<story><title>Smart TVs sending sensitive user data to Netflix and Facebook</title><url>https://www.ft.com/content/23ab2f68-d957-11e9-8f9b-77216ebe1f17</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>xcgfhgjbjhb</author><text>I worked on that.&lt;p&gt;It sends audio and&amp;#x2F;or video fingerprints (not frames, for privacy and bandwidth reasons), which are matched against a fingerprint database. Whatever people see on TV is usually 10 to 60 seconds behind the &lt;i&gt;real&lt;/i&gt; live stream at the broadcaster (which is where the reference fingerprinting happens). GeoIP data can be used to roughly deduce where the TV is located, in order to better filter out false positives out of multiple matches (e.g. in the US where lots of programming on east&amp;#x2F;west side is just shifted by ~3 hours due to time difference).</text></item><item><author>obmelvin</author><text>Roku enabled TVs very clearly send back frames of what you are watching. I&amp;#x27;ve been watching YouTube casted via chromecast plugged into HDMI (NOT the built in chromecast, I have verified multiple times) and the Roku will give me a full width toast saying to press `*` to watch the full movie or some similar contextual option&lt;p&gt;I was pretty put off the first time this happened. That said, I don&amp;#x27;t even know if I looked through the settings to see if I could turn it off..</text></item><item><author>mikeryan</author><text>This is a pretty open secret within the industry. Geographic data can be provided via setup (a lot of TV&amp;#x27;s ask for a zip code on setup) or usually simply via GeoIP lookup.&lt;p&gt;Dig a bit deeper and you get into service provided by Samba TV and or Inscape and you can find that they&amp;#x27;re sending back frames of video in a lot of cases to track what you&amp;#x27;re watching.&lt;p&gt;This data is becoming a huge mechanism for subsidizing TV sales and the interactivity is being looked at as a huge opportunity to recoup some of the ad spend being lost via streaming and fewer 30 second spots.&lt;p&gt;With new TV&amp;#x27;s its time to view them as private as a browser (With less controls).&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;samba.tv&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;samba.tv&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.inscape.tv&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.inscape.tv&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gbear0</author><text>are you saying that hypothetically, if the MPAA comes knocking on Roku&amp;#x27;s door with enough money and a fingerprint database of torrented movies&amp;#x2F;songs, Roku could then tell them they have people matching those fingerprints? After which I&amp;#x27;m assuming they&amp;#x27;d have enough justification to get a court order to get the contact info from Roku for matching users?</text></comment>
<story><title>Smart TVs sending sensitive user data to Netflix and Facebook</title><url>https://www.ft.com/content/23ab2f68-d957-11e9-8f9b-77216ebe1f17</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>xcgfhgjbjhb</author><text>I worked on that.&lt;p&gt;It sends audio and&amp;#x2F;or video fingerprints (not frames, for privacy and bandwidth reasons), which are matched against a fingerprint database. Whatever people see on TV is usually 10 to 60 seconds behind the &lt;i&gt;real&lt;/i&gt; live stream at the broadcaster (which is where the reference fingerprinting happens). GeoIP data can be used to roughly deduce where the TV is located, in order to better filter out false positives out of multiple matches (e.g. in the US where lots of programming on east&amp;#x2F;west side is just shifted by ~3 hours due to time difference).</text></item><item><author>obmelvin</author><text>Roku enabled TVs very clearly send back frames of what you are watching. I&amp;#x27;ve been watching YouTube casted via chromecast plugged into HDMI (NOT the built in chromecast, I have verified multiple times) and the Roku will give me a full width toast saying to press `*` to watch the full movie or some similar contextual option&lt;p&gt;I was pretty put off the first time this happened. That said, I don&amp;#x27;t even know if I looked through the settings to see if I could turn it off..</text></item><item><author>mikeryan</author><text>This is a pretty open secret within the industry. Geographic data can be provided via setup (a lot of TV&amp;#x27;s ask for a zip code on setup) or usually simply via GeoIP lookup.&lt;p&gt;Dig a bit deeper and you get into service provided by Samba TV and or Inscape and you can find that they&amp;#x27;re sending back frames of video in a lot of cases to track what you&amp;#x27;re watching.&lt;p&gt;This data is becoming a huge mechanism for subsidizing TV sales and the interactivity is being looked at as a huge opportunity to recoup some of the ad spend being lost via streaming and fewer 30 second spots.&lt;p&gt;With new TV&amp;#x27;s its time to view them as private as a browser (With less controls).&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;samba.tv&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;samba.tv&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.inscape.tv&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.inscape.tv&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>morrbo</author><text>And yet I still can&amp;#x27;t fast forward&amp;#x2F;rewind when using Roku media player and dlna.</text></comment>