Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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Smart T.V. Privacy Overview? (feddit.nl)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

42 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm considering buying a new TV. There's plenty of posts about trying to find dumb TVs, comments like 'just don't connect it to the internet/network'.

What surprises me is that there isn't a good overview of (popular) TVs or brands with basic information, answering for each TV:

Can you use it as a basic TV by choosing not to enable smart features during setup?
Can you opt out by just not accepting a bunch of agreements?
Does it have a camera and/or microphone? Where in the device are these? Is there a physical disable switch for microphone?
Does it nag when not connected to any network?
Does it have higher than normal power usage when not able to phone home?
Has it been discovered to connect to public WiFi networks? Does it have the (theoretical) ability to connect to 5G mobile networks?

And similar.

There are extensive lists with a lot of detail about VPN services but nothing like that for TVs. Am I ignorant of a good source, or does this just not exist (yet)?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Thanks, very helpful! I'm dubious about Samsung because of robolemmy's experiences (https://feddit.nl/post/22838850/13086582), perhaps that differs per TV.

[–] Bronzie 1 points 2 months ago

I can't speak for all Samsung TVs, but I have the Q9FN65 from a few years ago and it has been offline almost since day one.
Never had any nagging at all and all the pre-installed crap could be removed.

My biggest gripe with them is the lack of Dolby Vision. Samsung wants people to use HDR10+ which is their own version, but it's not widely supported. Otherwise it's snappy and functions well.