Popular smart TV models from Samsung and LG can take multiple screenshots of what you’re watching every second. Even when they were used as an external display for a laptop or game console.
Manufacturers use their content and audio recordings in their content measurement devices to show targeted ads to people. Researchers claim that Samsung TVs can take screenshots of women in 500 milliseconds, while LG TVs can take 10 milliseconds.
When a user turns on his laptop via HDMI to simply view something on the laptop screen using the TV as a display, he has no idea that his actions will be understood.
— Yash Vekaria from UC Davis
Researcher Yash Vekaria and his colleagues connected Samsung and LG TVs 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 weren’t loading anything when streaming from Netflix or other apps. However, the smart TV downloaded screenshots when showing broadcasts from a TV antenna or content from a device connected via HDMI.
The problem is that these screenshots can save sensitive information.
Users may be marked with this symbol. But this process requires turning on or off 6 to 11 different TV power options. They differ in all models, so there are no universal solutions. [New Scientist]
Source: Iphones RU
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