You really don’t think there’s a difference between a company collecting data about the usage of their own video library and another company tracking audio with microphones, sniffing local network devices, monitoring all video output and selling all of the above to third parties?

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bgarbiak 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Genuinely curious: is there any company caught “tracking audio with microphones”? And what does it mean? Is it about eavesdropping on users or identifying the content being watched?

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drdexebtjl 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

LG TVs transcribe conversations you’re having in the room and store them locally. While they haven’t been caught sending that data anywhere AFAIK, there are known vulnerabilities that lets attackers read these transcriptions.

Gamers Nexus had a viral video about them here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IFVTcM28KA

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bgarbiak 6 hours ago | parent [-]

From what I understood, the TV doesn’t actually do that. It can do that when hacked, but that something else entirely.

	▲	duchef 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It does do it but LG claim that it is only used to identify activation words for voice control. It has nothing to do with being 'hacked'.

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matwood 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> is there any company caught “tracking audio with microphones”?

I think it's become an internet meme because it's hard for the average person to understand the more creepy thing that's happening. All the data points being captured as one goes around the internet allows rich profiles to be built without something as complicated as recording and transcribing audio.

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6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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alt227 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Personally I think when you sign up to Disney+ and you give them things like your DOB, bank details, address, phone number, IP address, its a much bigger base for those companies to start building your ad profile much more accurately. If you have kids you then make a family profile to protect them, but in reality all you are doing is feeding the streaming company information about your kids viewing habits to ad to the ad profiles. All of this is being sold to 3rd parties all over the world, for each streaming service you use.

This is without even looking at Apple, who own the hardware you are streaming on and have been caught lying multiple times in the past about data harvesting. After all that, I feel that unplugging the cord on your TV is completely pointless, and it is frustrating how people gloat about it like they are getting around the system. In reality, you are only giving your data to 4 companies in the chain now, instead of 5.

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afavour 8 hours ago | parent [-]

You’re talking about “fans” and “gloating” and I really can’t understand why you see things that way. Like I said, people accept that streaming services are an inevitable part of their lives and they’re making informed choices to minimise their exposure. 4 companies is indeed better than 5.

	▲	alt227 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Im pretty sure I never used the word "Fans" anywhere? If I did please point it out as it wasnt intentional. If you think giving data to 4 companies instead of 5 is fine then thats fair enough, its your own data. In my opinion if you happy to give your data to one billion dollar ad profile selling company, then why squabble about another? However I understand this is subjective, and I am not trying to tell anyone they are wrong. I just dont understand it thats all!