[andy99]

I had a ~2008 vintage Samsung phone with a fingerprint sensor that gave your blood oxygen level (SpO2). One day it told me something similar, I had to agree to send them data or I couldn’t use it. So I never used it again, but yeah they have been abusing their costumers a long time.

This is they same company whose tvs take pictures of what you are watching and send them back to Samsung.

[wolvoleo]

Every TV does that unfortunately. It's called automatic content recognition but every manufacturer has a different euphemism for it.

It's definitely not just Samsung. As bad as this is. The problem is bigger than just them.

[subscribed]

Every TV might do this, not every single one does. Buy TVs which allow you to opt out (at least in one case it was several opt-ins, no opt out per SE).

[wolvoleo]

I don't really want to ask for permission to be excused from this vile monitoring. I don't want it to be in there at all. But I'm not aware of any brand which doesn't do this.

[jdmarble]

I’ve got 2 Sceptre “dumb” TVs.

[wolvoleo]

Thanks, never heard of that brand but I'll have a look.

[imoverclocked]

I have a projector that I just leave off the network. Do TVs require a network connection now? What happens when they don't have one?

[phil21]

At the moment usually just a nag popup on power on.

Annoying but not a huge deal. I imagine this will slowly get worse as more people learn to not connect it to WiFi.

Also of course all the smart tv features don’t work, and a lot more folks than I ever imagined actually use the built in controller (usually some form of Android or Roku) to watch Netflix and whatnot. And a lot of folks actually do watch the built in TV “channels” a lot of vendors ship with.

It seems very few people buy an additional device like an Apple TV or Nvidia Shield.

[wolvoleo]

I heard on another forum that the latest Samsungs just don't progress through the setup wizard without internet. And someone noticed they retain WiFi passwords even after a factory reset.

You can still set up a temporary WiFi and just kill it after but it's getting pretty insane now.

[globalnode]

ah so thats where microsoft got the idea for recall from.

[nicce]

How is Recall doing these days?

[nubinetwork]

At least yours still works, they took out the ability to use the sensor on my s5 some years ago... one random app upgrade and they just decided nope.