These smart TVs were apparently spying on their owners

All internet of things devices collect and send data. If they do it to this company they need to do it to all. I've seen my Samsung TVs sending data before.
 
All internet of things devices collect and send data. If they do it to this company they need to do it to all. I've seen my Samsung TVs sending data before.

I get that many companies are doing this.
I think in this case Vizio didn't mention it like with other TVs you have to accept agreements when trying to access their online features, I could be wrong however I think this is why they got fined.

"According to the lawsuit, Vizio was literally watching its watchers — capturing “second-by-second information” about what people viewed on its smart TVs. That included data from cable, broadband, set-top boxes, over-the-air broadcasts, DVDs and streaming devices. Vizio also is accused of linking demographic information to the data and selling the data — including users' sex, age and income — to companies that do targeted advertising."

When they say watching it watchers, so they were actually watching them from a a camera? I think Xbox does it right? not sure if PS and other companies to this as well.
 
I think what they mean by watching their watchers is they were tracking their every move, although I don't get how they can get sex age and income off TV info. Also don't get how they'd record info from devices connected to the TV via HDMI because it doesn't transmit that info unless they were literally recording everything.
 
I have to say that that all of this is scary because even if Vizio was watching their customers without their knowledge, how many people actually read the T&C? For all you know that's what you are agreeing to with other smart TVs.
 
I have to say that that all of this is scary because even if Vizio was watching their customers without their knowledge, how many people actually read the T&C? For all you know that's what you are agreeing to with other smart TVs.
When I first booted my Samsungs up there was nothing to accept before using Smart features. It's probably in the book that nobody reads.
 
When I first booted my Samsungs up there was nothing to accept before using Smart features. It's probably in the book that nobody reads.

When I wanted to use my LG Smart Apps it made me sign up and agree a bunch of stuff which is probably what this is.
In the article it says recording people, does it mean recording as in literally record people or record what they did like is there a hidden mini camera inside?
 
When I wanted to use my LG Smart Apps it made me sign up and agree a bunch of stuff which is probably what this is.
In the article it says recording people, does it mean recording as in literally record people or record what they did like is there a hidden mini camera inside?
That's what I was wondering, but I mean where would they put it that isn't obvious.
 
About a month after my parents got a new 4K Samsung smart TV we started experiencing intermittent internet problems every night around 8:00PM-1:00AM. I thought the problem was with our ISP so after a few weeks I called to complain. Time Warner told me they wouldn't do anything until I replaced our 5 year old router, so I did and the problem seemed to stop. A few days later it was back, so I complained to Time Warner again and they said everything on their end was fine. After a few months of this I got fed up and installed DD-WRT on our router and the next time the issue occurred I started looking at the metrics. Turns out the smart TV was uploading a HUGE file each night and killing our internet (we only have like 2Mbps up). I ended up limiting the upload on the TV to 56Kbps and the problem went away.
 
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