• PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I blocked my two TVs from phoning home via my pihole. They are the two noisiest devices on my network, by leaps and bounds.

    On a day of heavy usage, my phone and desktop may get ~2000 blocked requests combined. That’s high, but not unheard of. It just means I did a lot of browsing, with a lot of blocked ad requests. My TVs average somewhere around 7500 blocked requests per day, on days that I haven’t even turned them on. That’s an attempt to phone home every ~12 seconds. And it is much worse on days that I actually use them.

    • Chaotic Entropy@feddit.uk
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      1 month ago

      To be clear though, that’s largely because it is just repeating the same request over and over as it times out and retries. They’re a lot less noisy when they actually connect successfully, though it is still undesirable for them to do so.

    • cordlesslamp@lemmy.today
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      2 months ago

      Maybe i’m stupid, but why would a TV even do that? All it’s know is what you’re watching today, right? How is that information useful? If you’re living with other people, the TV couldn’t even know who’s watching, that would make the data useless.

      • Croquette@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        Data mining. They know what you watch, when you don’t and any other habits you have.

        If you have a microphone on your remote or tv, then they also send that data over.

      • ArcticPrincess@lemmy.ml
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        2 months ago

        Knowing the distribution of what entire households watch is very useful. It’s not about spying on you personally.

    • MajorasMaskForever@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Jesus dude, what brand TV do you have?

      My LG issues a few hundred blocked requests throughout the day with heavy usage. I’ve never seen it wake up and phone home (my Nintendo Switch does it every hour for some stupid reason)