Thursday, November 21, 2013

Is Your Television Spying on You?

If you own a smart TV by LG, your set may be telling the manufacturer a lot about your viewing habits.   The company logs what you watch and when.  If you access files through a USB device, the TV can transmit data on the files.  From this data the company can easily determine your gender, your age and probably a lot more than you can imagine including your political preferences.

It's unclear whether other smart TVs do the same thing.  My Sony obviously communicates with the manufacturer as it receives automatic firmware updates. It's not uncommon today for cell phones, tablets, computers and TVs to be networked wirelessly.

I wonder if a smart TV could some day be able to surreptitiously access a hard drive?

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