Link: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/cyber-security/hacker-finds-own-samsung-tv-collecting-scary-amounts-of-user-information-and-gets-banned-by-openai-for-cyber-abuse-tv-runs-an-ai-model-that-collects-audio-screenshots-and-plenty-of-other-user-data-for-ad-targeting

A hacker reverse-engineered his own Samsung TV and found alarming spying activity, including code that used connected devices' microphones to listen to users.

I kind of need a tutorial how to use a samsung (or whatever brand) smart tv without them tracking us like that - but with still being able to stream netflix and stuff, I just wanna have both, streaming & privacy 😭

I'm sorry to break it to you but streaming services and privacy don't mix. Your best bet is to sail the high seas.

This right here!

Ever read the ToS of a streaming service in detail? Even if you subscribe to the premium ad free plan you agree to let them profile your habits and sell those to others for advertising purposes, etc.

Samsung has been banned from my house.

Completely false. I stream without problems, while still retaining all my privacy.
(I stream from my friends jellyfin servers)

Yup, 'smart' TVs should never get a live internet connection, ever. Don't give it a WIFI password, if you have made that mistake change the password now. Attach a computer, preferably Linux, and use it as a monitor. Even if you then go ahead and use a streaming service (boo), at least you're not just giving audio/video of your living room to Samsung as well.

a region-specific convolutional neural network (an AI)

That parenthetical annoys the hell out of me.

A service remembering how I used it is not the same problem as its app spying on my living room.

These events need to be crimes.

All of the ACR “features” and the audio capture features are behind separate, optional EULAs that the TV will work fine without. The GN video about LG was behavior if you agree to every EULA as well. You can add on a pi-hole and a smart tv blocklist for added protection, e.g., https://github.com/hkamran80/blocklists/blob/main/smart-tv.txt

It’s very easy to setup Wireshark and capture the traffic coming off your devices as well if you want to be sure.

How did you get rid of the content recognition?

I have an antenna for local tv and if there's a movie I want to watch I load it onto a USB stick and plug it into the side of the TV.

Never connect your proprietary appliances to the internet. A TV is just a display, use another device to manage what it displays.

By using either streamio or jellyfin

And also do your best to not live near unsecured wifi.

Just because you didn't explicitly connect it...

How do you use ai to record audio? I mean, recording audio is just procedural code. You can use ai to process the recording, of course.

RIP anybody in a NYC or Tokyo high rise with a few thousand neighbors in wifi range.

That's Apple's (Watch 18) newest semantic shenanigans to get around privacy laws, and it's being echoed by Amazon (Bee) and now Samsung, apparently. They argue that, if local AI processes an audio input stream, produces a transcript and does not store the audio as a file, that does not constitute a "recording". I'm looking forward to the look on the judge's face once this bullshit reasoning inevitably reaches their court...

1996: cameras, microphones, radios, in your appliances? You're schizophrenic

2026: removing the cameras, microphones, and radios from the appliances we use to spy on you is illegal.

Or anyone that gets deliveries. Some vehicles have open wifi networks.

Disconnect your TV from the internet and use a streaming stick. AppleTV is the least evil among the commercial ones. So you still have the normal streaming experience without the TV spying on you. However, as others have mentioned, these TVs are so bad that they try to find nearby unsecured wifi to transmit your data. So unless your immediate neighbors all have password protected wifi, and no one with an open hotspot gets in range, there's still a chance.

join the political pressure for it to be so

Is there any reason to think separate steaming boxes behave better?

I am pretty sure my Debian box that runs Kodi has fewer trackers than my TV.

I'm sure your experience using a remote to watch various streaming services and cable tv and pirated shows is all just totally simple and just works and the average person wouldn't have an issue using it though, right? This is the crux of the issue.

Dang, I want to upgrade my TV for christmas, and was thinking of a nice 65" OLED Samsung, as the "hospitality" TVs of the same size with OLED are like twice the price. I don't have open WIFI, I use a computer and just the TV as a display, I thought I'd be OK. But I have a soundbar as well, so it'll be listening to me regardless? Jesus fucking christ. The future we've built is terrible.

Actually yes. Requested through Seerr, added automatically to Jellyfin, streamed to the Kodi box. Simpler interface than Netflix. Setting it up is though not simple, but if a toddler has learned to use the TV remote they'd be able to use it. And there's about 30TB of content already so Seerr is rarely needed.

My kodi box, running librelec not debian, works with a remote and is just as easy to use as a Roku or whatever. Kids, old people, and all ages in between have used it with zero coaching.

It is very irritating that ppl just accepted that. It wasn't forced on us by law. We just... bought the stuff. It was so shiny! Now we have a mass surveilance apparatus that would make the Stasi blush.

Lots of us saw the terrible potential. But way more of us didn't.

Not like that, OpenAI!