Privacy
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
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much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
You don’t have to get a smart tv at all. TVs do not need to be smart. If you search ‘business monitor’, you will find large quality displays such as used for corporate signage. The one issue is they often have only a few inputs, but that is easily addressed and worth it to avoid the completely unnecessary hassle of a TV too smart for your own good.
My two cents
I have a WebOS tv and the answer is: just don’t. It’s open source in a similar way Android is, spy’s on you, has way less apps available and can’t/is really bad at basic shit
Everything is really bad. But sadly it is nearly impossible to buy a normal TV these days. Just buy any SmartTV, and get yourself a MiniPC with the Linux Distro of your liking.
Buy a retail display screen. Totally dumb.
I would avoid anything built into the TV.
- Its starting to be used for spying on you
- The chip they come with are usually not that good unless it's a high end TV.
- They are building ads right into the TV themselves.
I would not connect the TV to the internet and use a external media player. Either a Nvidia shield or an Apple TV is your best bet.
You can also try building a media player yourself using a small computer.
Note - The self made media player will be more limited in terms of apps available, unfortunately, as well as streaming quality from some of the streaming services.
We need this info added to an FAQ. This question comes up frequently.
LG WebOS doesn't have good support for things like Jellyfin. If you want to ever build a library of media and let them have easy access to it, then WebOS is gonna suck, so will Samsung's Tizen. But all the Android TVs have access.
Don't know if you're interested in that kind of thing, but figured I'd share it in case it was a factor.
The only other alternative is a commercial display.
This is untrue. You can use Jellyfin or Kodi natively on LG WebOS on the TV and stream whatever you want locally. You have to grab it from the homebrew channel or sideload it. It's a little bit of a process though. Nothing crazy. But it works!
Edit: you can also get YouTube without ads off Homebrew.
Just don’t connect it to the internet.
Yeah, but is that an option realistically, if the parents want Netflix and Iplayer or whatever?
I think just with electric cars all the options are a complete privacy nightmare ...
Sure is. Block the tv from the internet. Get a Chromecast, use that instead
This is the way. I have an LG and bought one for my parents. Do the initial sign up/registration, then turn off Internet access. I actually thought mine was broken when I got it, but it was just my pihole blocking it. Temporary whitelist for setup, smooth sailing since.
But you can just block all the ads on the home screen with pihole. Then you can still use the native TV apps. It's a win-win.
If you turn off Internet access then your parents can't stream.
That's generous of you. If I'd mistakenly bought one that wouldn't work without ever having a network connection, I'd be returning it and demanding my money back. Hasn't happened yet, though.
Won't work without setup?
My advice is never use a smart tv of any kind.
Use a third party device like an apple tv or roku, hell even a bluray player with apps on it.
Then get what ever TV you like and never let it see the internet.
I personally like Visio, but any mid grade display is fine.
It is getting harder and harder to find a dumb TV though.
They didn't say that....they just said not to hook whatever smart TV they get to the internet.
I mean, they say both things.
My advice is never use a smart tv of any kind.
I heard that https://libreelec.tv is pretty good
Its good if everything you need can run from Kodi. It uses its own Linux distribution in the background, so you won't really be able to install anything else unless you build it.
Then run it in a container under a better distribution if you desperately need to put neofetch on your HTPC. Or run the other distro in a container under libreelec since I’m pretty sure it supports them.
Absolutely this. Depending on how you use it though, make sure you have a VPN and private DNS setup on your router
Why do you need private dns for?
If Kodi is used to watch movies and TV shows for free then you'd want to protect your internet traffic from unwanted eyes
To control what can be accessed.
Having your own DNS enables you to block ads on every device in your network.
PiHole makes my smart TV more responsive, because it can't get crap to load into the home screen.