If It Itches Don't Scratch It - Your TV's Watching

Best to resist the temptation to scratch that itchy place as you watch your favourite show on the box. What you get up to in front of your Smart TV may not be as private as you think.

According to a UK blogger, his LG Smart TV has a nasty habit of sending back unencrypted data and in the clear, to LG every time he changes channel.

Not that switching off "Collection of watching info" (it's set ON by default) in his settings did much good as his viewing data was still being sent back to LG's servers in a highly insecure fashion.

Source: DoctorBeet's Blog 

Go to the company web site and they boast "LG Smart AD provides the express way for advertisers to engage with targeted audiences through multi device screens in global scale and in the most effective and innovative fashion." i.e. targeted advertising.

On the face of it it would seem that LG are in breach of the UK's strict UK Data Protection Act?  One wonders how other countries are faring and if they are even aware of the nature of this risky data flow from their personal appliances.

According to a BBC report the blogger, Mr Huntley, "suggested that even if LG had never inspected the data, it could still pose a security risk as hackers could take advantage of the practice".

Buying a new television doesn't mean by default that you have agreed to be spied upon and neither it should.

With the Internet of Things upon us perhaps the best advice to give is 'better watch what you say to your toaster'!

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Scary Ideas About Privacy

There have been a number of disconcerting revelations about platform privacy in recent times.  Facebook has drawn a lot of flak for introducing Facebook Places which has the ability to pinpoint where a person is accessing their account and entering data.

Not every one wants this information available to third parties. If you don't wish to have Digital Big Brother knowing your every move then you should go to your account and do the following:

• Go to Account which is at top right of the screen
• Account settings
• Notifications
• Scroll down to Places
• Uncheck the 2 boxes

There have also been some very strange pronouncements from the CEO of Google. Gawker with its usual eloquence, highlights this as " the Google CEO outlining his dystopian vision of the future, in which children change their names at adulthood to escape damning online dossiers — dossiers of the sort stored by Google."

In earlier statements Eric Schmidt would have us believe that we should not have any secrets and that the virtuous Google is better at maintaining our privacy than a government; I think not.

The other flaw in this post-adolescent  name change idea is that the inference that upon reaching adulthood one becomes sin-free. There maybe be super mortals in this category but I have yet to meet one.

Stephen Colbert skewers Schmidt on the privacy issue in this video.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Word - Control-Self-Delete
www.colbertnation.com
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Valleywag has got even hotter under the collar over this issue and lists six delusions of Google's arrogant leaders.

Of course the other side of the coin is that it is not Google's responsibility to dictate to users what they should or should not put online. 

There has to be a level of personal responsibility and if a person is silly enough to ruin their own reputation on the web, whose fault is this?

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• Google's CEO Has Scary Ideas For Children [The Way We Live Now] (gawker.com)
• Google CEO Eric Schmidt's answer to online privacy concerns: change your name (telegraph.co.uk)