The ACR-based retargeting audiences (https://www.samsung.com/us/business/samsungads/resources/tv-...) are probably the most offensive. For example: "Reach viewers who saw your competitor’s ads as quickly as 60 seconds after linear ad airing." Since they're capturing and analyzing screenshots from all TV inputs (even HDMI sources), they can target based on not just what you're watching, but which ads you've seen. Games, movies, apps, whatever - they're capturing the actual image you're seeing in realtime.
I maintain a list of deep links to opt-out of data collection and sharing, mostly just because it pisses me off: https://simpleoptout.com/ . My site includes all of the TV manufacturers and TV OSes, but Samsung is easily the worst. As I wrote: "distinctly less customer-friendly than its peer companies. If it can be retained and shared, it probably is."
How to prevent all Samsung tracking and advertising:
1. Factory reset your Samsung TV.
2. When promoted to accept the Samsung EULA, select no/reject
3. Attach computer or streaming stick to Samsung HDMI port (Windows, mac, chromebook, appleTV, chromecast, Amazon Firestick, Roku stick). I use an ancient PC with Linux Mint installed. You can use KODI or Plex if you like that interface, but I don’t.
4. Select that HDMI input on the TV.
5. Enjoy streaming video with Samsung-free ads and Samsung-free tracking
Optional but recommended: Logitech wireless K400 keyboard/touchpad ($20)
2. Connect Apple TV via HDMI
Not only does this improve your privacy, but it improves the UI and remote of your TV.
I do what you suggest in step (3), and never connect it the TV to a network, but it's still concerning.
6. Repeat factory reset every time “helpful” guests “fix” the internet on your tv.
On my (Silverblue) laptop I've been using a simple video player (Celluloid), youtube_dl/get_iplayer/bashpodder, plus a bash script to select and play the “next” episode.
That works nicely for recorded/downloaded audio and video, but doesn't address live streams.
Does the device continue to function? On some recent gaming consoles, if you select "No", you're basically left with an expensive paperweight.
One of them was an unexpected white paper, which contained this statement:
Statement of Volatility – Dell U3219Q Monitor
The purpose of this document is to certify that the Dell
U3219Q monitor will not save, retain, or reproduce a signal
to any internal or external component after power has been
removed and reapplied to the unit.
The Dell U3219Q monitor contains both volatile and
non-volatile (NV) memory ICs. Volatile memory(s) lose their
data immediately upon removal of power. Non-volatile memory
ICs continue to retain their data even after the power has
been removed. However, no input video data is written into
these memory ICs during operation.
List below contains volatile and non volatile memory ICs
used in the Dell U3219Q monitor."
- system eeprom
- hdmi edid eeprom
- system flash rom
- usb hub eeprom
- pd controller flash romThat said, even for standalone devices, there's plenty of other data to target with. You can see the marketer-facing view here: https://advertising.roku.com/, https://advertising.roku.com/advertiser-solutions
On all Roku devices, these are collected and can be used for ad targeting (https://docs.roku.com/published/userprivacypolicy/en/us):
> We receive information about your interactions with the Roku Services, such as your browsing history, search history, search results, audio information when you use voice-enabled features, channels you access (including usage statistics such as what channels you access, the time you access them, and how long you spend viewing them), interactions with content and ads, and settings and preferences.
Like Samsung, TVs running Roku's OS use ACR and target ads based on that data:
> When you use a Roku TV with the Smart TV experience enabled, we use Automatic Content Recognition (“ACR”) technology to receive information about what live television content you watch via the Roku TV’s antenna, and what you watch via devices connected to your Roku TV, including cable and satellite set top boxes. For example, we receive TV viewing information such as the programs, commercials, and channels you view, the date, time and duration of the viewing, and how you use the on-screen TV guide. We receive TV viewing information both when you access live TV directly through your Smart TV’s interface and when you access live TV from within a Third-Party Channel. If the Smart TV experience is enabled on your Roku TV, we will use this information to personalize your TV viewing experience and ads.
[0] https://twitter.com/random_walker/status/1177570679232876544
Lost a customer for life. I will never again buy a Samsung product.
-I want a new TV.
-I have this great Samsung model.
-I hate Samsung.
-I have this great LG model!
Funny thing, the that TV came with webOS, which after being bought and sold over a few times, ended up at LG. It works pretty well, never had an issue with it.
The newer webOs models with magic remote that you can use as a pointer are super nice too, but admittedly my 43UJ701V sometimes does reboot it self, the old Netcast plasma is rock solid.
I landed on LG because my requirements were "no Android" and "I hate Samsung", LG are the only ones left pretty much.
The in built apps seem pretty decent as well for on demand video.
Unfortunately, in the meantime, the whole smart hub stopped working. The answer was the update the smart hub. Unfortunately, you have to update the smart hub through the smart hub which doesn’t work.
Samsung support was useless. I now have a “dumb” TV with a separate Apple TV and it’s much, much better.
If I want to stream things, that can go through the gaming PC that's right next to the TV.
https://gist.github.com/peteryates/b44b70d19ccd52f62d66cdd4b...
* The wifi slows down to <1mbps every morning. Restarting wifi fixes this. * The entire bixby button. It can finally be remapped, but occasional double taps (like using volume in the dark) will still open it. * The weather 'Current temperature' widget updates every two days. Current temperature. Current. Two days. * Random notifications to sign up for Samsung services that I don't want. You cannot swipe them away. You have to open the app and decline their EULA to get rid of it. * Disappearing notifications * Needing to reboot every week, or getting slowdowns * Only two years of updates (an entire android problem)
Obviously all of these problems can be fixed, and many aren't exclusive to samsung, but dealing with all of them continuously is just grating. I had been planning to buy a Samsung Frame TV before I heard all this stuff about their ads.
Things like: They hired a contractor to modify a website used for thousands of staff to log in, but they had him modify the production system live because they were too cheap to build a dev system. Several days of everyone sitting on their hands in the morning ensued. Several.
Another fun one was that instead of using Access Control Lists and unique accounts for Active Directory security, like rest of the world does it, everyone is an admin, there's no security, but your IP address is logged. You are your network address, it's assigned to you like a user name. If anything 'bad' is logged from it, you are blamed and/or fired. So, it's basically network security through punishment instead of... you know... actual security.
The typical culture at one of these conglomerates is highly paternalistic in nature. Much of the environment is defined by the chairman who acts as a "fatherly-figure" to his subordinates.
See for yourself: https://www.samsung.com/us/business/samsungads/
The answer is to make sure they don't sell the device in the first place.
Let's say that the average Samsung TV costs $1,000, ad revenue per person is around $30 a year, and the average lifespan of a TV is 10 years. I own a Samsung TV since 2016. I think they may have pushed 5 firmware updates since then.
There is no way I can be convinced that Samsung needs to increase the price of TVs by 20%. Also, if that's the difference, why can't I just pay more and opt out? And why are other users in other countries not being shown ads?
Because they one day realised they can make you pay more and show you ads to get both of the moneys
Honestly this is why I fully back adblockers of all kinds. Companies associated with ad tech would do much worse if they thought they could get away with it
Yeah, ad revenue couldn't possibly be just "found revenue" to layer on top of existing profits. Why folks are so willing to carry water for corporations, by making unsubstantiated excuses for them, mystifies me.
Because if you don't keep making excuses for them, you're left with the alternative: doing a bunch more work yourself, which many people don't find remotely enjoyable.
Which reminds me, I need to go and try installing Axolotl on my PinePhone again :)
In a competitive market, you can certainly imagine a situation where this would be true. Competition should drive prices as low as they can go, and if manufacturers make money from ads, they can afford to not make a profit off hardware (and maybe even sell it at a loss).
In which case, the questions are:
1) Is this a trade-off we're okay with? (Advertisements and privacy violations in exchange for cheaper televisions.)
2) How can we support a business environment that leads to this outcome?
We ought to focus on #2 anyway, for all sorts of reasons.
For #1, I think it's fairly easy to say "no, everyone should have a guaranteed right to privacy", but as a fairly well-off person, I'm not sure I'm comfortable making that decision for everyone else.
Even if that were true, it ignores a very important question - where does that ad money come from?
Companies buy ads (to get you to spend money on something you don't need, or due to an arms race with their competitors, fighting over a limited market) with money the get from consumers, that pay more for their products.
All ads "contribute" to society is change in consumer behavior, that is ultimately paid by those same consumers. Even ignoring that behavior change, consumers are, on the whole, financially hurt, not helped, by ads.
So I'd be really curious how this equates to the profit on the TV, and how much those costs can be amortized between the install base vs actual revenue per user.
At previous company (wireless telco), while not the same thing, we had the intercepting DNS that everyone hates, for typo'd queries redirect to our own search page. I asked one time how much we make in the ad revenue on that, and the basic napkin math was that we were probably losing money. Just the amount of time, complaints, maintenance, keeping it running, etc burned hundreds of hours a year. But it was buried in other budgets so the company thought they were making money.
Even then I don't know how they justified it, it was peanuts compared to mainline revenue.
I'm always more convinced that I'll end up with a monitor, a Raspberry, a stereo speaker and possibly a DVBT decoder.
Because people who are willing to pay to get rid of ads are even more valuable to advertisers. If the average lifetime revenue per user is $300, the average revenue per user who wants to pay to get rid of ads might be $500. If that's the case the manufacturer would need to charge you $500 just to be even.
Because they probably did market research and found that ~nobody would pay what it was actually worth, and it would generate negative press.
Samsung TVs are not cheaper than the competition. In fact, their mid and high tiers are expensive, compared to LG. On the low tier, other brands like TLC or Vizio are still cheaper.
To try to remedy the issue (knowing it was slowed down by the disgusting ad platform), I installed a Pi Hole in the house to see if that would alleviate the problem. The TV felt a bit less clunky but Pi Hole seemed to have some issues with some of the installed apps - primarily Hulu, so I needed another solution. The Pi Hole statistics were terrifying at around 12,000 blocked Samsung requests per day (around 6-7 hours of shared TV usage).
I researched Amazon FireSticks, Roku's, etc. I needed something easy for my family and kids to use (they are not as techy) and I wanted an interface that was buttery smooth. While I am very much not an Apple fan, last night I picked up the 4K Apple TV to test and so far it seems to be decent. There are some things I would change with the platform for sure, but it is overall pretty intuitive so my family can just pick up the remote and go.
I factory reset my Samsung TV and completely removed the network from it. It was sad to see how responsive the TV was again after the reset. You can be sure I will not be buying another Samsung TV!
The stats can be misleading. It's just trying over and over again when it has a failure. If the first attempt was successful, you would have a lot less requests.
Typically I would suggest not connecting your TV to any sort of internet connection - firmware updates don't typically tend to add or fix much on these devices. If you really have an issue, update the firmware, factory reset and then disable wifi / unplug ethernet.
and host everything on ephemeral AWS addresses?
Imagine a browser extension that whitelist the ip of the site you go to in the address bar for like 30 minutes in cooperation with the router.
All other ip traffic is blocked.
[1] https://www.sceptre.com/TV/4K-UHD-TV/U550CV-UMRD-55-4K-UHD-T...
Anybody here have one?
They advertise the display as HDR but the specs say its brightness is a quite poor 280cd/m^2. A proper HDR TV should have quite a bit higher brightness.
I consider HDR to be a far greater improvement in visuals compared to 4k, and something which made my jaw drop the first time I saw it at home watching The Reverend on my Samsung top-end model.
To make this worse, my several year old U2414Hs can reach 280 at 100%. Those are inexpensive, standard, 1080p IPS office monitors, that have rather good color consistency for being low $2xx each... and also like 5 years old.
It's fine. Takes a while to turn on but otherwise just works. I'm not super-discriminating about display quality, but nothing about the display has ever bothered me.
[a] I don’t delude myself into thinking this won’t change, but so far, I can just tune out (no pun intended) the ad on the side. Not to mention that the ads are of shows and movies, not products (which would be worse).
I’m planning to get YouTube premium to remove ads there and vote with my money for an ad-free Internet.
I never imagined that they would be spying on the actual video output, but I would consider that not only a major violation of privacy but corporate espionage (because I use it for work).
I don’t believe that is the case, but I’ll be researching if that is being done.
So you only have to see ads, on a service you bought outright, every single time you turn it on? No thanks.
[0] https://www.spotx.tv/resources/blog/spotxer/server-side-ad-i...
Also it's hard to tell people about it and for them to grasp all the ways this can be used.
"ACR is a technology that (with device-owner permission) reads pixels on a smart, internet-connected device screen as it delivers content to a . . . consumer—on a second by second basis. A recent Forbes article explains that the data is then shared with the manufacturer’s tracking software, matching them to a database that keeps track of local broadcasts and other [TV or video] content sources."
https://www.admonsters.com/automated-content-recognition-acr...
I know someone who started a job at a tobacco company. He went from 'of course they cause cancer, you're an idiot if you smoke' to 'everybody dies from something, it's not that bad, the media are against us, it's inconclusive'.
He still won't smoke, though.
He doesn't seem to specify who his users are but he's clearly thinking about advertisers rather than customers, who he's treating like shit.
Waring: This TV shows ads that can’t be turned off
Warning: This TV records what you watch, when and for how long and shares that with third parties
I know I wouldn’t buy a TV with that warning on the front of the box
We will find you and we will spam you. You can't hide from us. Were watching, were tracking.
I really can't imagine myself ever buying a samsung tv. I mean they're quite blunt about their intentions, nothing to be surprised about when they're shouting about advising to cord cutters on their website.
1) Buy an Nvidia Shield, Google Chromecast, or Apple TV
2) Connect that to your TV
3) Factory reset your TV and never connect it to the internet again
I wish AppleTV would allow side-loading apps. That would be the best of both worlds.
I'm sure soon enough the TVs will refuse to boot unless connected to the internet.
Samsung pays a bit to get access to this and voila - they can skip the internet setup steps (so more consumer friendly) and block you from blocking their ads / ACR (consumer not friendly).
If it hasn't already happened it will.
Apps from Samsung's app store masquerades like security updates and constantly prompts to install.
I made the mistake of buying them for my parents, even though they use their phone just for WhatsApp like most Indian parents, each of their phones generates ~2000 DNS requests/week which I'm dutifully sinking into PiHole.
Besides, Suprisingly Samsung pushes almost regular monthly android security updates for these devices.
It's not exactly rocket science to plug in an NVidia Shield TV or an Amazon Fire Stick, so I don't really mind using those, but I don't like having any kind of implicit spying being done to me by my TV...I kind of feel like TVs should remain a "neutral" platform.
It sounds like if I have to replace my TV, I am going to have to look into more expensive commercial offerings which aren't subsidized by Orwellian monitoring solutions.
I got an LG OLED, which has ads, but they are successfully piholed for now. It's painful to manage because it also blocks ordinary features, like NTP.
You can't change the company, but we can definitely chose how we use their product
Anyone could order the parts and put their own TV together, it really isn't as crazy as people think.
You're paying more for the fact that some models are built to last longer, and the fact there's no wireless or smart junk.
[1] https://www.cdw.com/search/Monitors-Projectors/Large-Format-...
Voting with money is not going to stop this as all major players with high-end devices are pushing this. On top of it, this information is usually a nice surprise after you already bought and setup the device.
To even further push the boundaries, they are adding (more) advertising to devices that have been purchased years ago!
But from another angle, I think majority of population would not mind targeted advertising if that means their TV are much cheaper. If we think about it, it is kind of ridiculously cheap you can get a 4K 40" LCD TV delivered to you for under $300.
Ok, but also on the internet, radio and in newspapers.
It would be more similar to your ISP injecting advertisement in your traffic and displaying it on top of the websites you visit rather than advertisement in the website.
The issue is deeper than advertisement itself. It's that it is unsolicited pushed into devices that are meant to consume other content.
I should not need to run a PiHole to deal with this.
One thing is how annoying most ads are. Ad networks has proven themselves time and time again to be excellent attack vectors for all kinds of nasty. I don't want that on a device I paid thousands of dollars for!
I have ~5 years old Samsung smart tv. I've disconnected it from the network almost a year ago.
I have cheap Android tv box for all my "smart" needs, I will probably replace it with a mini pc once it die. Those moves only makes me want more control over my setup.
When will they pull a Kindle and sell special "ad-free" versions of so-called Smart TVs for an extra $100?
It started out with a few innocuous ads, then it got worse and worse until at one point it started displaying adult ads on a device that was on prominent display in people's homes. There was quite a backlash.
I returned it the next day after unboxing it and discovering that the fax capability was actually just the ability to connect to an Amstrad-operated gateway, that used a premium-rate number, costing something like 50p/minute.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen an advert on it from Samsung - where are they appearing exactly? I just switch between terrestrial TV and various apps like Netflix and Amazon on the bottom navigation bar and don’t think I’ve ever seen one. Might be wrong though!
> Samsung Smart TVs have built-in Automated Content Recognition (ACR) technology that can understand viewing behavior and usage including programs, movies, ads, gaming content and OTT apps in real-time.[0]
Literally every second or two, Samsung was performing some screen reading data collection and sending it off to their servers. My Pi Hole was capturing 12,000 blocked requests from this per day (6-7 hours of shared family viewing). This resulted in a poor user experience where I would feel the actually latency when trying to navigate around or open the menu. After factory resetting my TV it was so snappy again. Plugged in an AppleTV and haven't looked back. This form of advertising is incredibly invasive and disgusting to me, with constant spying/screenshotting of the content I am viewing.
[0] https://www.samsung.com/us/business/samsungads/resources/tv-...
However, they seem to be rampantly anti-consumer - not only selling user data, but overcharging on everything they sell.
They also hobble their hardware with software designed by a bunch of shit-flinging monkeys.
They're also perfectly happy to engage in whatever legally dubious practices that they can get away with.
Anyway, when is it that we finally ban targeted ads?
I'm sure it's only a matter of time before these TVs require 'activation' and frequent 'reactivation' before you can use them though. Alternatively they may perhaps start connecting to cellular networks, which would be a lot harder to evade.
Yeah, they're "only" 1080p, but then again, my movie collection is mostly standard definition anyway. I realized that I don't need higher than that if I'm enjoying a movie/TV show: I stop noticing the picture quality once the story quality surpasses it.
Hopefully in the next 2-10 years we will see a renaissance of high quality affordable dumb TVs as people continue to learn about data collection/ads/etc
[1] https://www.sceptre.com/TV/4K-UHD-TV/U550CV-UMRD-55-4K-UHD-T...
Anybody here have one?
I got a Samsung N5000 43" LED [1], 1080p, dumb as hell, boots in less than a second. Got it for 330 CAD$ before taxes.
I try to be modest and consume less.
I prefer using a Chromecast.
People on HN might spend more for some privacy, but most average consumers definitely wouldn't.
I almost would like to see Apple release a television that has tvOS built in.
Does Samsung perform content fingerprinting on streams not played via the Samsung software (i.e. Apple TV content coming over HDMI)? Does the fingerprinting continue to work if you run your audio through a receiver and send no audio signal the TV?
I’m looking for ways to allow me to use my non-commercial Samsung TV (a nicer QLED TV from 2017) without having it spy on me. It’s on a VLAN that doesn’t allow outbound connections on my home network, but, honestly, I don’t trust Samsung.
No washers, fridges, and certainly nothing with an internet onnection.
But I'd rather reward a competitor for my next TV. Which brands don't do this?
But then the battle continues and they brick the device if it cant phone home with an endless reboot cycle or something. Why is this blatantly anti-consumer behavior not illegal? Companies continue to show us nothing is beneath them except for us.
Also who the hell is saying TVs would be more expensive without ads? What a load of BS -- perhaps for small companies starting out, but Samsung? LOL
I was on the fence about getting their frame TV, this pretty much kills it.
Can something preconfigured like pie hole help sandbox these things?
Now: I will only get chinese phones running stock android.
Ads are far too inciting to be left on the table. Costumers be damned!
Or it pauses ads when the app is muted?
So getting upset at Samsung and plugging in a Chromecast or AppleTV or ROKU or whatever, is silly. They're all tracking you everywhere.
But there isnt a lot of demand from a lot sources. So the ads are not nearly as tailored as digital. But they can be. And eventually they'll be as creepy as the banners you are served after browsing thingamajigs. For now, you'll likely just get served Direct Response scatter and the same branded ad over and over...
I haven't seen any dashboard ads on it yet but that is probably becouse there is no regional service yet where I live. I wonder if this is worth it for Samsung in the long term to piss their customers off and get the image of a cheap rippoff brand.
However, that's probably not an issue for most people. The concerns people have is around obtrusive advertising in their home screen.
However, there is another component to Samsung Ads - the video ads on their Samsung Plus Channel. For those that don't know, this channel consists of free content (usually B-level movies, old TV series, etc).
Why does anyone have a problem if Samsung puts ads on this content? After all, it does cost them money to license most of this content, and if you don't want to watch those ads, you simply don't watch that content. Not to mention Youtube and everyone else has the same business model.
Furthermore, pushing an automated software update to put ads inside the user interface of the TV where they previously didn’t exist should be illegal as well.
Samsung tvs are hilariously bad with ads all over.
On neither item is it possible to flash this crap away or disable it. People love to tout things being free for our data, but this is paying over $1k to still have some of the most intrusive ads ever.
You must own one of their products to watch their ads with shows thrown in (Samsung channel) and this means you have paid for access to that channel and are still being served disgustingly intrusive ads(as others pointed out they screen grab and send home images of everything you watch on any input)
You're the only person mentioning this avenue in the entire comment section. Safe to say, it doesn't sound like people have a problem with ads there.