How to stop it from spying on you.
My solution to this is to not give it my wifi password. As far as I’m concerned, our screen is nothing but a video monitor.
15 thoughts on “Your Television”
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How to stop it from spying on you.
My solution to this is to not give it my wifi password. As far as I’m concerned, our screen is nothing but a video monitor.
Comments are closed.
I haven’t owned a TV in years.
In that case you cannot access streaming services, which is the only reason to have a TV at all
I have many ways to access streaming services. None of them require my TV, other than to be able to watch them. You do not need a “smart” TV to watch TV. The TV is just an end point via HDMI for the video source.
We have a cable box, and a Sony Blu-Ray player, both of which can access streaming services. We also have a Roku in the bedroom. I don’t think that the Sony or my cable box spies on me or sells my data, though the Roku may these days.
“You do not need a “smart” TV to watch TV”
The problem these days it’s tough to find a TV that isn’t a smart TV. I saw a discussion a few days ago about using kiosk display screens, which are the same thing but without the spying because that would be pointless, but apparently they’re much much more expensive.
You can buy a “smart” TV, and lobotomize it by not giving it your wifi password, which is what I do. It is simply a video monitor.
Sure, if you trust that.
What’s to not trust? If it doesn’t have access to the Internet, it’s not “smart,” it’s just a video monitor.
Rand, it is a privilege afforded members of the Inner Party to disconnect your TV screen from the Internet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CjXJgr71LA
One option, which I’m sort of investigating, is using your router to black hole the sites ACR depends on, but regular consumer-level routers may not have the functionality.
Guess I am less concerned about this than others. The “targeted” ads that I get seem ludicrously overdone – for instance, I did a quick check in November on what a condo would cost in Vail for a week and have been getting Vrbo ads almost nonstop on YouTube ever since. This just guarantees that I will never use Vrbo, because the ads are annoying and not improved by constant viewing. Madison Avenue still believes their own lies about constant repetition.
But assuming that I am going to have to see some form of advertising while watching or reading free stuff – nothing in life is truly free, after all – I think I prefer targeted ads to totally random ones. I may see something of minimal interest, instead of ads for The Voice or whatever advertisers seem to think we might be *made* interested in.
In the end, it doesn’t matter what information they get on us – assuming you are not watching child porn or other blackmail attractions – because they cannot make you actually buy. All this worry seems to be a form of “Stop me before I shop again.”
I’m putting myself under this column.
All I use my 55″ TV for is to watch DVDs. I watch YouTube videos on a 9″ tablet and rocket launches either on a 17″ laptop screen or occasionally on a 22″ XP-Pen monitor. I only got the big TV because my old 20″ analog set finally croaked.
Once the TV is connected to the Internet it receives software updates automatically that process changes all the security/ads settings back to default.
No it doesn’t. I’ve got a 2018 Samsung 50″ TV that I’ve disabled ACR on in the setttings, and I checked it a few weeks back and they were the way I set them.
Ok, that doesn’t mean other makers don’t do it.
Also, Samsung TVs (mine at least) won’t autoupdate. I forget if it came that way by default or if I had to change the setting, but every once in a while I get an update request notification and I say no.