2y ago

Your Smart TV Knows What You’re Watching

themarkup.org Your Smart TV Knows What You’re Watching – The Markup

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.

107 comments

Obviously
- Honestly the least I'd expect of a smart TV.

... 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.
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  Any evidence of that or are you just speculating?
  
  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 pretty sure my Android TV powered by Google™ knows more than what I'm watching. It could probably give me therapy if I threw a LLM on there.
Good to know I'm not paranoid enough tho.
- Yep.
  I got a Fire Stick early on, ditched it after a year.
  Have a Samsung smart TV now, working to stop using the smart part and run more self hosted, and isolate apps like Netflix and Amazon.
  
  Worst part about this is I have an OLED, if I use a different device for features I risk burn. Netflix on the tv will show a screensaver and go black after 2 minutes. Pressing pause on Netflix on the ps5 or appletv means you get a static screen until you return.
  I wish we could get what we pay for and not be products ourselves.

My two smart TV’s are the most blocked devices by my network’s pihole. It’s not even close.

The first two are my two TVs, (one is a Samsung, the other is a Roku,) and the third is my phone that I’ve been doomscrolling on all day. The “better” TV has almost 3x as many blocked requests as my phone, even though I only used my TV for about an hour today.
- yeah lol, no real need to obfuscate those ip fyi
  
  https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/campfire.png
- I tried using free tier NextDNS on a network with 2 Samsung TVs hooked up and hit the threshold of 300k requests within a week. It's mad how much data Samsung is collecting from their smart devices. Even when not using any features, the TV may stay with a screensaver and still send lots of data.

I have my old (stupid) tv from like 2013, works perfectly fine. No apps, no firmware, no ads, no tracking. Never felt the need to buy a smart tv, but I'm afraid it'd be near impossible to find a new one that isn't nowadays I'd mine broke down.
- This is the only reason I have a smart TV. I didn't want one, in fact it prompted me to make an SSID and VLAN just for it, then applied a bunch of DNS blocks. Unfortunately my old 2012 TV wasn't worth shipping across the country and the image was getting pretty dim and it had started developing dead pixels.
  If you want anything above 1080p that's a dumb TV you have to go commercial like the hospitality market and they charge you way more for it. And they won't even sell it to you without a corporate account in most places.
  The only way to get 4K and HDR without the smarts as a consumer is to buy a giant gaming monitor... and those too ask for quite a premium, because gamers.
  
  Have you tried just not connecting it to the internet, and using a streaming box?
- Yeah, I'm waiting for the death of my current TV. A LG that's plain old LCD, but HDR and 4k, no smart shit. Luckily I know hardware and can physically disable things. I break and remove things so hardware is physically incapable of connecting.

"Are you watching the TV, or is the TV watching you?"

laughs in crtv and dvd player

Good. Have fun uploading any information about me without wifi or an ethernet cable. Smart TVs were a mistake, even the most expensive ones are slow and trash.
- Yeah, I needed some 70" for work displays had to spend like hell to go top of the line to get half assed quad cores.
  
  Couldn't you use a raspberry pi or something? My point was that a $50 android tv box beats the absolute top TVs both in terms of speed and compatibility with apps.

So... Can someone explain how this is legal if you're watching DRM content? Capturing and uploading copyrighted, protected content doesn't seem very kosher.
advertisers spent an estimated $18.6 billion on smart TV ads
Jesus. Spend a fraction of that developing good products that people will actually want to buy so you can end this unethical, scumbag way of making a buck.

It'll never tell anyone because it'll never be hooked up to the internet.
- I really likr the last few firmware updates that my TV received. But apart from checking for updates every few months, I agree that keeping it blocked in my router settings is ideal.
  
  Doesn't that kind of beat the purpose? The device can just store telemetric data and send them in batches whenever you connect it.
- I had read a story once that if I recall correctly, one manufacturer would send the signal back thru the coax cable to the cable box just in case to make sure your data was captured somehow.

My smart TV is blocked from the internet. It doesn't know shit.
- oh it knows. it just can't tell anyone!

I am so glad I don't have a TV. It's just the Internet with even more ads, minus the Internet.
- It doesn't have to be. I get everything for free, no subscriptions, no ads. I'm pretty happy with the deal.

surprisedpikachuface.webp
- God damn webp, why is support so inconsistent?

Next up: Televisions that don't have off switches and never go to sleep.
- We could call them telescreens maybe
  
  They could have a built in alarm clock that starts your day with a mandatory workout and the latest news telling us what to believe
- Ones with voice activation & stuff do this already. TVs will pull a lot of power when ‘off’ since they’re not off.
  
  Yup. A lot of folks don't seem to understand that this is the case, though.
  Pretty soon, there won't even be soft-off switches anymore.
  
  Check this out: https://www.freetelly.com/
  This thing gives me serious 1984 vibes. I hadn't read the book when I first heard of this, but I now realize the name is pretty much and open play on the tellyscreens in the book. Reminds me of the black mirror episode where you have to pay to stop watching.
  Since I didn't comment elsewhere on the thread, my plan of attack for now is usually older TVs (even just a few years old are still really good quality), even if they are smart but not ever connected. Apple TVs on each one, also buy the 2-3 year old version of this used for about $40-$50 not any more then I used to spend buying Roku sticks. Gives me a good enough balance for now, and before Apple haters pile on, yes it's not perfect, but there have been some studies showing these are some of the best behaved streaming devices. More importantly than what the streaming device is, I have the ability to chuck them and add a PC or whatever else without having to replace the actual TV.

I leave the TV on all day for the cats, I'm sure they're getting lots of useful data while they sleep in front of MASH reruns

NextDNS has a blocklist you can enable to block telemetry for Roku TVs FYI. You can also get a dumb TV or keep your TV offline and have a separate Kodi box for your shows.

just plug a SBC running Kodi/jellyfin/whatever non-proprietary to a regular tv
- It’s extremely difficult to find a dumb tv in sizes larger than ~55”. You really don’t have much choice at the moment. I personally host a jellyfin server and play that via apple tv over hdmi, but content recognition still does its thing. Best i could do was deny wifi/ethernet to the tv and have no open networks.
  
  Yes, do exactly this. If you have AppleTV connected to your TV over HDMI or whatever, why does your TV need an internet connection?

Mine connects through pihole with all LG domains blocked. I'm not getting any update request, notifications or anything. Just Netflix.
- Obligatory pihole doesn't block anything if they use their own dns. You can probably force all port 53 traffic through pihole if you have a decent router though.
  
  You can.
  Source; I’ve done it. Don’t forget to redirect/block DNS over HTTPS as well. Usually port 853.
  
  Thanks for the reminder.
  Blocking all DNS other than PiHole is a great thing to do.
  Just setup mine a week ago. Already up to 28% blocked, and no ads on the smart TV (which makes it a little faster)

Considering I don't connect it to the internet I'd be surprised if it was doing anything.
- It's brute-forcing your neighbors' WiFis
  
  "I'm in"
  your TV after hacking the neighbors tv.
  Joke aside, would that make it basically anonymous? Unless it's actually sending screenshots, it will only tell "somebody around this IP is watching TV/Something from HDMI"
  
  You joke... but isn't that what Amazon Sidewalk was invented for? And isn't it sort of what AirTags do? They don't connect to the internet... they connect to partner devices in ways that are unseen by the owners to co-opt their internet access.
  I wouldn't be surprised at all if Samsung TVs without internet access are using nearby Samsung phones to connect to the internet. Or maybe they partner with the ISP to use those default guest wifi networks. If news broke tomorrow that this was already a thing, it wouldn't surprise me at all.

Doubtful, since I don't have one.

Doesn't mention what circumstances it's tracking your watching habits. If you're watching an obscure movie on DVD, is it still looking at frames? Does it have to be through a streaming service being run on the TV? Does it recognize content being run on modern game consoles? Not a very informative article.
- First, a quick primer on the tech: ACR identifies what’s displayed on your television, including content served through a cable TV box, streaming service, or game console, by continuously grabbing screenshots and comparing them to a massive database of media and advertisements. Think of it as a Shazam-like service constantly running in the background while your TV is on.
  All of this is in the second paragraph of the article.
  
  Bah! Reading! But that is concerning. Looks like I'll be disabling my wifi credentials on my TV later tonight!

on our vizio, from the settings side panel: all settings-admin/privacy-viewing data. turn it off.
- I wouldn't trust it anyway. I would only trust a TV that does not have Internet access, period.

SmartTV: This customer loves watching Balance of Nature ads
Me: fuck balance of nature I fucking hate those stupid scammy ads!

My TV must be very disappointed in me

That’s why i don’t connect mine to the internet and I black hole suspicious traffic

Mine doesn't
- care to share?
  
  Mine's a crt with an hdmi converter. I'm untouchable
  
  Most likely offline or firewalled to Hades.
  
  VLANed off with no internet. Can only see my Plex server. No other access

Is that you Santa?
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0PTXttx13E/?igshid=N2ViNmM2MDRjNw==

That's cool. I just use my shield
- Did you read the article? It captures screenshots, doesn't matter if you use a Shield, console or whatever.
  
  Yes.I read it. And no I dont hook my TV to the Internet . It's even blocked at the router level

Who cares? Ad targeting has been around for years, ads on TV aren't any different than what's on YouTube anymore, they're often literally the same ad. I don't need drugs, I don't need cars and I don't need insurance so whatever
- You do know what community you’re posting in right?
  This type of snooping covers anything you play on the screen including but not limited to Blu-Rays, Plex, Home Movies, Live TV, YouTube, and Netflix. It’s incredibly invasive and harmful to the end user, especially when the raw data is inevitably leaked to the world at large.

107 comments