Aside from not having one of these devices at all, or disconnecting it from internet access, if you have one and want to opt-out of ACR (Automatic Content Recognition), you need to make sure that you did not select to 'opt-in' to "personalization" type features on the device.
ACR opt-ins are not presented to end-users with a clear statement of what the opt-in means or what will happen with your data from your device and are often presented as turning on "personalization" (generally, for advertising purposes).
The various TV or tv-related device manufacturers use different names for "ACR," so you'll need to decipher what your manufacturer calls this to disable the feature. Consumer Reports has a useful guide covering multiple brands on how to turn off ACR: https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics/privacy/how-to-t...
If you find that your device has already been opted-in, you can disable the selection, and submit a request to have your device's information removed in some jurisdictions. You can also select to have your device's identifier id (e.g. "PSID" etc) reset from the device before performing a full factory/configuration reset of the device and setting it up again. If you fully reset the device, you'll want to watch out for the ways the manufacturer will try to get you to opt-in during the setup process. Many people have ACR-turned on without knowing.
It's also worth firewalling, or at least using dns-based blocking, any "smart tv" type devices on your network. Some of them even do periodic scans of your network and send that information to the manufacturer when they "phone home."
On an LG TV, ACR tracking is deceptively called "Live Plus", and it is on by default. I was very careful not to opt in to anything, but they it was still on when I discovered it. Also, you apparently do not own your homescreen, it's their property to do with as they wish.
I run AdGuard at my parent’s home and it’s crazy the amount of logs (blocked DNS queries) I get from the TVs alone. Before that Windows was the biggest offender but I switched them to Linux Mint since.
Mint has been by far the most stable / least "requires CLI fix on a weekly basis" distro I've used so far, but I gotta ask: how's that working out?
I like it a fair bit, but I've still had to figure out weirdly broken things like "captive portals always look like the wifi didn't connect at all, but `nmcli c up` fixes that" which I can't imagine most non-computer-oriented-Windows-haters in my life would be able to manage...
Honestly, for my parents it has been a delightful experience. They have quite a basic usage of their computer, mainly web browsing, some Excel/Word, managing files like photos, and occasionally printing.
I didn't brief them much, I just installed and configured everything that was necessary for them, and let them figure out the rest. To my surprise, they managed everything on their own! Which made me realize how far UX went in the Linux world.
In terms of maintenance, every six months when I get home for a visit, I run some updates and answer some of their questions. It's very low maintenance, especially compared to Windows.
Also, I noticed quite an interesting side effect when installing Mint for non-techy people. They feel empowered because I trust them to run Linux, which they believe is reserved to the elite techies. This also makes them respect their computer more, which in turn makes them run into less issues as they are more careful with that they do.
I was looking at getting a TV and they all have garbage "smart" features I don't want. Someone told me to get a sceptre tv without any of that but I can't find them in my country and their actual panels don't seem that great.
So all thats left is looking for commercial panels but a lot of those have built in content management systems now too.
Why not take advantage of the subsidized price of the “smart” model, never plug it into the internet or connect it to wifi, and just plug in your devices of choice? Best of both worlds.
I think the only real problem with that is at some point (if they aren't already) they will embed cellular modems and just exfiltrate the data that way. They do this now in cars, why not TVs too?
1) From the perspective of the manufacturers that's theft of service. The manufacturers will implement measures to ensure your use of the TV is contingent upon them continuing data collecting and serving ads. Think TVs piggybacking off any available wireless connection (even LTE or 5G), or simply refusing to function until the network is set up.
2) That's still a lot of potentially crash-prone crud that's running. Better to just buy a Sceptre or maybe a large computer monitor, and have nothing running that isn't dedicated to "get pixels into eyeballs".
If this model of "theft of service" is legally enforceable, then significant swaths of this industry are engaging in false advertising and possibly full-on fraud by not making this agreement they're entering into clear to customers prior to their purchase of the device
From an ethical perspective, you will never convince me to feel bad about any "theft" of this kind, and this kind of dilution of concepts like "theft" and "crime" is likely responsible for the emotional valence of those terms reading a lot less significantly negative to people
I'm not saying that you should feel bad about it. What I am saying is that the manufacturers won't feel bad about fighting you on this issue, and coming up with ways to force you to see the advertisements they want you to see, and turn over the data they want on you.
It's a principle I'll call Kellner's Law: If a company makes a product or service available free or at a discount by involving advertisers, from the company's perspective that creates an implicit contractual obligation on the customer's part to see the ads; and any attempt to take advantage of the freebie/discount whilst avoiding the ads will be considered a form of theft, legitimizing any technical or legal means at the company's disposal to force customers to see the ads, or else to withdraw service from those who try to avoid them. Kellner's Law explains a lot of corporate behaviors in this space, including crackdowns by YouTube and other sites on Web-based ad blockers.
I named it for Jamie Kellner, a television executive who when TiVo (which famously allowed skipping ads in television programs recorded to the device) came out, said "Your contract with the network when you get the show is you're going to watch the spots" and that skipping ads with a device like TiVo was "actually stealing programming".
Kellner's law. I like it. It's an excellent illustration of the cowardice and hostility toward customers that comes from being in the subscription-twiddling business model
If Kellner wanted to make a deal with cable subscribers, why didn't he advertise cable that way? "If you buy our package and agree to watch ads when they come on in order to support our monetization model, you can watch over a hundred channels!"
But he didn't do that, of course. Instead, when his business model clashed with reality, he blamed the customers for violating an imaginary contract they never signed. Just because execs want to imagine violations of their assumptions as crimes doesn't mean that they actually are, and we should be using every meager lever of power we have access to to prevent governments from making laws to appease people like him, because every time a law like that is made, more people's rights are made subject to the arbitrary retroactive demands of delusional businessmen
Unfortunately 99.998% of the population can't do that. I'm glad you found a solution for yourself, but that doesn't help everyone else, so everyone else will reward the manufacturers by buying them and leaving them able to phone home, so manufacturers will just push the boundaries a little further next time and that might impact you in a way you can't easily mitigate.
Obviously, but I also vote for right to repair laws and "reward" the right manufacturers by telling my family to buy devices that are easier to hack/repair.
Just taken a look at my Adguard Home query log for my TV, it seems to try and make hundreds of requests to "logs.netflix.com" for some reason - I'm not a subscriber to Netflix, I've never opened the Netflix app, I just turned on the TV and it's sitting on a HDMI source that's turned off so it isn't even doing anything
...and yet it keeps trying to connect to "logs.netflix.com" for reasons I do not understand. Granted, it could be just crappy retry logic, but still, why ping this endpoint when I'm not even using netflix!
ACR opt-ins are not presented to end-users with a clear statement of what the opt-in means or what will happen with your data from your device and are often presented as turning on "personalization" (generally, for advertising purposes).
The various TV or tv-related device manufacturers use different names for "ACR," so you'll need to decipher what your manufacturer calls this to disable the feature. Consumer Reports has a useful guide covering multiple brands on how to turn off ACR: https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics/privacy/how-to-t...
If you find that your device has already been opted-in, you can disable the selection, and submit a request to have your device's information removed in some jurisdictions. You can also select to have your device's identifier id (e.g. "PSID" etc) reset from the device before performing a full factory/configuration reset of the device and setting it up again. If you fully reset the device, you'll want to watch out for the ways the manufacturer will try to get you to opt-in during the setup process. Many people have ACR-turned on without knowing.
Adding a few more opt-out guides:
https://www.tomsguide.com/how-to/stop-your-snooping-smart-tv...
https://www.zdnet.com/home-and-office/how-to-disable-acr-and...
It's also worth firewalling, or at least using dns-based blocking, any "smart tv" type devices on your network. Some of them even do periodic scans of your network and send that information to the manufacturer when they "phone home."