Popular smart TV models from Samsung and LG can take multiple screenshots of what you’re watching every second. Even when used as external displays for a laptop or game console.
Manufacturers use them and audio recordings in their automatic content recognition systems to show people targeted ads. Researchers found that Samsung TVs can take screenshots every 500 milliseconds, while LG TVs can take screenshots every 10 milliseconds.
When a user connects his laptop via HDMI to just watch something on his laptop on the big screen using the TV as a display, he has no idea that his actions will be filmed.
– Yash Vekaria from UC Davis
Researcher Yash Vekaria and his colleagues connected Samsung and LG televisions to their server running software to analyze network traffic. It acted as an intermediary to see what visual screenshots or audio data the TVs were loading.
They noticed that smart TVs were not loading anything when streaming from Netflix or other third-party apps. However, smart TVs will load screenshots when displaying broadcasts from a TV antenna or content from a device connected via HDMI.
The problem is that these screenshots may contain sensitive information.
Users can opt out of such tracking. But this process requires turning on or off from 6 to 11 different options in the TV settings. They are different in every model, so there is no universal solution. [New Scientist]
iPhones.ru
Popular smart TV models from Samsung and LG can take multiple screenshots of what you’re watching every second. Even when used as external displays for a laptop or game console. Manufacturers use them and audio recordings in their automatic content recognition systems to show people targeted ads. Researchers have discovered that Samsung TVs can take screenshots…
