By Jeremy Hsu on September 24, 2024

Popular smart TV models made by Samsung and LG can take multiple snapshots of what you are watching every second – even when they are being used as external displays for your laptop or video game console.

Smart TV manufacturers use these frequent screenshots, as well as audio recordings, in their automatic content recognition systems, which track viewing habits in order to target people with specific advertising. But researchers showed this tracking by some of the world’s most popular smart TV brands – Samsung TVs can take screenshots every 500 milliseconds and LG TVs every 10 milliseconds – can occur when people least expect it.

“When a user connects their laptop via HDMI just to browse stuff on their laptop on a bigger screen by using the TV as a ‘dumb’ display, they are unsuspecting of their activity being screenshotted,” says Yash Vekaria at the University of California, Davis. Samsung and LG did not respond to a request for comment.

Vekaria and his colleagues connected smart TVs from Samsung and LG to their own computer server. Their server, which was equipped with software for analysing network traffic, acted as a middleman to see what visual snapshots or audio data the TVs were uploading.

They found the smart TVs did not appear to upload any screenshots or audio data when streaming from Netflix or other third-party apps, mirroring YouTube content streamed on a separate phone or laptop or when sitting idle. But the smart TVs did upload snapshots when showing broadcasts from the TV antenna or content from an HDMI-connected device.

The researchers also discovered country-specific differences when users streamed the free ad-supported TV channel provided by Samsung or LG platforms. Such user activities were uploaded when the TV was operating in the US but not in the UK.

By recording user activity even when it’s coming from connected laptops, smart TVs might capture sensitive data, says Vekaria. For example, it might record if people are browsing for baby products or other personal items.

Customers can opt out of such tracking for Samsung and LG TVs. But the process requires customers to either enable or disable between six and 11 different options in the TV settings.

“This is the sort of privacy-intrusive technology that should require people to opt into sharing their data with clear language explaining exactly what they’re agreeing to, not baked into initial setup agreements that people tend to speed through,” says Thorin Klosowski at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital privacy non-profit based in California.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2449198-smart-tvs-take-snapshots-of-what-you-watch-multiple-times-per-second/ (paywall!!)

  • Badland9085@lemm.eeEnglish
    26·
    2 hours ago

    Imagine the amount of bandwidth and energy saved, if they didn’t do any of this bullshit.

    They are essentially using someone else’s money to get themselves more money. Fuck these people!

  • SuperFola@programming.devEnglish
    182·
    4 hours ago

    So they are allowed to pirate content actually? Even if it’s not Netflix or YouTube they take screenshots of potentially copyrighted content

  • Zementid@feddit.nlEnglish
    17·
    5 hours ago

    Theoretically I could display highly illegal stuff and they would distribute it making them complicit?

    Can the API be hacked to flood their servers with petabytes of cat pictures?

    What is happening with the data? Where are the data savers?

  • Slovene@feddit.nlEnglish
    523·
    6 hours ago

    THIS is piracy. Along with all the other personal data selling.

  • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.caEnglish
    17·
    6 hours ago

    I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, corporations treat you like a product. Whether you buy something from them or not. People are becoming the product that they sell.

    I usually don’t care very much until it starts to affect pricing for stuff based on some algorithms impression of how desperate you are. That algorithm started with travel (airlines, online booking fees for hotels and stuff) and has expanded.

    If I need a new computer because mine isn’t working, I don’t really care that advertisers come at me with ads for their computer products. I need one, they want me to buy one, it’s marketing. No worries.

    If I need a new computer and suddenly all the prices for new systems goes up by $100 because it thinks I’m desperate enough to pay that, now I have a problem.

    I still don’t like them selling my data, and I’ll do what I can to avoid it, but marketing is going to do marketing things.

  • ipkpjersi@lemmy.mlEnglish
    131·
    5 hours ago

    That’s both disturbing and completely expected. I’ve generally always preferred monitors over TVs tbh, this is just another reason for it lol

  • 0x0@programming.devEnglish
    181·
    7 hours ago

    Buy a computer monitor, a projector or a commercial display instead, they tend to be dumb.

    Alternatively, don’t connect your TV to the internet (bear in mind some are wireless). Unplug it from the wall when not in use.

    As if Microsoft’s Recall wasn’t enough…

  • Blackmist@feddit.ukEnglish
    71·
    12 hours ago

    Actual paper here.

    https://arxiv.org/html/2409.06203v1

    It is not sending full screenshots as anybody technical would already have guessed. It’s a few KB over an hour, so it’s content recognition hashes.

    Opt out anyway. Their study shows the opt out option does indeed opt you out of it.