DoctorBeet's Blog: LG Smart TVs logging USB filenames and viewing info to LG servers - 1 views
doctorbeet.blogspot.ru/...logging-usb-filenames-and.html
surveillance state surveillance-industry smart-tvs
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In fact, there is an option in the system settings called "Collection of watching info:" which is set ON by default. This setting requires the user to scroll down to see it and, unlike most other settings, contains no "balloon help" to describe what it does.
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At this point, I decided to do some traffic analysis to see what was being sent. It turns out that viewing information appears to be being sent regardless of whether this option is set to On or Off.
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Here you can clearly see that a unique device ID is transmitted, along with the Channel name "BBC NEWS" and a unique device ID. Here is another example of a viewing info packet.
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This information appears to be sent back unencrypted and in the clear to LG every time you change channel, even if you have gone to the trouble of changing the setting above to switch collection of viewing information off. It was at this point, I made an even more disturbing find within the packet data dumps. I noticed filenames were being posted to LG's servers and that these filenames were ones stored on my external USB hard drive. To demonstrate this, I created a mock avi file and copied it to a USB stick.
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This file didn't really contain "midget porn" at all, I renamed it to make sure it had a unique filename that I could spot easily in the data and one that was unlikely to come from a broadcast source. And sure enough, there is was...
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Sometimes the names of the contents of an entire folder was posted, other times nothing was sent. I couldn't determine what rules controlled this.
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It would easily be possible to infer the presence of adult content or files that had been downloaded from file sharing sites. My wife was shocked to see our children's names being transmitted in the name of a Christmas video file that we had watched from USB.
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So how can we prevent this from happening? I haven't read the T&Cs but one thing I am sure about is that I own my router and have absolute jurisdiction of any traffic that I allow to pass, so I have compiled an initial list of internet domains that you can block to stop spying and advertising on TVs that we, as customers have actually paid for.
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Wow! I don't know what to say about this except that as incredible an intrusion as it is, I'm not surprised. I have a MOXI DVR that intercepts the cable feed, and takes control over the content sent to the Samsung TV. I purposely chose MOXI over the two-way cable-DVR boxes provided by Astound because I didn't want Astound collecting information. Now I find out the the the HD-TV provider is in position to snoop on me. I like the router solution though.