Is your smart TV SPYING on your family? Investigation reveals how much personal data television sets know about viewers

Home »Is your smart TV SPYING on your family? Investigation reveals how much personal data television sets know about viewers

Is your smart TV SPYING on your family? Investigation reveals how much personal data television sets know about viewers

Posted by sciencetech-blog on Friday, August 29, 2014 Label:

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Sitting in front of your smart television, you may think you are the only one watching.

But if you have agreed to the appliance's terms and conditions, the manufacturer may be spying on you, researchers claim.

Brands could be monitoring the programmes you watch, and the websites you browse, according to a study by Which?

Smart TV brands monitor the programmes you watch and the websites you browse to offer personalised recommendations for TV shows - but this information can be passed on to advertisers to target viewers more accurately

WHAT WHICH? WANTS FROM SMART TV MANUFACTURERS

Which? thinks that manufacturers could do more to keep their customers happy.

It has asked companies to keep TV tracking to a minimum and to encrypt all data transmitted.

To disclose what they are tracking and why.

To allow customers to opt out of tracking and still use the smart TV functions they have paid for.

To give consumers a choice about whether they see adverts on their homescreen.

Such monitoring could bring benefits such as more personalised recommendations for TV shows to watch.

But it could also be used to let advertisers target people more accurately in their own home, which some may consider an invasion of their privacy.

Last year, IT consultant Jason Huntley realised his LG smart TV was tracking his family's viewing habits and even knew his children's names because he had watched a family video on his set.

Which? magazine's more recent investigation explored how TVs from LG, Samsung, Sony, Panasonic and Toshiba track their owners.

Experts monitored streams of data coming from 2013 and 2014 models of smart TVs, and changed channel, searched the web and played videos from a USB stick to see what information was collected.

They discovered that all the brands track people's viewing habits to some extent, although LG has stopped temporarily.

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Most of data collected was encrypted to hide it from hackers, but a Samsung TV disclosed the tester's location and postcode for anyone to see.

The firm told Which? that location is needed to operate the TV, but that a postcode isn't required.

Last year, IT consultant Jason Huntley realised his LG smart TV was tracking his family's viewing habits and even knew his children's names because he had watched a family video on his set. An LG set is pictured

A previous study by the publication revealed that brands have abandoned support for some of the TVs that are a few years old – rendering them less smart because some apps (illustrated) couldn't be accessed

'RED BUTTON' FEATURE COULD BE USED TO HIJACK WEB ACCOUNTS

A team of scientists at Columbia University claimed in June that hybrid smart TVs that blur the line between televisions and the internet are vulnerable to a simple hack.

Coined the 'red-button attack' - named after the red button used on modern smart TV remotes to access additional content - the flaw can be exploited with a $250 (£150) transmitter.

In just minutes, someone using a smart TV could find their various internet accounts sending spam, printing coupons and writing fake reviews without their knowledge.

Hackers could, in theory, also use these accounts to harvest personal information.

The attack works by exploiting a vulnerability in Hybrid Broadcast-Broadband Television (HbbTV).

This 'allows broadcast streams to include embedded HTML content which is rendered by the television,' the researchers wrote in their paper.

The hacker would then take over the channel a viewer was watching for a short amount of time.

This would be done by using a simple amplifier, on a rooftop to hijack networks across an area of 0.5 square miles (1.4 square kilometres).

In doing so, the hacker would have access to any websites the viewer was logged into on their smart TV.

This could range from getting access to their Facebook accounts to writing fake reviews on websites for products.

Samsung, LG, Panasonic and Toshiba all push adverts onto a TV's homescreen, and while users can stop them being targeted, they cannot be blocked completely.

People uncomfortable with data being collected about them may wish to decline their TV's terms and conditions, but this could leave them without much of the device's functionality.

Panasonic blocks the use of apps and web browser if a user rejects its terms, while LG blocks app and Samsung and Toshiba stop all access to the TV set.

Sony was the only brand studied that if a user rejects its terms, only blocks tracking so that a user loses content recommendations - without limiting other functions.

A previous study by the publication revealed that brands have abandoned support for some of the TVS that are a few years old – rendering them less smart.

Which? was contacted by Samsung and LG smart TV customers who bought their sets in 2010 and 2011 respectively.

They were outraged after losing access to LoveFilm, now called Amazon Prime Instant Video.

When a TV manufacturer updates its smart TV range, the whole operating system it runs on can potentially change to incorporate new features.

This means the people who make the apps may have to redesign and recode their services to make them compatible.

Manufacturers have to pay the developers for licenses to host the apps and show the content and, as a result, may choose to only cover app licenses for their newer products, and not their older ones.

Keeping apps such as BBC iPlayer and Netflix available on smart TVs requires agreement between the manufacturers and the third-party app providers.

If they can't agree, or either party changes their technology or software, consumers can lose services.

This also goes the other way - if a TV was sold before an app becomes available, it's unlikely the developers will ever make it backward compatible, meaning it will never work on models released before the app launched.

If an older TV doesn't meet these requirements, customers will get a poorer experience and Netflix could develop a reputation for providing a sub-standard service.

According to the Which? investigation, 'manufacturers blame the app providers, the app providers blame the manufacturers, and the retailers blame everyone but themselves.

'Yet in the middle of this, consumers can lose out. Since the product itself hasn't developed a physical fault, it's a grey area for consumer rights.'

Smart TV spying: what you need to know

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