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.
my roku TV felt my wrath because it dared to show me a banner ad while I was in the middle of a game.
i promptly disabled internet on it completely. now it’s a dumb TV. and my life is much better.
I want to recommend that you change your WiFi password. Even though you disabled the internet, it may still phone home.
oh it’s a relief that we have recently changed it. the bastard roku is completely locked out.
Better yet, tear the wifi antenna off the board, can’t connect to wifi without any antenna, no matter how hard you try.
i’d rather masturbate with a cheese grater than own a “smart” tv….
We’ll have fun all TV’s are smart TVs.
i don’t own a tv… just a computer
Ah an even smarter tv than a tv
yeah but i actually control my computer
And more lies we like to tell ourselves
no like i’ve been a computer nerd my whole life and went to college for computer science… and i control my own computer, unlike almost everyone else.
and at least with a pc you can control it… most people don’t
That isn’t true
Samsung QBR line is an example of a dumb tv
Yep disabled Internet and I cast video from my phone to the TV so I can control what appears on the screen.
Using screen mirroring or does it still access the home network?
Just screen mirroring iirc.
For reference, I have a Samsung S23, and I use the Smart View function that you can find if you pull down twice the top of the screen and get to the Quick Settings drawer. I think my phone and TV had to be on the same WiFi network at first for the phone to be able to find the TV, but after that I can turn WiFi off on both devices and Smart View still remembers the Roku TV.
Oddly, after screen mirroring begins and I can see my phone screen on the Roku TV, if I scroll down on the Quick Settings drawer it shows the phone’s WiFi is on, but the symbol next to my signal bars is clearly 4G LTE or 5G and not WiFi.
Works pretty well unless you have too much ElectroMagnetic Interference (EMI) in which case the lag sucks and may even cease the connection. I’ve been using screen mirroring for years though and it’s great.
Good luck!
Yeah it probably becomes WiFi Direct once both find the other. In my experience though the quality is pretty bad, might depend on the devices
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?
You can return it.
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.
My workplace uses Samsung TVs. I found a trick to let it run without connecting to WiFi. On the screen where it asks you to connect to a network, just click right like you wanted to skip it and it will skip it even though it doesn’t say that’s an option. YMMV though, I can’t say if it works for all TVs.
Better yet, don’t buy a Samsung TV but this might come in handy if you happen to have one.
I’ve talked to numerous people who have modern Samsung QD OLED and Mini LED TVs and literally not a single one has ever mentioned an issue like this. I’m incredibly skeptical of your claim.
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”
deleted by creator
Alright. I hope they enjoy smelling my dog’s farts all day.
Maybe that’s why they removed it… 🤔
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.
Literally every smartTV OS does this. Roku isn’t special. They all collect image metadata, at least by default.
They pushed these changes on Christmas Day.
Knowing no one would read it, since they’re with family just trying to watch a lovely Christmas movie. Bastards.
Edit: autocorrect
The new section pertains to the California Law about biometric data collection, it seems they removed it because it was applied worldwide and they didn’t want that. I used a California VPN server and the privacy policy changed for me.
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.
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 🤣
Don’t give it internet, return it if it “needs” internet.
What you’re doing is a losing battle; once internet connected everything is normalised they’ll stop working if you block tracking and suddenly you’re the weird one.
Instead, vote with your wallet, talk with others about how annoying/bad this is and get them to vote with their wallets, too!
The moose is tightening.
Can’t even sniff digital panties in the privacy of your own home what is this world coming to?
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 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…
Every single SmartTV OS does this fyi.
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
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.
Probably a catch-all for their next generation of Roku devices they’re developing.
It is definitely a catch all, disclosure of this information is required by California law, that is the only reason they even put it in the policy. They seem to have accidentally released it worldwide, which is why they reverted it, now it only shows if you have a California ip.
Smell-O-Vision sounds like a great idea until you think about it while watching a zombie movie.
