Re: Not metadata....
Blocking connection to TV is easy. Just don't plug it in.
Blocking connection to TV, whilst allowing services like Netflix to work, is harder. It's not as simple as just allowing access to Netflix IPs (although that would be hard enough for most people).
My Samsung TV, for example, has a Netflix app, and it calls home to Samsung to check if that app is up to date before running it. So, I have to allow it to call Samsung. How do I know it's not also sending back a record of my last 7 days' terrestrial viewing habits at the same time?
There is no technological solution to this. It is a question of:
(a) trust in the vendor - that they are not doing things which are "wrong" from the user's point of view;
(b) trust in the vendor's platform security - that it doesn't have gaping holes which allow third parties to take over the box and do nefarious things
Unfortunately, the history of the last 10-20 years does not fill me with confidence in either of those areas.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
