Audio, electronic, visual, thermal, olfactory, or similar information.
Clarification: after a bit of research it seems the olfactory section pertains to CCPA California law, many places have olfactory in the privacy policy because it is required by the law. I can’t believe we reached a point where we have to put olfactory in the privacy policy, but then again it won’t be long before Smell-O-Vision becomes reality.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smell-O-Vision
They removed it, archived here: https://archive.ph/YYBuJ
Also have a California ip you get a different privacy policy.
my roku TV felt my wrath because it dared to show me a banner ad while I was in the middle of a game.
i promptly disabled internet on it completely. now it’s a dumb TV. and my life is much better.
I want to recommend that you change your WiFi password. Even though you disabled the internet, it may still phone home.
Yep disabled Internet and I cast video from my phone to the TV so I can control what appears on the screen.
Just screen mirroring iirc.
For reference, I have a Samsung S23, and I use the Smart View function that you can find if you pull down twice the top of the screen and get to the Quick Settings drawer. I think my phone and TV had to be on the same WiFi network at first for the phone to be able to find the TV, but after that I can turn WiFi off on both devices and Smart View still remembers the Roku TV.
Oddly, after screen mirroring begins and I can see my phone screen on the Roku TV, if I scroll down on the Quick Settings drawer it shows the phone’s WiFi is on, but the symbol next to my signal bars is clearly 4G LTE or 5G and not WiFi.
Works pretty well unless you have too much ElectroMagnetic Interference (EMI) in which case the lag sucks and may even cease the connection. I’ve been using screen mirroring for years though and it’s great.
Good luck!
Never give your TV the wifi password.
The problem is that some TVs (cough Samsung) won’t allow you to even use the thing as a monitor until you allow it online.
I’ve heard tell of this, I’ve been wondering something. Can you change your wifi password, give it the new one for setup, and then disconnect and restore your typical password and continue to use the TV, or does it need an active connection?
My workplace uses Samsung TVs. I found a trick to let it run without connecting to WiFi. On the screen where it asks you to connect to a network, just click right like you wanted to skip it and it will skip it even though it doesn’t say that’s an option. YMMV though, I can’t say if it works for all TVs.
Better yet, don’t buy a Samsung TV but this might come in handy if you happen to have one.
Damn so this already started?
Is LG also doing this?
I think current advise is Sony but they are a lot more expensive for the same panel.
Not sure about LG. But it also depends on model as well afaik. Most Samsungs I know that were bought via Walmart, Best Buy, Costco, etc had that issue, but one of my commercial clients bought a couple and it was a non-issue, so ymmv. I typically like Sonys, but I also have a reseller account with them through my wholesaler and get them significantly cheaper than retail.
We bought a LG QED 80" 4k at Costco. Not once did I enter a wifi, hasn’t asked me at all 6 months later.
This is false. I just bought a brand-new current-model Samsung QN90D QLED TV. Like any modern device it nags you to connect to WiFi/Ethernet during the setup, but the “decline” button is not hidden and it’s completely optional. Not sure if that’s on-par with older models, but I just have it connected to my external Roku and several consoles via HDMI. Completely offline. No ads on the home screen (not that I really use it, I just switch inputs). All features are available: 4K, AI upscaling, HDR+, 144hz gaming mode, etc…
Eh I want to control it with my automation. But it can’t connect to the wan. Have firewall rules blocking it.
“we may collect information about your activities, like the apps you install or access (including usage statistics such as what apps you access, the time you access them, and how long you interact with them), and information about the videos and other content you select and stream within these streaming services.
When you use a smart TV with our operating system (e.g., a Roku TV model) with the Smart TV Experience enabled, we use Automatic Content Recognition (“ACR”) technology to collect information about what you watch or access (e.g., the programs, video games, ads and channels you viewed or accessed, and the date, time and duration of the viewing or access) via your TV’s antenna, cable box, game console, media player or other devices connected to your TV, and we may also collect additional information about the videos and other content you stream. The data collected while the Smart TV Experience is enabled may vary depending on your TV’s model and when you enabled the Smart TV Experience. For information specific to your TV, please see the Privacy > Smart TV Experience section of your TV’s settings menu. If you disable this setting on your TV, Roku will not use ACR on that TV, but Roku still receives information about your interactions and streaming activities on that TV through other methods.
If you use the Roku Media Player to view your video or photo files or listen to your music files, Roku will collect data about the files viewed within the Roku Media Player, such as codecs, and other metadata of the local files you play through the Roku Media Player”
Super weird. I would assume that olfactory sensors would cost more per TV than Roku would make by collecting the data. Afaik there’s no such thing as electronic olfactory sensors per se anyway. In before labs start buying Roku TVs because they all have gas chromatography machines inside them.
It is related to the California Law, there are no sensors in the tv. The strange thing is that they reverted the policy without informing anyone.
https://www.zengrc.com/blog/what-are-the-ccpa-categories-of-personal-information/
They pushed these changes on Christmas Day.
Knowing no one would read it, since they’re with family just trying to watch a lovely Christmas movie. Bastards.
Edit: autocorrect
If you buy something nowadays and it connects to the Internet, it’s bad. Treat it like it’s bad. VLAN it, firewall it, force it to use your DNS only and block everything until it breaks then figure out what it actually needs.
Don’t give it internet, return it if it “needs” internet.
What you’re doing is a losing battle; once internet connected everything is normalised they’ll stop working if you block tracking and suddenly you’re the weird one.
Instead, vote with your wallet, talk with others about how annoying/bad this is and get them to vote with their wallets, too!
