 1 is none. Good to have a fall back in case hardware dies
This is the way.
I'm a little surprised we haven't heard about one of these smart TV brands using something like Amazon Sidewalk yet to communicate the analyzed data:
https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Sidewalk/
A popular brand could totally set up their own network like this and with apartments there would probably be sufficient density to ensure that there's always at least one connected device nearby to act as a bridge.
Well that's pretty terrifying.
Need to figure out how to block that now. Sigh
Faraday cage.
Open it up and desolder the wifi module/antenna
if you're this paranoid, just buy one of those mcdonalds menu screen tvs or just rip out all of the wifi electronics. i can imagine it being one of those standard modules like in laptops.
Until it doesn’t work at all since the wifi chip is integral to boot up.
Just make your own TV
What’s the funny-to-serious timeline for this comment, fifteen years?
Any evidence of that or are you just speculating?
Pure speculation.
I don't think so. The first step when connecting to WiFi is to agree to the terms of service that allow the manufacturer to legallly spy on you. Without agreeing to that, they'd be breaking the law.
I'm too skeptical to default to the whole "corporations will abide by the law" thing anymore. I'm willing to accept that I might be wrong though. There have just been too many times where I've pessimistically remarked on a situation like this as a sort of half joke only to find out that I was right and it was actually worse than I initially assumed.
"Oh boy, my master gonna be so proud of me when I can finally show him everything I collected over the years... cant be too long until I finally be able to ping the severs... any day now..."
- your TV probably
Read this in Dug's voice