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SimianSci 1 hours ago [-]
The idea was always that Facebook or Google were listening to us and whenever we would talk about something we would shortly thereafter see an ad related to it.
Now we can basically say that its not Facebook and Google doing this directly, its our televisions and appliances that are listening and just selling that data back to the ad-networks.
gumby 46 minutes ago [-]
This is similar to Flock and Palantir who collect info the government is not allowed to and then sell it to the government.
In this case Meta, Google etc can honestly say they aren't surrepticiously listinging to you or collecting data not in their privacy statement. They just buy it instead.
So I need to write a chaffing agent that runs when I am not home and randomly spouts synthetic conversations through non-smart speakers about nappies (kids a re long gone), nuclear weapons development, plumbing, union membership, crochet, video games, crypto coins, and other things we don't normally do.
notnullorvoid 16 minutes ago [-]
> Now we can basically say that its not Facebook and Google doing this directly
Finding out that TVs are listening does not mean Google and Facebook aren't. I've had plenty of times in an old car, or on a walk talking about something only to have related ads pop up later.
tempest_ 1 minutes ago [-]
They can already do that with most of the information they already have, they don't need to listen for that type of thing (though they still might be as you see here, data is data after all).
Most people are not that unique. They know where you are and who you are with and any searching or sites you have been to and what is in your text messages or whatsapp as well as that same information for all the people 6 degrees away from you. They know people like you, who are your age and like the things you like and are where you are with friends like yours etc etc it goes on and on.
People rarely talk about things unprompted and you will only notice when you think you talked about something and then see an ad for it so there is a confirmation bias as well.
agilob 21 minutes ago [-]
This does not mean that Google and Facebook never do it.
lincon127 20 minutes ago [-]
Has this not been proven by now? That smart devices are used to do this, including smartphones? Their OSes just ship with apps that that record that audio information right out of the box.
rdtsc 58 minutes ago [-]
That's a pretty good point. We kept hearing these rumors for a while now and all the usual suspects keep saying "we don't listen to your microphone on your phone" but yeah nobody expects the TV and fridge to do it, so maybe that's how it happens and people are not crazy.
BoxwoodSeed 25 minutes ago [-]
That's just weasel language. For "hey, Google" to work, the phone needs to listen. Just like it can react to "hey, Google", it can also react to any amount of other trigger words without ever actually recording your conversation.
MegaDeKay 43 minutes ago [-]
People were up in arms (and rightly so) when the LG TVs were found out for their spying thanks to the Gamers Nexus investigation. At least LG TVs can be rooted and you can install apps like Glasshouse [0] to disable all the telemetry and add substantial new features that you can't do via the officially sanctioned Dev Mode. The vulnerability that enabled rooting was recently patched so hopefully another can be found.
Hopefully similar apps will come along for Samsung now that root on it can be achieved [1].
Leading to one of my favourite jokes: The Soviet Union is socialist, and bugs it's citizen's homes. America, though, is capitalist - the people must buy their own bugs.
jen20 18 minutes ago [-]
They need to you blindly accept the terms and conditions and think "oh that seems fine" instead of returning it and costing them money.
brookst 1 hours ago [-]
I’ve got a Samsung frame used for two things: 1) showing hdmi 1, and 2) showing art when idle.
I guess I’m going to have to just write replacement firmware, aren’t I?
microtonal 1 hours ago [-]
Disconnect it from the network and hook up a streaming device that is relatively trustable (e.g. Apple TV or an open source alternative).
catdog 47 minutes ago [-]
With that much criminal energy behind it, you might even want to remove the wifi module or ground the antenna at this point.
gumby 43 minutes ago [-]
I was about to post "this is overkill — just don't connect it to your access point" but then realized that my neighbor has an xfinity router that advertises the public xfinity subscriber SSID. And it could be using an unadvertised SSID for which they've done a deal with the US carrier cartel members.
If this data is worth enough, they could be using IOT 4G service.
lelandfe 34 minutes ago [-]
We to date have had no proof of this happening. The best I found was someone on a Samsung forum years ago claiming their TV auto-connected to a public WiFi without proof.
Not saying it isn’t happening, nor that it won’t ever happen.
Anyway - Faraday living room?
DenisM 1 minutes ago [-]
We have proof they have no moral qualms or other guardrails, and they have incentive. We also have a decent idea how much it costs to connect to ambient WiFi or cell/5gnetworks. It’s a matter of time, which may or may not be already in the past.
BoxwoodSeed 19 minutes ago [-]
I heard you can buy really expensive paint that you can use on your walls, ceiling and floor to get this effect, that you then can paint over whatever color you actually want.
So far the only benefit other than shielding you from electrosmog was to stop having to compete with your neighbors in an apartment complex for wi-fi bands.
lincon127 14 minutes ago [-]
I mean there is proof that this does happen, to my knowledge there's no proof with larger brands such as this. But also it's not like every device is tested for that sort of thing by some competent user safety guidelines organization or whatnot.
jen20 16 minutes ago [-]
I'm sorely tempted to go down that road, I have a few frames. They've never been connected to the Internet, but the software on them is trash - literally the only thing I ever want it to do is display art (in standby) or display the Apple TV connected to HDMI.
polack 1 hours ago [-]
Load the art from a flash stick and never connect it to the internet?
CliffJumper 1 hours ago [-]
don't let it connect to the internet
pxtail 8 minutes ago [-]
What I would do if I were manufacturer hellbent on spying would be to search for devices of my own brand nearby to pass data using their internet access, if no access found then extend search - basically p2p/mesh network to pass data.
Folks, we need to move on from "this is outrageous!" to "what can we do to stop it?"
luma 33 minutes ago [-]
Some version of this has been posted a dozen times now. The dog barking and baby crying detection are advertised features of this product range which is used for SmartThings integration.
Swarms of RE-hopefuls are now using tools they don't understand to work on projects they don't understand. Anyone doing RE knows step 1 is read public documentation, FCC filing, patent applications, etc. That step would tell you what the device does out of the box, no RE required to find everything the OP has actually uncovered.
Instead they busted out Claude and have been gaslit by their own AI into thinking they've discovered something. They just discovered features that Samsung has been pitching for years.
MaxL93 31 minutes ago [-]
It's been a feature of the phones for years too.
While caution is definitely warranted after LG, I am definitely getting the impression that people are far too quick to jump to conclusions because an A.I. service told them something without them factually checking it first
Kuyawa 33 minutes ago [-]
They hear us all the time, here is an anecdote...
I was at the butcher one day and asked for "ossobuco" because I wanted some bones for my dog, then all of a sudden I got reels with ossobuco in it, recipes, sellers, nearby shops, etc and I said WTF? Who the fuck makes posts about ossobuco? Why all of a sudden after using social apps just for football and porn all I start getting is ossobuco ads everywhere? A word you will never see anywhere now popping up in all my social feeds.
Possibility of that being random? Zero, not in this probabilistic universe we live in
101008 25 minutes ago [-]
Yeah same experience. People working in Facebook (I had a friend there) say it is only pattern behaviour, they can predict your interests, check when you meet with your friends, share WIFIs, etc, so they can imagine things you have been talking about. I call this bullshit. I dont know if my friend working at Facebook believes this, or was just hiding it for me, but it's 0% chance of them doing that. Also because I never got any of these recommendations BEFORE I mentioned it out loud, which means their prediction engine (if it exists) also knows when I am going to talk about it!
gambiting 5 minutes ago [-]
I also got ads for things I have only thought about and never ever searched online or mentioned to anyone.
Doesn't mean my phone can suddenly read my mind - just that prediction algorithms + data from BLE trackers is incredibly good at guessing what I might be interested in. It's just crazy crazy good.
senordevnyc 4 minutes ago [-]
Sorry, but there’s just zero evidence that your phone is listening to you like this. There never has been. Lots of people have tried to uncover such evidence. On the iPhone at least (not as familiar with Android), it’s not even clear how your phone would be listening and sending the data to Meta.
This isn’t happening.
mightypirate 25 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
fein 1 hours ago [-]
Maybe I'm just old fashioned or out of touch, but why is it such a barrier for people to treat their smart TV as a dumb display? Hook up a computer via HDMI and never connect the TV to wifi.
I understand that the tech in these things is a horrorshow, But so is the tech in every other smart device that normal ("I don't care how it works, just that it works" types) people allow into their homes every day - and these are the people who tech is built for, not "us". Of all the tech to raise red flags about, this seems the easiest to mitigate.
And to be completely fair, I haven't purchased a new TV (Projector yes, TV no) since I bought my plasma in 2014. That 2014 TV has smart features as well but has just never been hooked up to the internet. Maybe the new rigs can't be used until connected to a network but I wouldn't know. Enlighten me if this is the case.
Grombobulous 1 hours ago [-]
One way that you probably are behind on the goings on in the TV market are that there are whole TV brands that require you to login just to use the television at all, like Roku.
These are usually the cheap models, the kind that are heavily subsidized by spyware, but the fact that this exists at all is seriously not cool.
I imagine that you can login to those televisions once and then take them offline, though I haven’t tried personally.
The other thing I would say is that here we are asking customers to basically buy duplicate products and that second product might still engage in spyware.
E.g., I’ve bought a $500 TV that comes with Roku or whatever. It already runs all my streaming apps. So the strategy now is to turn off internet on that TV and now I have to buy a streaming box and hope that it’s less intrusive. If we decide maybe Apple is the one with the least intrusive ads and tracking, that’s now $300, almost doubling the cost of the TV.
And if we buy some other streaming box like Roku or Amazon well guess what they have all the same sorts of telemetry and ads going on.
treebeard901 17 minutes ago [-]
To fully remove the national spy network from your life you would have to get rid of all other devices that will collect the same data or do already. Smartphones, smartwatches, home security systems, Wifi, any computer or device you did not build yourself, TVs, any other "smart" device, anything that has electricty going to it, any car since OnStar in the 1990s, all delivery trucks and self driving cars, your neighbors security system, devices that broadcast IDs, even bluetooth devices... So many examples..
The amount of devices in the national spy network which is passed off as just advertisement data is really providing full spectrum live video and audio to third parties that can and do share it for any reason that benefits them.
BoxwoodSeed 14 minutes ago [-]
You also have to create an account to use an Osmo action cam. I almost sent the damn thing back upon finding out, but as it turns out, you can make a fake mail, fake account, and after having connected once you can treat it as if it never happened.
Still infuriating.
Havoc 18 minutes ago [-]
>Hook up a computer via HDMI and never connect the TV to wifi.
Having just gone through this...it's a lot harder than you think.
Current gen TVs have specs that garden variety connect a computer can't supply over HDMI. You need HDMI 2.1 with FRL to hit it. So you climb onto google, discover yes there are minipc that can do that...except only the new ones...the "AI" ones that cost you an arm and a leg. Also they need fast DDR5 memory which is great fun right now. And the more affordable ones are AMD so no quicksync.
So you think lets maybe do a USBC dongle to an existing device, only to discover that they require different firmware (!) on the dongle depending on whether you're using a mac or a windows PC [0]. And then you realize you actually need a cable capable of 48gbps and none of the ones lying around are labelled so you have to buy a new one just in case. And after you've done all that you still don't know why its connecting at 120hz not 144hz per TV specs. And then the whole media encoding circus starts...
I can 100% understand why people just type in wifi password and call it a day. The average consumer is not up for flashing firmware onto dongles to watch their big brother series.
No streaming app is giving you a video feed with 48Gbps of data (more like 5-15 Mbps), no one produces 120 or 144Hz video (most movies/TV are still 24Hz aren't they?), and cheap n100 minipcs can do 4k60 just fine.
SimianSci 1 hours ago [-]
better yet,in the age of AI why not do more?
Ive been motivated recently to start making my appliances mine by using Ai to reverse engineer and replace their firmware.
So long as the appliance has been slow to update its security channels, the recent eMudrha certificate leak was the perfect opportunity to place yourself in the middle of the relationship between device and vendor. Its allowed me to make some trivial updates to my television's firmware and start to have AI build me firmware that better serves my purposes. Hoping to lobotomize it and replace everything with a simple linux system that executes a startup script to launch a Jellyfin client.
I bought it and its mine, this is the freedom we were originally robbed of.
BloondAndDoom 6 minutes ago [-]
Its all about UX, I recently got sick of my LG and switch to Apple TV and made LG a dumb TV with HDMI, and surprisingly UX ia significantly worse. Apple being Apple and force their shit weird UX. My kids can’t figure it out, they used to use LG TV by themselves to open what they want to open.
Even I fucking hate it because Apple UX. is just bunch of weird behaviors popping out from every action. Apple UX rant aside, similarly many solutions has tons of UX problems, connecting a PC to TV unfortunately leads to even more problems.
All of these shit supposed to work but in practice way too many edge cases, and random issues.
jasonjayr 41 minutes ago [-]
It's not hard; but often the TV will nag and nag until it gets a wifi connection.
And with how hard these manufacturers are trying, I wouldn't be at all surprised if they start including some alternate data connection for metadata/DRM/whatever. (ie, not the primary streaming data connection)
colkassad 43 minutes ago [-]
This is what I do. I find navigating with a remote control to be infuriating, especially when you need to search for something. With an old computer and wireless mouse and keyboard, it's so much better. Some minor configuration of Firefox's homepage and it's a fine start page for watching TV, with all your stuff right there. Plus you can have extensions that save hours of your life over time. The only downside is the remote becomes the literal keyboard and mouse which might be cumbersome for some, but I don't even think about it anymore. I've been using the same 50" for ten years.
dm319 9 minutes ago [-]
Funny I am also using a Plasma from around that time (Samsung one but hopefully too dumb to spy). I guess the problem is that they'll keep turning the screws, in the same way it gets harder and harder to use Windows and Office without an account and internet connection.
As a result I'm not upgrading my TV anytime soon, and when I do, I hope to find a dumb one.
prasadjoglekar 1 hours ago [-]
You are unlike most people. Most people just want to come home and watch TV. Historically it used to be cable, now it's YouTube or similar. What do you think is the quickest way to watch YouTube?
ndriscoll 10 minutes ago [-]
Definitely not with a TV remote vs a keyboard/mouse.
addaon 1 hours ago [-]
> What do you think is the quickest way to watch YouTube?
Shout "six seven" and look over the shoulder of the twelve-year-old who magically appears?
59 minutes ago [-]
EtienneDeLyon 27 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
baal80spam 1 hours ago [-]
Is it still news that Samsung does this? Feels like I'm reading a similar story every few months.
megous 42 minutes ago [-]
Well, dog and baby owners are great targets for advertising, so this makes sense.
Now we can basically say that its not Facebook and Google doing this directly, its our televisions and appliances that are listening and just selling that data back to the ad-networks.
In this case Meta, Google etc can honestly say they aren't surrepticiously listinging to you or collecting data not in their privacy statement. They just buy it instead.
So I need to write a chaffing agent that runs when I am not home and randomly spouts synthetic conversations through non-smart speakers about nappies (kids a re long gone), nuclear weapons development, plumbing, union membership, crochet, video games, crypto coins, and other things we don't normally do.
Finding out that TVs are listening does not mean Google and Facebook aren't. I've had plenty of times in an old car, or on a walk talking about something only to have related ads pop up later.
Most people are not that unique. They know where you are and who you are with and any searching or sites you have been to and what is in your text messages or whatsapp as well as that same information for all the people 6 degrees away from you. They know people like you, who are your age and like the things you like and are where you are with friends like yours etc etc it goes on and on.
People rarely talk about things unprompted and you will only notice when you think you talked about something and then see an ad for it so there is a confirmation bias as well.
Hopefully similar apps will come along for Samsung now that root on it can be achieved [1].
[0] https://github.com/rorygallagher2024/glasshouse
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50218633
Samsung just needs you to buy a TV.
I guess I’m going to have to just write replacement firmware, aren’t I?
If this data is worth enough, they could be using IOT 4G service.
Not saying it isn’t happening, nor that it won’t ever happen.
Anyway - Faraday living room?
So far the only benefit other than shielding you from electrosmog was to stop having to compete with your neighbors in an apartment complex for wi-fi bands.
[0] https://r2.community.samsung.com/t5/SmartThings/SmartThings-...
Swarms of RE-hopefuls are now using tools they don't understand to work on projects they don't understand. Anyone doing RE knows step 1 is read public documentation, FCC filing, patent applications, etc. That step would tell you what the device does out of the box, no RE required to find everything the OP has actually uncovered.
Instead they busted out Claude and have been gaslit by their own AI into thinking they've discovered something. They just discovered features that Samsung has been pitching for years.
While caution is definitely warranted after LG, I am definitely getting the impression that people are far too quick to jump to conclusions because an A.I. service told them something without them factually checking it first
I was at the butcher one day and asked for "ossobuco" because I wanted some bones for my dog, then all of a sudden I got reels with ossobuco in it, recipes, sellers, nearby shops, etc and I said WTF? Who the fuck makes posts about ossobuco? Why all of a sudden after using social apps just for football and porn all I start getting is ossobuco ads everywhere? A word you will never see anywhere now popping up in all my social feeds.
Possibility of that being random? Zero, not in this probabilistic universe we live in
Doesn't mean my phone can suddenly read my mind - just that prediction algorithms + data from BLE trackers is incredibly good at guessing what I might be interested in. It's just crazy crazy good.
This isn’t happening.
I understand that the tech in these things is a horrorshow, But so is the tech in every other smart device that normal ("I don't care how it works, just that it works" types) people allow into their homes every day - and these are the people who tech is built for, not "us". Of all the tech to raise red flags about, this seems the easiest to mitigate.
And to be completely fair, I haven't purchased a new TV (Projector yes, TV no) since I bought my plasma in 2014. That 2014 TV has smart features as well but has just never been hooked up to the internet. Maybe the new rigs can't be used until connected to a network but I wouldn't know. Enlighten me if this is the case.
These are usually the cheap models, the kind that are heavily subsidized by spyware, but the fact that this exists at all is seriously not cool.
I imagine that you can login to those televisions once and then take them offline, though I haven’t tried personally.
The other thing I would say is that here we are asking customers to basically buy duplicate products and that second product might still engage in spyware.
E.g., I’ve bought a $500 TV that comes with Roku or whatever. It already runs all my streaming apps. So the strategy now is to turn off internet on that TV and now I have to buy a streaming box and hope that it’s less intrusive. If we decide maybe Apple is the one with the least intrusive ads and tracking, that’s now $300, almost doubling the cost of the TV.
And if we buy some other streaming box like Roku or Amazon well guess what they have all the same sorts of telemetry and ads going on.
The amount of devices in the national spy network which is passed off as just advertisement data is really providing full spectrum live video and audio to third parties that can and do share it for any reason that benefits them.
Still infuriating.
Having just gone through this...it's a lot harder than you think.
Current gen TVs have specs that garden variety connect a computer can't supply over HDMI. You need HDMI 2.1 with FRL to hit it. So you climb onto google, discover yes there are minipc that can do that...except only the new ones...the "AI" ones that cost you an arm and a leg. Also they need fast DDR5 memory which is great fun right now. And the more affordable ones are AMD so no quicksync.
So you think lets maybe do a USBC dongle to an existing device, only to discover that they require different firmware (!) on the dongle depending on whether you're using a mac or a windows PC [0]. And then you realize you actually need a cable capable of 48gbps and none of the ones lying around are labelled so you have to buy a new one just in case. And after you've done all that you still don't know why its connecting at 120hz not 144hz per TV specs. And then the whole media encoding circus starts...
I can 100% understand why people just type in wifi password and call it a day. The average consumer is not up for flashing firmware onto dongles to watch their big brother series.
[0] https://kb.cablematters.com/index.php?View=entry&EntryID=147
Ive been motivated recently to start making my appliances mine by using Ai to reverse engineer and replace their firmware. So long as the appliance has been slow to update its security channels, the recent eMudrha certificate leak was the perfect opportunity to place yourself in the middle of the relationship between device and vendor. Its allowed me to make some trivial updates to my television's firmware and start to have AI build me firmware that better serves my purposes. Hoping to lobotomize it and replace everything with a simple linux system that executes a startup script to launch a Jellyfin client.
I bought it and its mine, this is the freedom we were originally robbed of.
Even I fucking hate it because Apple UX. is just bunch of weird behaviors popping out from every action. Apple UX rant aside, similarly many solutions has tons of UX problems, connecting a PC to TV unfortunately leads to even more problems.
All of these shit supposed to work but in practice way too many edge cases, and random issues.
And with how hard these manufacturers are trying, I wouldn't be at all surprised if they start including some alternate data connection for metadata/DRM/whatever. (ie, not the primary streaming data connection)
As a result I'm not upgrading my TV anytime soon, and when I do, I hope to find a dumb one.
Shout "six seven" and look over the shoulder of the twelve-year-old who magically appears?