Audio, electronic, visual, thermal, olfactory, or similar information.
Clarification: after a bit of research it seems the olfactory section pertains to CCPA California law, many places have olfactory in the privacy policy because it is required by the law. I can’t believe we reached a point where we have to put olfactory in the privacy policy, but then again it won’t be long before Smell-O-Vision becomes reality.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smell-O-Vision
They removed it, archived here: https://archive.ph/YYBuJ
Also have a California ip you get a different privacy policy.
Never give your TV the wifi password.
The problem is that some TVs (cough Samsung) won’t allow you to even use the thing as a monitor until you allow it online.
That would have been an instant return for me.
I’ve heard tell of this, I’ve been wondering something. Can you change your wifi password, give it the new one for setup, and then disconnect and restore your typical password and continue to use the TV, or does it need an active connection?
Good question, I’ve heard rumors that they’ll eventually get upset and throw an impassable splash screen until you reconnect, but I’ve never seen it myself.
Eh I want to control it with my automation. But it can’t connect to the wan. Have firewall rules blocking it.
It is always better to do that shit with a separate gizmo. Ideally, something computery enough that it will not betray you, or cheap enough that you can take a hammer to it when it does.
“we may collect information about your activities, like the apps you install or access (including usage statistics such as what apps you access, the time you access them, and how long you interact with them), and information about the videos and other content you select and stream within these streaming services.
When you use a smart TV with our operating system (e.g., a Roku TV model) with the Smart TV Experience enabled, we use Automatic Content Recognition (“ACR”) technology to collect information about what you watch or access (e.g., the programs, video games, ads and channels you viewed or accessed, and the date, time and duration of the viewing or access) via your TV’s antenna, cable box, game console, media player or other devices connected to your TV, and we may also collect additional information about the videos and other content you stream. The data collected while the Smart TV Experience is enabled may vary depending on your TV’s model and when you enabled the Smart TV Experience. For information specific to your TV, please see the Privacy > Smart TV Experience section of your TV’s settings menu. If you disable this setting on your TV, Roku will not use ACR on that TV, but Roku still receives information about your interactions and streaming activities on that TV through other methods.
If you use the Roku Media Player to view your video or photo files or listen to your music files, Roku will collect data about the files viewed within the Roku Media Player, such as codecs, and other metadata of the local files you play through the Roku Media Player”
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Super weird. I would assume that olfactory sensors would cost more per TV than Roku would make by collecting the data. Afaik there’s no such thing as electronic olfactory sensors per se anyway. In before labs start buying Roku TVs because they all have gas chromatography machines inside them.
It is related to the California Law, there are no sensors in the tv. The strange thing is that they reverted the policy without informing anyone.
https://www.zengrc.com/blog/what-are-the-ccpa-categories-of-personal-information/
Ah. I appreciate the context. Now my confusion is just shifted from Roku to California legislators. I can appreciate future proofing a law, but this seems a bit on the nose.
Also just so you are aware apparently the changes weren’t removed, but only show if you have a US ip. So US have their own privacy policy that differs from the rest of the world. The reason it was included is probably this https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smell-O-Vision.
This is the US policy dated January 2025: https://docs.roku.com/api/v1/published/userprivacypolicy/en/US/text
The rest of the world it is dated 12 December.
If you buy something nowadays and it connects to the Internet, it’s bad. Treat it like it’s bad. VLAN it, firewall it, force it to use your DNS only and block everything until it breaks then figure out what it actually needs.
then figure out what it actually needs.
It needs tracking to work.
Also, I hardly see my non tech relatives following your advice 🤣
I don’t connect my Roku TV to the internet, and always use external devi e via HDMI.
Ok. Which device u connect?
Another device that collects the same shit probably 😂😥
I mean the list is pretty small. Unless they install Kodi - everything else is compromised.
Laptop, or a mini PC
Sure, but what os u run? The only open source one for home media is Kodi.
I’ve ran it for a while. But it’s a pita.
My most people that also have jobs don’t do that.I run Arch on both my PC and Laptop. I self host a few containers to stream media from. Either use web front end, or native apps.
I both have a job, and maintain all of this. For fun.
Ya I wanted so bad to like Kodi but no matter what I do it crashes at least a few times daily. Constant audio sync problems and lockups as well.
My Roku media player, obviously…
The moose is tightening.
Roku is, first and foremost, an advertising platform.
My friend uses roku and I found it hilariously dystopian that the screen saver is basically just an artistic side scrolling city scape with billboards that advertise shit shows and movies you can stream or pay for.
Plex/Jellyfin is the only way to go.
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Any recommended firewall block lists (or allow lists) for Roku?
put it on a damn VLAN with no access to the internet. maybe through a whitelisting proxy. otherwise you won’t know if it just evades your measures by using some encrypted tunnel or anything
Why would I use Roku anyways? It’s such an inferior television operating system.
I’ve had good luck with it for years in comparison to Samsungs junk. I only briefly tried LGs when I bought my C3 but fell back to the Roku because it’s simpler to use (as a CEC device to turn on the audio receiver and change inputs automatically) and syncs between other Rokus. It also has the least amount of issues with Plex and all my Linux ISOs since they’re in varying formats that don’t always play nice with other clients (like the god damned POS Xbox client).
I understand there’s a lot of tracking and phoning home but it’s the least worst option in my experience.
If you have files with a bunch of different formats and codecs you don’t want to use anything Roku, your direct play options are extremely limited. This becomes almost a hard requirement when dealing with hevc 4K hdr/dv stuff unless you’ve got a server with quicksync or some oomph.
I’m probably going to get a lot of derision for this because it’s Lemmy, but for wide direct play coverage you either want an Nvidia Shield or an Apple TV 4K. I like the Apple TV solution, and everyone in my household is familiar with the UI. The Shield is the only one of the two to support Atmos audio if you have ceiling or upward firing speakers. It’s also not apple if you’re ideologically opposed to owning Apple products.
I’m not surprised you fell back to a Roku box from the built in TV apps, but if you’re going to go for a dedicated streaming box Roku, Firesticks/Firecubes, and Chromecasts should be the last resort due to ads in the experience and codec support.
Look at this guy with choices.
I mean - these days u go to store and buy a tv. Many people don’t even know what os is on it.
LOL fair. If I have a choice (we’ll see when I move out) I take Google TV over Roku everytime. Roku’s software is horrible, Apple got sued over doing far less than what Roku does with their operating system.
We have a roku TV that has no internet connection. It did when we first got it and didn’t play as much attention to this kind if thing. It’s now a dumb TV that’ll never get internet again. We run everything through an rpi4 running osmc.
When Roku took all four of my set-top roku devices hostage a while back with their forced Terms of Service update, I threw them all in the trash and have warned people against using them since.
Roku is a garbage ad company that will continue to use your devices against you.
I ain’t reading all that
And you’re someone who cares enough about privacy to subscribe to this community.
Which is why the only actual viable solution is legislation and privacy protection laws.
but also because reading the policy doesn’t help much when there are no options (brands) that are acceptable
OP could have included a summary, description, or quote of what they’re referring to and criticizing. They did not.
If you don’t own a Roku device, there’s no reason to read all that. I certainly don’t want to read the full privacy policy either and then guess what OP opened a discussion about or other commenters talk about.
Also, this community is called piracy, not privacy.
You think your Roku wouldn’t snitch on you?
