Few things over the past few years have infuriated me as much as tracking and advertising being introduced at the OS level, especially on TVs. I'm looking at you, LG! I will gladly pay more for a TV that doesn't try to advertise Roku's streaming service to me or track my kids' watch history. Seems like they are few and far between, though.
The best thing we have been able to come up with is leaving the TV itself disconnected from the WiFi and using an Apple TV for smart features/streaming. I'm sure they're still gathering data but it's at least not as blatant. It's a real crapfest for the consumer at the moment.
This is sound advice for keeping yourself free from malware as well. Many of these TVs end up running super vulnerable junk that doesn’t get updated and has known exploits.
I’ve had two devices end up with malware like this. A Sony blue ray player that was uploading 2gig a month before I caught it and a Samsung tv.
It’s worth mentioning you have to block or change WiFi credentials. The device with malware may attempt to connect to any known wifi even if you disable it on the device. I get 45000 auth attempts a day from my tv.
> I will gladly pay more for a TV that doesn't try to advertise Roku's streaming service to me or track my kids' watch history. Seems like they are few and far between, though.
This just swaps one locked-down company for another. You're still at the mercy of a giant corp, and worse it's unlikely to work well with my linux laptop and Android phone whereas at least Samsung tries (and often fails). A better solution is needed. I buy Sceptre TVs when I can, though for a "big screen" there aren't great options.
Yeah, we do use Apple TV because at the very least if they are collecting our data, they're not using it to advertise directly to us on the same device. My parents have a Roku TV and the number of ads it serves up directly on the device leave me feeling nauseous.
The best thing we have been able to come up with is leaving the TV itself disconnected from the WiFi and using an Apple TV for smart features/streaming. I'm sure they're still gathering data but it's at least not as blatant. It's a real crapfest for the consumer at the moment.