I’m mostly sailing the high seas, using the tv as a giant monitor for the always-on laptop connected to it. I’m afraid of the 1984-esque “You must connect to the internet to continue using this TV” that might come after some time.
I’m mostly sailing the high seas, using the tv as a giant monitor for the always-on laptop connected to it. I’m afraid of the 1984-esque “You must connect to the internet to continue using this TV” that might come after some time.
Sure, you can. But the point is it’s only more private IF you do that AND you’re not also using services on your laptop that report the same info like, say, Youtube or Netflix.
If you’re only using a laptop with Arch to play back offline videos then by all means, carry on, you’re good. But there’s a bunch of people out there worrying about Smart TV spyware and plugging in a Chromecast dongle instead or streaming from their subscription apps from a laptop, which doesn’t really achieve anything. I guess it may cut Samsung or LG out of the loop, if you have a particular grudge with them specifically, but that’s about it.
That’s what people are trying to avoid, the unnecessary data collection by the TVs themselves. I don’t think anyone is saying watching netflix on a laptop is more private than on a tv, and even then, using a browser with uBO can still block some tracking on streaming sites vs using their apps on a tv.
Maaaaaybe? Like, it probably helps mitigate some ingest of data from trackers (because on a web app running on your browser they are probably mining MORE stuff than on your TV by default, depending on your setup), but they still know everything you watched and what you did in the app plus anything adblocking isn’t successfully targeting.
I just don’t know that I have a sliding scale on this. Once your data is out there it’s out there. People will be buying and selling it. There is such a thing as partial mitigation, but ultimately I do stand by the point that a lot of people fixate on some vectors that are less subtle and still have massive holes, sometimes in setups built specifically to replace the more conspicuous snoopers.
I’m all for keeping your TV offline or logged out, but that’s in the context of either not using streaming apps or having them tightly controlled wherever else you use them. Otherwise I may prefer to have them leak my viewing habits from a TV that only ever uses streaming apps than having access to my PC where I do a bunch of other stuff and log in to a bunch of services that may be subject to tracking.
I’m not being contrarian, either. I genuinely think this is a nontrivial issue and you’d need some heavy duty monitoring to get a good sense of what is going on between different configs.
I’ll also say I’m not surprised smart TVs have an increasingly terrible reputation on this, though. Most of what my Pihole ends up blocking is smart TVs calling home. It’s kinda nuts how frequent and persistent they are about it.
And hey, tell the guys up the thread about the data collection thing, apparently some didn’t get the memo.
That’s the sliding scale you’re talking about. Threat modeling isn’t black and white, it depends on what the person’s risk profile is. Yours is not wanting to expose your laptop. Others don’t want their tv monitoring their activity, and would prefer to transfer the risk to their laptop and browser where they have more control of the medium their streaming site goes through and they can cut off the tv manufacturer.
If you didn’t have a sliding scale, you’d be a hermit with no internet access at all.
Yeah, for sure. No argument from me there. As long as you’re aware of what’s going on and your scale is set that way on purpose I have no issue with that at all.
Again, I’m making a point about ignorance. People who hear about TVs being a massive cesspool of spyware (accurate) and just move the cesspool around to other similarly compromised devices because they’re reacting to the meme and don’t understand what the risk is supposed to be.
If you know what you’re leaking I have no issue with you choosing which leaks to live with, man. I just want to clarify to people who may not know that making a plug out of the bottom of their boat is not gonna keep them from leaking.