Beware of smart TVs

Why would the FBI watch and listen to us, most boring job in the world.
Is this a tactic of impregnated fear in good honest citizens watching National Geographic on their smart TVs?

We need smarter phones, with anti-scam system protection.

If the world keeps doing what it's doing it will take few billion years before we can watch TV safely. I'm eating my vegetables and fruits every day, from the local farmers market.
I buy eggs from healthy chickens, milk from healthy cows, and I feed my birds and dogs and cats and trees with organic healthy food.
I watch only the good stuff, the good documentaries, movies and only the good news channels. I watch peaceful sports...golfing, bowling, ping pong, snooker, tennis, baseball, basketball, swimming, gymnastics and chess.
Everything I do, I watch, music I listen to, I eat, I sleep, everything is good.
I put a piece of electric tape on all the cameras of my devices, and I only speak outside where there is no microphones.

* Do you guys do banking online or off?
 
a.wayne said:
Think your PC is any worse than your phone ,, worse ...!!
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I do not yet have a Smartphone aside from an iPhone from work for 2 factor authentication of two Pharma customer databases and systems and I run VPNs on my PCs and keep a pretty low footprint.
 
NorthStar said:
* Do you guys do banking online or off?
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We do nothing personal on-line aside from a few mail orders here and there. Everything else is done in Paper and by snail mail, No Email.

So I may be rare, nothing on-line and no smartphone. But, when the power goes out and I need proof of something, it's all right here in filing cabinets and not on line.

Oh, and a Roof Antenna for the very little TV I watch, no Cable/Sat TV. My FIOS is Internet and Phone only.
 
I never use Alexa voice recognition on any TV (device). That's the first thing I turn off. Granted I don't watch tons of TV and much of what I watch is on the bedroom system which has a 92 inch screen (which folds into the ceiling) and a projector with a Firestick (used a Roku box up until a couple of years back) and it is most often Netflix and sometimes regular over the air TV or Amazon Prime. Amazon rolled out an update for FireStick late in 2018 that enabled data monitoring by default and allowed the company to collect user data related to app usage and device usage. Make sure that the privacy settings have things turned off (on any device). It's just the nature of the current state of the world whether it is spam callers, spam texters, etc.
 
in addition to taking all prudent measures to ensure digital security and data privacy, i also wear a tin foil hat while watching TV ... belt and suspenders.

;):D
 
The last TV I bought was a Samsung somethingorother and extremely difficult to setup without ’smart’ features. It took me 45 minutes to do it. Then WiFi was still active per my RF field strength meter so I had to go in and disconnect it. Fortunately it was on a readily identifiable pwb.

I gave the TV a 1 star review because of all the spyware on it. Now it’s a dumb TV and works just fine.

It was inexpensive and I bet Samsung was counting on selling all my data to a shadowy third party as part of the overall profitability.
 
W9TR said:
The last TV I bought was a Samsung somethingorother and extremely difficult to setup without ’smart’ features. It took me 45 minutes to do it. Then WiFi was still active per my RF field strength meter so I had to go in and disconnect it. Fortunately it was on a readily identifiable pwb.

I gave the TV a 1 star review because of all the spyware on it. Now it’s a dumb TV and works just fine.

It was inexpensive and I bet Samsung was counting on selling all my data to a shadowy third party as part of the overall profitability.
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I should be surprised but somehow I’m not.
By the way, Apple just released their new iOS that has some privacy barriers built-in. They must be good since Facebook is fuming about it.
 
I have had a similar issue happened to me with my Vizio Chinese TV. With Netflix!! Long story short, yep my registered email got spoofed, plus my Netflix account got hacked! I really do not like having to say this but OP is correct in saying (anything connected to the internet can be hacked) Thing about my issue that Vizio tv, when I got on the phone with a Vizio support tech created a Wi-Fi connection which I could not disabled. It broadcast it that Wi-Fi connection to my TV constantly without any security. So yep anyone in my area could login on my internet though my Vizio tv. I had to do a hard reset on the TV and not running internet setup in settings on that Vizio tv. I didn't even trust ethernet connection after that to the TV. So yes Beware of Chinese built TVs not saying they're not good performing TVs that Vizio had excellent color for cheap TV good features. Just not secure as one would think. At least in my case.
 
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I have actually done something similar to that never shot a TV but I sure have thrown one out!! 😁
 
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I do have a Sony 40" Bravia 1080 it's close to 15 years old 1st gen HDMI.. it's like 50 pounds! Still works! No Apps no internet, it also is digital and analog! The over the air tuner in it pulls in 24 channels without a signal booster!:woot:
 
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Artister said:
I do have a Sony 40" Bravia 1080 it close to 25 years old 1st gen HDMI..it like 50 pounds! Still works! No Apps no internet, it also is digital and analog! The over the air tuner in it pulls in 24 channels without a signal booster!
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Interesting, I have the 42" XBR4 from same time period and it just won't die. Picture is same as when new. It does have USB input for Pics but won't recognize large drives. I have no SAT or Cable and get at least 65 OTA channels from my roof antenna.
 
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