Smart TVs, smart-home devices found to be leaking sensitive user data, researchers find
Posted by M. C. on September 18, 2019
The term leaking makes this sound accidental.
The only accident is NBC telling us about it.
I would hesitate to assume that just because you didn’t connect your smart appliance to your internet that it isn’t connected.
Your kids bedroom and your bedroom smart TVs have MICROPHONES and CAMERAS.
By Jason Abbruzzese
Smart-home devices, such as televisions and streaming boxes, are collecting reams of data — including sensitive information such as device locations — that is then being sent to third parties like advertisers and major tech companies, researchers said Tuesday.
As the findings show, even as privacy concerns have become a part of the discussion around consumer technology, new devices are adding to the hidden and often convoluted industry around data collection and monetization.
A team of researchers from Northeastern University and the Imperial College of London found that a variety of internet-connected devices collected and distributed data to outside companies, including smart TV and TV streaming devices from Roku and Amazon — even if a consumer did not interact with those companies.
“Nearly all TV devices in our testbeds contacts Netflix even though we never configured any TV with a Netflix account,” the Northeastern and Imperial College researchers wrote.
The researchers tested a total of 81 devices in the U.S. and U.K. in an effort to gain a broad idea of how much data is collected by smart-home devices, and where that data goes.
The research was first reported by The Financial Times.
The researchers found data sent to a variety of companies, some known to consumers including Google, Facebook and Amazon, as well as companies that operate out of the public eye such as Mixpanel.com, a company that tracks users to help companies improve their products.
One of the researchers, David Choffnes, a professor of computer science at Northeastern, said that his previous work looking at the data collection and dissemination habits of mobile apps led him to expect similar practices with smart-home devices…
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