User Alleges LG TVs Phone Home With Your Viewing Habits 286
psychonaut writes "Blogger DoctorBeet discovered that his new LG television was surreptitiously sending information about his TV viewing habits, as well as the names of the files he watched on removable media, to LG's servers. There is an undocumented setting in the TV configuration which supposedly disables this behaviour, but an inspection of the network traffic between the TV and the Internet showed that the TV continues to send the data whether or not the setting is disabled. DoctorBeet contacted LG, but they shrugged the matter off, saying that it's a matter between him and the retailer he bought the TV from."
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
I used to think totalitarianism came from above (Score:5, Insightful)
Now I realize that it's democratic: it comes from the people.
Your average consumer doesn't care that their TV is phoning home, or Google is tracking them, or that their cell phones are reporting to Amazon.
We used to be afraid of three-letter government agencies but really, the bigger story is that the average person doesn't care if they're spied on. To them it represents greater convenience in lifestyle as products are tailor-made to their kinks and purchasing habits.
When fascism arrives, it will appear on a Harley with a cheeseburger and a credit card, not wrapped in a flag carrying a Bible.
Re:I used to think totalitarianism came from above (Score:5, Insightful)
You think totalitarianism doesn't come from above? Who do you think is higher on the political food chain, the consumer or corporations?
You expect consumers to care about privacy, but what does it cost him to care? You almost can't buy a decent TV these days that's not "smart". So he has to put a packet analyzer on the network port and figure out if the thing is phoning home?
No, this a place where the consumer reasonably feels he ought to be protected by government regulation.
Back in 1972 the US Department of Health Education and Welfare developed a landmark report which anticipated a lot of the electronic privacy issues of the following 40 years. The report was prepared under squeaky clean Elliot Richardson, who was shifted from HEW to DoD shortly before the report came out. He was replaced by Caspar Weinberger (later Reagans' Sec'y of Defense, and mixed up with Iran Contra). If you read the report it is capped with a conclusion which doesn't seem to match: we can't really be sure about what's going to happen in the future, so we should avoid regulating any potential privacy abuses by the private sector until they become problems. That's the philosophy which controls the US approach to consumer data privacy to this day. Consumers have to figure out that their data is being abused, then win a political fight against companies who've invested money in the business of exploiting their data.
No thanks.... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is exactly why my TV though having an either port does NOT have internet access connected to it. I get monitored enough, there's enough risk from being hacked. Leave my TV alone!
Re:Easy Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
No Internet access (Score:5, Insightful)
Since we have more and more connected devices in our lives, you've got to take extra precautions. First and foremost, if your device doesn't need to be connected to the Internet, just don't. There is no reason your wired printer need Internet access, so block that MAC address for external access. If your device does need it, then make sure that it's in an isolated segment with no raw access to Ethernet frames from other systems in your house, and if it's WiFi-enabled, make sure you have guest isolation turned on. Then, setup a proxy, transparent or not, to make sure you have the chance to monitor that traffic for unexpected surprises. If you can, whitelist some specific sites that your application needs to access, like Netflix or VUDU for example and block access to everything else.
Finally, why use apps in the TV when you can have excellent open source software provide you with content, like XBMC or MythTV?
Re:And LG paralyzes your tv when it wants to. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds nice, but "return the TV' means somehow finding an appropriate shipping box, filling out the required paperwork and paying to mail it back. If you are lucky you will then eventually get another TV to unpack and set up - and then have to repeat the process. Maybe you "win" and get your money back. The TV company doesn't care - very few of their customers will go to that effort rather than just click on the box, and your return will just be in the "user too stupid to use our TV" category.
This is the general problem with "returning" any sort of high tech product. The cost of the users time to do it is so high that most people simply won't bother - especially when they realize that the competitors product will likely have the same problem.
Re:it's a matter between him and the retailer (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, I think that was just a fancy way of saying "We're not changing it, so return your product...if you can".
Re:Built-in set top box (Score:5, Insightful)
Mine is called "don't hook the TV to the network."
Re:it's a matter between him and the retailer (Score:5, Insightful)
No, he posted the full text of their response, the relevant part being:
"The advice we have been given is that unfortunately as you accepted the Terms and Conditions on your TV, your concerns would be best directed to the retailer. We understand you feel you should have been made aware of these T's and C's at the point of sale, and for obvious reasons LG are unable to pass comment on their actions."
What they're actually saying is that he agreed to the terms and conditions somehow, and it's the retailer's fault that he wasn't aware what they were / that he agreed to them. So really it's just a fancy way of saying 'our asses are covered beyond what legal action you can afford so go away'.
Re:it's a matter between him and the retailer (Score:4, Insightful)
Out of *policy*, I never read any EULA for any product ever. To read it would be giving it weight. I will just click on anything that makes the thing work, and the only reason I'm clicking on it is to make the thing work, not because of any consent.
One of the nice things is that many websites are as dumb as fuck, and often ask me to agree to things before they let me have access to their pages - and these agreements are in a foreign language I don't understand. I cannot have consented, as I couldn't have even understood what I would be consenting to. That's not just plausible deniability, it's deniability-as-the-null-hypothesis. I just clicked on the button that then led me to where I was trying to go. If the websites don't like that, they are free to 403 me.
Re:it's a matter between him and the retailer (Score:5, Insightful)
I do the same thing - when I buy a house, I never read the terms of the mortgage contract. I just sign on the "give me a house" line. So I'm not bound by the terms of the mortgage since I signed under a duress. It was just what I had to do to buy a house.
Re:Great thing about being old (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually it vastly improved their wine industry, as they refocused from "cheap" to "quality". There are really good Austrian wines today.
Re:it's a matter between him and the retailer (Score:5, Insightful)
I do the same thing - when I buy a house, I never read the terms of the mortgage contract. I just sign on the "give me a house" line. So I'm not bound by the terms of the mortgage since I signed under a duress. It was just what I had to do to buy a house.
Yes, I too buy houses where the purchase contract requires no signature, but merely a mouse click. Or even better, where the contract is INSIDE the house and by the mere fact of removing the key from a sealed envelope and opening the door, I've accepted the mysterious contract that is inside that I did not sign...my opening the door is signature enough.
And if there is some clause in that contract that says the bank will install secret video cameras, too bad, take it up with the previous owner.