For those who still use televisions, it turns out there’s a security hole when you plug in your computer, according to NewScientist (5 October 2024, paywall):
Popular smart TV models can take multiple snapshots of what you are watching every second or upload audio snippets of viewed content – possibly even when they are being used as external displays for your laptop or video game console.
Smart TV manufacturers use these frequent screenshots or audio clips in their automatic content recognition systems, which track viewing habits in order to target people with specific advertising. But researchers showed this tracking by some of the world’s most popular smart TV brands – Samsung TVs can take screenshots every 500 milliseconds and LG TVs upload 10-millisecond audio samples of viewed content – can occur when people least expect it.
“When a user connects their laptop via HDMI just to browse stuff on their laptop on a bigger screen by using the TV as a ‘dumb’ display, they are unsuspecting of their activity being screenshotted,” says Yash Vekaria at the University of California, Davis. An LG spokesperson disputed this scenario, and Samsung did not respond to a request for comment. …
[Vekaria and his team] found the smart TVs did not appear to upload any screenshots or audio data when streaming from Netflix or other third-party apps, mirroring YouTube content streamed on a separate phone or laptop or when sitting idle. But the smart TVs did upload data when showing broadcasts from the TV antenna or content from an HDMI-connected device.
That’s an unpleasant thought. While sheer volume might slow passive security breaches, this is certainly something to keep in mind.
If you own a television.
